Name: You Are a Badass
ISBN: 9780762490547

Jen Sincero

How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life

You Are a Badass

Isabella Martinez 

Offers a blunt and irreverent guide to achieving the money, relationships, career, and happiness that one desires through recognizing and doing away with self-sabotaging beliefs and behaviors.

This book is your biggest cheerleader. Many good parts, some stories I didn’t care for. Empowering. 

Robin Collura

Terry Benzie

I purchased this book on sale for Kindle some months ago but forgot about it until I did the same on Audible recently. It's highly thought of in several Facebook groups I belong to so was looking forward though I've only made it through four chapters thus far and, unless somebody tells me to hang in there as the good stuff ("I'll show you how later in this book" is a common refrain) is in the last few chapters, this is as far as I am going and I will be the second book I have ever returned for a refund. 

Summary: 
1). The author feels immensely dissatisfied with her life which apparently consisted of meaningless jobs, random sexual hookups and drug use.
2). Author decides to go to every self-help seminar under the sun.
3). Author writes book giving fluffy summaries of the most pseudo-science of the self-help genre. Not enough to get notices, she then decides to use "fuck" and "badass" repeatedly.
4). Great success

I like to pride myself on finishing books I don't enjoy and trying to get something out of them but am not finding anything here. So far, I have gleamed:

- you can't desire what you want, you have to want it as well
- you have to find the frequency of success, then you will have success because you can't get laid listening to NPR
- the author loves God, who she finds similar to line dancing...or perhaps not God but energy or spirit or Scooby-Doo, all of which she will use interchangeably throughout the book 
- she discovered the value of the present moment while swearing to herself during yoga class. 
- Ego is bad...I think...and abbreviated as "BS" because you have to have something catchy to be 'badass'.

Does the good stuff come later in the show?

Ugh. If you think your life can be improved by “vibrating” at the right frequency which will then manifest your wildest dreams, this book is for you. DNF because I couldn’t stomach starting chapter 4.

In response to another reviewer who asked if she was tricked into reading “The Secret,” yes. You and me both.

Eric Smith

I really love 90% of this book but 10% gets a little out there. Here’s the thing, if you’re looking for a scientifically backed belief system, this isn’t it. If you’re looking for even strong anecdotal evidence that believing your way into more money works, this isn’t it.

Most of the advice given here is fantastic. I only take umbrage with Sincero telling people to put extravagant expenses on credit cards and just believe that they are the type of person who can afford it. Why can’t you believe you’re the type of person who can afford it and find the money BEFORE you make the purchase of a BMW?

Definitely inspiring on guiding you to focus only on what truly matters. For that purpose, I highly recommend the book.

My first personal development book that I’ve read and it has some great tips.

Haley Kirinsky 

i think this book was good for a person who needs to come to the realization that their life isn’t what they want! 

personally, i already knew the info and i loved the quotes !

Zamyha

i think this book was good for a person who needs to come to the realization that their life isn’t what they want! 

personally, i already knew the info and i loved the quotes !

I thought that this book was good when I read it 

Lexy 

Kat Rector

I think this book has great points in it and I was able to tab some of it to change my mentality on some things. But I think this book definitely was overhyped and took me so long to finish.

Adding onto this to say that I also didn’t like how the author stated that if we have mental health issues that we should “just get over them” which is something that isn’t possible for a lot of people. Changing your mindset if you are able to absolutely could reduce a small percent of that but definitely not all of it.

Julia

I can't describe how much I love this book. I would give it six stars if I could. I want this book with me always.

Ed Kay

I picked this up in a store and glanced at a couple of pages which looked interesting and useful, so bought this for my Kindle. Unfortunately, within the first couple of pages the author made clear that this was a 'spiritual' (aka woo-woo) book, and that I'd have to get on board with connecting to the Source Energy (i.e. God) in order to fully appreciate the advice and direction she was about to impart. There was some sneering about how she used to be such a hateful atheist and how changing her life has given her belief in the all powerful - at which point I felt my hackles rise, and I read the rest of the book with rolling eyes. 

Although you'd have to be pretty far gone to read a lot of Sincero's assertions without scepticism. For example:

When you learn to consciously master the energetic realm, believe in the not yet seen, and stay in your highest frequency, you harness your innate power to create the reality you desire.

I think this just means "positive thoughts bring positive outcomes" - of which I think there is some scientific basis, for example, in sports science athletes are encouraged to visualise winning a race.

Similarly sensible ideas are wrapped in a mystical blanket, for example, the following paragraph which takes the positive benefits of being grateful and describes it with a lot of hippy nonsense and faux-scientific respectability:

Conversely, when you show up disappointed or angry or guilty or oblivious instead of being grateful, you’re at a lower frequency and thereby less connected to Source Energy and in a less powerful state to manifest good feeling things and experiences into your life. So that’s all fabulous and great, but here’s where the whole gratitude thing gets really cool. There are lots of ways to feel good and raise your frequency and get closer to Source Energy, but with gratitude, you’re actually expending positive energy by sending out thanks, which makes positive energy reflect back to you—every action has an equal and opposite reaction. This makes the manifesting process even more powerful.

I'm pretty sure Newton hadn't considered 'gratitude' as part of the energy he was describing in his Third Law.

Not that gratitude is the only thing that can be 'manifested' by tuning your frequency - apparently money can come your way just by positive thinking:

Money is currency and currency is energy. As we’ve discussed, we live in a Universe that is vibrating with energy. Our Universe is abundant, and everything you desire is here, in this moment, waiting for you to shift your perception and your energy and receive it. Money included... Money is energy like anything else, and when you’re operating at a high frequency with no resistance to it, and take right action, you can manifest the money you desire.

It seems like there's nothing that Sincero won't take at face value, without any critical evaluation:

As British philosophical writer and self-help pioneer, James Allen, states in the quote that opens this chapter, “Mind is the master power that moulds and makes, -and Man is Mind. . . .”—we are the very thinking substance that was used to create us. Hello?! How major is that?!

Here she just restates a poetic description as scientific truth and backs it up with a moronic exclamation, as if it was self-evident. Hello!! How stupid is that?!!

This faux-chatty, painfully 'cool' slang is drizzled throughout the book, making such incomprehensible gibberish even more annoying:

Meanwhile, even though arrogance and conceit (which are different from self-love and confidence, BTW) are part of the Ego, they’re not, as I later learned, the whole dealio.

This display of astonishing brilliance didn’t just splat down into being-ness by random, dumb luck, it was thought up.

And whoever you are, puhleeze, stop saying how pathetic you are at making decisions.

Even sensible advice or thoughtful commentary is ruined with this yoof speak. This excellent quote from Eleanor Roosevelt, is undermined by the silly descriptor Sincero tags onto the end of the attribution:

'No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.' -- Eleanor Roosevelt; activist, feminist, superhero, longest-serving First Lady of the United States evah

There are also some rather loose descriptions and definitions, here, that irritated me. For example,

Meditation, otherwise known as sitting still and thinking about nothing...

Meditation isn't really about "thinking about nothing" - this is a fallacy that makes normal people feel bad about their inability to meditate 'properly', and it's strange that someone who meditates so regularly, and wants to encourage others to take it up, would wish to repeat this falsehood.

In fact, meditation seemed to bring together all of the worst examples of these complaints into one chapter. Some selected lowlights:

...when we meditate, we practice getting into The Vortex and connecting to Source Energy

[meditation] raises our frequency [and] ... opens us up to receive unlimited information and ideas

Meditating is about receiving information from The Universe 

The book does contain some good advice regarding self-love and compassion, giving up on resentments, challenging yourself, determination and self-belief etc, but it seems that it's all just a rehash of the books and ideas Sincero has picked up through her own self-help journey. She includes a helpful reference section at the back listing her top recommended books that cover each of these ideas in greater depth and - one would hope - with a far less grating and unnecessary tone.

Haylie

Likes:
- Sincero gives great advice on how to deal with procrastinating, fear on all levels (social, economic, etc.), and with relationships. 
- Part of the reason why I decided that I liked this book was based on Chapter 21 alone. I haven't read any self-help books before but there's a sense of accomplishment when you've already done something a life coach says to do before they even say it. *Small pat on the back*.
- Her voice was different than most self-help (?) authors and I felt she was a more excitable chatty friend than a holier than thou life coach.

Dislikes:
- Source Energy. Every time she said it (which was a lot) it felt clunky and distracting. Essentially this is a filler for God/faith, and instead of being like hey, find some God in your life, she tried to make it applicable and masquerade it which felt confusing when reading the text. Ex) She mentioned that Source Energy could be your gut or intuition, which when I tried to keep in mind when she talked at length about, but it just didn't fit the context that she was implying.
- Jen Sincero has no idea what depression is nor does she understand class/race discrimination. Sure, you can TRY to get your mind into the "Just Do It" mentality, but you're really alienating a part of your audience that cannot help the outside factors influencing their mental health or their cash flow.

Final Thoughts: Look, I thought her advice on trying to think of things in a different perspective and how it affects the way you interact with others was alright, and there were definitely things in this book I would refer to if I felt in a slump. However, I do feel like in certain portions of the book she had her head in the clouds and what worked out for her might not be applicable to her audience.

I still have two more of these to read, but cheers to finishing the first book of 2019!

Fadi

مندهش من إصرار الكتّاب على إعادة تدوير كل هذا الهراء وطبعه 😭😭😭
كفاية أبوس إيديكم

Pamela M. Minkovska 

Jen Sincero shows us the colours of our inner world. Those, we tend to forget. In this book she's teaching us self-love.

Escaping the BS(explained in the book), starting to trust our gut and letting ourselves LIVE, we change out while life. Not only that we'll feel happier by using the knowledge gained from this book, but we'll also start achieving our goals, crossing out dreams from the bukket list.

What are dreams for? To be fulfilled and turned into reality. This book is for everyone that wants to start living now.

Sofia Collodel

I don't really like self-help books, especially not this whole idea of 'you can do whatever and be whatever if you think hard enough about it' NO , what about the conditions that you are born in? The opportunities you have in life? Does a poor person have the same opportunities as a rich one? NO . BUT apart from that, I really liked some of the things she talked about specially related to how others make us feel, how to let go of anger that only hurts ourselves , or let it go when we are irritated by someone's personality. I get wind up very easily so there was some good advice for my anger problems in there. All in all its an ok book 

Kendra Leigh 

I feel like I really would have loved this when I was like 20, but now you can definitely tell that it was written in 2013. Not bad, just nothing revolutionary now!

Sarah Ryan

A great read. The author, Jen Sincero, shares how we all have enormous potential but many of us fail to realise this potential as we stand in our own way. She shares how she directed all her energy towards what she wanted to achieve and what she then achieved. She shares common thought processes and behaviours that keep people from living their best life. She advises how we can identify them, replace them, and move forward to live our best life.

Casey W. 

Meh. I've never read a self hep book, but it was pretty ho-hum. I don't know, it felt really gimmicky and had a lot of woo.

Robin M Cabana

This book has kicked my ass. It's helped me realize what I need to do to make my life more awesome. I've never gone in for self-help books before, but I was hooked from the first page. I took my time reading this. Re-read parts. Took pictures of pages so I could refer to them when I was out and about. Jen Sincero made me laugh and cry and has really helped me focus. I can't thank her enough for writing this book. I'm really excited about living a badass life.

marie-ange

dnf: this is my second time attempting to read this in it’s entirety. some things were cool and were, the aave was weird (thought it was a fluke until it happened more than 5 times) . a book filled with of fleeting moments so i don’t remember much. think i’m going to stay away from self help books with these kinds of titles :$

Kerrie Webb

Yes! You are a badass :-) I think this will be a good book to keep to top up on the reminder that what ypu think shapes who you are.

Emily Ruth Carter

ugggggghhhhhhhh. While there are a few solid points in this, mostly this is incredibly unhealthy. I spent an entire chapter shouting "GO TO THERAPY THAT IS THE ANSWER." Also as I listened (not knowing anything about the author herself) all I could think was that this author must be a cis, straight, white woman who is child free.

Laura Yaneth Martinez

Incredible listen. Really enjoyed the bluntness and inspiration in this book!

Karla 

Hoy les comparto la reseña de You are a Badass de Jen Sincero. Con los 10 consejos que más me llamaron la atención, cambios para alcanzar metas, alejarnos de personas tóxicas, etc. Espero que les guste mucho :D 

https://youtu.be/5lsb_iufkJ4

Fiona Coffey

I originally came across this book on my ex-roommate's bookshelf. She actually told me that she had only bought it to "look interesting and well read" but I thought it actually looked interesting, so whenever she left the dorm for a substantial period of time I would pick it up and read a few random pages. 

(Eventually she moved out and took it with her so I had to wait a few months to actually buy it myself so I could pick it up again) 

All in all the book was great! I don't usually read inspirational books, not really for any reason, just because I generally always get pulled into the fiction quicksand. But I really enjoyed this one! 

It did actually help me feel a lot better about myself when I was in a slump, and I do feel sufficiently badass after reading it! 

As I was reading it I also thought of several people that I knew that might benefit from the book more than me! 

Eventually about 3/4 of the way through the book I was kind of like "yay! I'm a badass! I get it now!" And j kinda wanted to stop reading and go back to fiction. 

But the book was hilarious and totally worth a read and has the ability to help a lot of people so go read it y'all!!

You Are a Badass How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life

Reviews

Highlights