🍭 Stop Yucking Your Yum

Letter 181: I am going to continue reading self-help books

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Aloha fellow learn-it-all 👋

Greetings from Honolulu, Hawaii

I’m changing this week’s letter up a bit because why not? All the rules I have for this are self-imposed anyway?

Also, if you’re not listening to this, I encourage you to listen because I play you goofballs some original music. Some of you might like it, and most might not. That’s okay. It’s my yum. More on that soon.

Now, let’s dive into letter 181 from a learn-it-all. Enjoy!

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📜🖋 Poetry Corner

A Fib:

Don’t
Yuck
My yum
You ugly
Judgmental voices
I find joy trusting my choices
So let me be now
Unashamed
Not tamed
Just
Me.

📸 Photo of the Week

❓Question to think about

Why am I embarrassed to be reading self-help?

🖊️Writing

After one of the more stressful weeks of my year, I zipped a few books, some snackies, sunscreen, and coconut water into the pocket of my beach chair backpack to scooter down to Diamond Head Beach.

Apart from my journal, the other books were The Bible and Think Like a Monk by Jay Shetty. Both are self-help books, one of the first ever published and the other in 2020. They’re both serving my needs right now. I probably won’t finish them, but I don’t finish most books. Finishing is the exception, not the rule. 

I felt shame for my self-help books wash over me like the waves that brushed my toes as the tide rose. This hadn’t always been a guilty pleasure.

Five years ago, I discovered the self-help genre and bought a Dale Carnegie book to improve public speaking. A year later, I moved to Chicago, bought a bookcase, and started buying self-help books up the wazoo. I gave myself a learning budget of around $150 for books. 

Moving to Hawaii two years ago, I had to kiss all those books goodbye. I promised I’d move away from self-help because they tend to get a bad rep. Self-help feels like I’m giving myself constant homework with a tendency for a short-term band-aid approach where all the ideas feel easy.

But the truth is self-help books have shaped my mindset the most. Here are six of them:

1. Mindset by Carol S. Dweck

2. Atomic Habits by James Clear

3. The Defining Decade by Meg Jay

4. The War of Art by Steven Pressfield

5. Walking in this World by Julia Cameron

6. Secrets of a Buccaneer-Scholar by James Bach

Here are the seeds of beliefs they planted within me:

1. I am not good yet.

2. I can get better over the long term by getting 1% better daily.

3. Seize the day as twentysomething and lean into weak ties.

4. Go pro instead of being an amateur.

5. Write every day no matter what and go on walks too.

6. Let enthusiasm create the map for lifelong education.

Once, self-help was a genre at the pinnacle of literature in Ancient Greece and Rome. The most admired thinkers – Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Seneca, Plutarch, and Marcus Aurelius – all wrote self-help books intending to teach us to live well and die well. 

I have this inner battle that there are way too many things I shouldn’t like. It’s as if my taste is leading me astray and causing me not to trust myself. 

My expectations always should all over me. I am sick and tired of it. 

Just like how I can create art for the sake of art without seeking approval, I can like things for the sake of liking them. No permission is necessary.

I can continue to dip pretzels in apple juice, spit in my goggles before swimming, scramble eggs for dinner, sleep in socks, burn my toast, pop zits, dip my grilled cheese in ketchup, eat the aged gouda after I cut the mold off, enjoy overripe bananas, and savor my soggy cereal.

I’m going to keep doing all these things anyway. Maybe, just maybe, I’ll start to trust myself more. 

Note to self: stop yucking your own yum.

(I am publishing this mainly so my future self can remember that I don’t need to yuck on my yum. Just because others find it yucky doesn’t mean it is.)

🎬 Watching

I recently discovered Ze Frank on Youtube and what a hoot that is! I love some evergreen content from over a decade ago.

“Yum getting yucked is when you like something harmless and someone tells you to stop liking it.”

🎸 Playing

I’ve been picking up my uke again and it’s been fun so far. I’ve been trying to master five chords: C,G, Am, F, and Dm

I created my first original strumming pattern over the weekend and I like it. You might like it too.

🔍Word to define

Yuck: used to express strong distaste or disgust: “Raw herrings! Yuck!”.

Etymology

originated in 1966 from the US for “exclamation of disgust”

🌟Quote to inspire

“When you try to live your most authentic life, some of your relationships will be put in jeopardy. Losing them is a risk worth bearing; finding a way to keep them in your life is a challenge worth taking on.” –Jay Shetty (6)

🙏Shoutouts

To my uke, who has been keeping me company, while my fitness is out of pocket with a kinked neck from a new chin yoga pose and a sprained foot from too much hiking. With time, teh body shall heal.

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I appreciate you reading this!

If ideas resonated, I’d love you to press the heart button, leave a comment, reply to this email, or reach me at vermetjl@gmail.com. If you forgot who I am, I welcome you to my online home.

Never stop learning 😁

Mahalo 🌺

Jen

PS - in case you missed last week’s I wrote about 📲 Breaking Free: A Journey to Intentional Living Without Social Media

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