Do You Live Your Life, or Does Your Life Live You?
People ask me for a nutshell description of my book, Move on Motherf*cker: Live, Laugh, and Let Sh*t Go. They ask how it will help….who it will help. They want to know what will be useful for them.
I’m not a salesperson. I don’t have a sleek sales pitch. In fact, I have a hard time whittling down my response to a quick answer. No joke. I’m a therapist. There are always multiple answers.
Perhaps the best way to describe the philosophy of Move on Motherf*cker is to ask this question:
Do you live your life, or does your life live you?
Move on Motherf*cker: Live, Laugh, and Let Sh*t Go is about finding a sense of empowerment to take control of your life with psychological science + fun — BS.
I love what I do — which is talking with people about ways to change unhealthy patterns in choices, relationships, and ways of seeing the world. It is understanding how we are sometimes prisoners to our own abusive self-talk, which drives the behaviors we don’t like.
Seriously?! If you beat someone up enough, how might you expect him/her to respond? This is you abusing you, and you may be so used to it that you don’t even know you are doing it. You can stop any time, but it takes awareness and practice.
One of the big traps people fall into is that at some point life begins to just happen. We are at risk of becoming mindless participants who feel victimized or controlled by our own lives. It is absolutely a skill to pull ourselves out of the rut of existing in our lives without being an active participant or leader.
You may or may not be surprised when I tell you that many people struggle when I ask this simple question: What makes you happy?
How disconnected have we become from our very selves and our lives when this becomes a hard question to answer?
Bad shit happens and will always happen. That fact is irrefutable and unchangeable, and there are times that we are actual victims of bad events. Once we allow the pain and sadness, the challenge is how to turn the corner.
The central question here is: What will you do with with the hurt in life?
The real work is reminding ourselves that we have a choice in where things go next. It is exhausting at times.
When I work with folks, I use compassionate, direct talk based in the real world. I want people to feel better as quickly as possible, and I do not believe in just thinking positive thoughts.
MOMF is about giving yourself tools to defend yourself against life’s difficulties and your own inner bully. It is about using science (including targeted profanity) to empower yourself with skills even when it feels overwhelming. It is developing a life philosophy of showing up for the fight even if you get clobbered. It is getting up and showing up EVERY….. SINGLE…. TIME.
My goal for the book is to teach, very directly, all I’ve learned from working with real folks in real life. I’m not speculating. I’m not blowing smoke. I’m not just giving a motivational talk. I apply evidenced based psychological science to everyday problems that we all struggle with. A big part of that is understanding that we are not alone and reminding ourselves that despite all of the energy it takes, it is so worth reclaiming our lives with intentionality.
How do we do that? One step at a time. Check out Move on Motherf*cker at Bookshop.org, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, New Harbinger, or your local bookstore can order it for you. We’re all in this together.
