Girl, Wash Your Face published by Thomas Nelson on 06 Feb 2018
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Founder of the lifestyle website TheChicSite.com and CEO of her own media company, Chic Media, Rachel Hollis has created an online fan base of hundreds of thousands of fans by sharing tips for living a better life while fearlessly revealing the messiness of her own. Now comes her highly anticipated first book featuring her signature combination of honesty, humor, and direct, no-nonsense advice.
Each chapter of Girl, Wash Your Face begins with a specific lie Hollis once believed that left her feeling overwhelmed, unworthy, or ready to give up. As a working mother, a former foster parent, and a woman who has dealt with insecurities about her body and relationships, she speaks with the insight and kindness of a BFF, helping women unpack the limiting mind-sets that destroy their self-confidence and keep them from moving forward.
From her temporary obsession with marrying Matt Damon to a daydream involving hypnotic iguanas to her son's request that she buy a necklace to "be like the other moms," Hollis holds nothing back. With unflinching faith and tenacity, Hollis spurs other women to live with passion and hustle and to awaken their slumbering goals.
Girl, Stop Apologizing published by HarperCollins Leadership on 05 Mar 2019
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Rachel Hollis has seen it too often: women not living into their full potential. They feel a tugging on their hearts for something more, but they’re afraid of embarrassment, of falling short of perfection, of not being enough.
In Girl, Stop Apologizing, #1 New York Times bestselling author and founder of a multimillion-dollar media company, Rachel Hollis sounds a wake-up call. She knows that many women have been taught to define themselves in light of other people—whether as wife, mother, daughter, or employee—instead of learning how to own who they are and what they want. With a challenge to women everywhere to stop talking themselves out of their dreams, Hollis identifies the excuses to let go of, the behaviors to adopt, and the skills to acquire on the path to growth, confidence, and believing in yourself.
Both of these books were recommended to me by my mother. She had attended a conference where Rachel Hollis was a guest speaker, and subsequently bought both her books, then recommended me to read them before reading them herself, give her a review, and let her know whether they were worth reading and which one she should start with. So this one's for you, Mom!
I hadn't heard of Hollis or her blog before my mom pushed these books on me, so I was curious to know more about where Hollis was coming from, and Girl, Wash Your Face gave that. It's supposed to be a self-help book, but as someone who is already familiar with self-help content, I found her anecdotes more interesting than her tips were enlightening, so I appreciated her book more as a memoir. (Boiled down, her message was just to work hard and have a good attitude.)
Use the no you hear as an indication that you should try an alternative route.
When it came to tips, I kept thinking, "I know." It felt like this book was always taking a step backward before going forward, and was content calling that improvement. But that only ends with meeting me where I already am, instead of beginning with where I am, and then taking a step forward toward real improvement.
To be fair, the structure of this book is that every chapter starts with a lie Hollis once believed about herself, and follows with an explanation for why she doesn't believe it anymore, but the thing is, I never believed those lies in the first place.
What I found more interesting were the anecdotes that came from her growing out of those lies, and learning about her untraditional career path, which led to her position today as founder of her own media company. These anecdotes helped open my mind and understand that however I felt about her advice, this was her truth, and I suppose that's all we can ask of anyone to share.
I think that if you approach Girl, Wash Your Face as a memoir, you'll enjoy it more than as a self-help book. If you're hoping for self-help content, this book might be more relevant for new moms who are struggling with feeling like they aren't doing it right or feeling like they've lost their identity, particularly if the mother is a working mother or mother who wants to be working.
I stopped comparing myself to other people, and I also stopped comparing myself to whomever I thought I was supposed to be.
Girl, Stop Apologizing is a little more targeted with its advice and aims to help women who are trying to make their dreams happen. If you're looking for a self-help book to help discover your passion, this isn't the book for you. If you're looking for a self-help book to help you find the confidence to voice your passion and pursue it, this might be the book for you.
There's a big difference between faking something that you have no idea how to do and having the confidence to step into a role that you don't have full training for yet.
Once again, I didn't find the advice revelational personally, but I loved what Hollis said about making time and putting time into your dream. I can't tell you how many times friends have told me that they don't have time to read, time to pursue some other passion, or time to get lunch together even just once a month (or maybe they just don't want to get lunch with me, yikes). To me, it's not a matter of time but a matter of how much you value something to spend time on it. I've lost patience for "I don't have time" as an excuse and just let that statement fade away whenever it comes up in conversation. Luckily for you, Hollis is more enthusiastic than I am. Not gonna lie, I totally pictured a peppy white suburban mother with inspirational quotes and scripture tacked around the house yelling at me.
You're right. I don't know you. But what I do know is that if you can't find a single hour for yourself in a twenty-four-hour period, you need to look at your priorities. You need to ask yourself what you are doing with your time.
If you're trying to gauge whether either of these books might be relevant to you, just have a flip through their table of contents -- yes, a table of contents! What I do have to praise about both books is how organised they are. Girl, Wash Your Face is composed of 20 chapters, each headed by a lie to shoot down. Girl, Stop Apologizing is composed of 3 parts -- excuses to let go of, behaviours to adopt, and skills to acquire; the first part on excuses to let go of was reminiscent of the structure of Girl, Wash Your Face.
These two books were very similar. I read each in a day, one right after the other, and cannot clearly say which tips I got from which book. I don't think you have to read one before reading the other, and in fact you could probably even read the chapters out of order, but personally I'm a stickler for reading things in order.
These are not must-reads, but I do think that there's a little something to learn from everything, or at least you might find a well-timed reminder of something you already know. There were points in the books that were questionable, but I always read self-help books with a grain of salt, so nothing bothered me too much, though I've read some aggressive reviews about these books being tone-deaf, which, not wrong (~white feminist~). Again, flip through the table of contents and judge for yourself whether any part of it resonates with you enough to read more about.
To my mom, I say that I think you would enjoy the peppy tone of these books. Flip through the contents of both books and choose which chapters seem more interesting to you. Although I enjoyed Girl, Wash Your Face more as I was more interested in the anecdotes than self-help tips, I think the last two parts of Girl, Stop Apologizing would probably be most relevant for you.
