The key ideas

Girl, Wash Your Face: Stop Believing the Lies About Who You Are So You Can Become Who You Were Meant to Be

Rachel Hollis, 2018

To her readers, Rachel Hollis seems like someone with a perfect life, while she herself admits she gets things wrong all the time. Each chapter of her book begins with a lie about herself that she believed for years. Hollis tells how these thoughts ran her work, her body, her love life and her dreams, and what helped her see them for what they were.

Who it is for

For anyone who has long been putting their life off until tomorrow and is tired of the inner voice insisting that nothing they do is good enough. The book is written for women, but its ideas about trusting yourself apply to anyone.

When you really want something, you will find a way. When you don't really want something, you'll find an excuse.

Lies that sound like white noise

At seventeen, Rachel Hollis moved from a tiny California town to Los Angeles. She grew up in a house where celebrations gave way to shouting and broken dishes, and at fourteen she lost her older brother: he took his own life. Back then she decided she would have to build a better life herself. In Beverly Hills she was struck by the neat rows of trees along the streets. After so many years of chaos, that order seemed like a promise of happiness.

Years later she realized that moving only changes the view from the window. Happiness, in her view, has to be chosen every day, in any city.

Her media company for women made Hollis well known, and readers write to tell her that her life looks perfect. In reply she wrote a book of twenty chapters, and each one begins with a lie she herself believed for a long time. She writes above all for women and tells her own stories.

The main idea sounds harsh: you alone are responsible for your life and your happiness. Hollis makes clear that she isn't talking about depression or grief, but about lingering dissatisfaction. To change it, you first have to hear the lies about yourself. And they have been playing for so long that they've turned into white noise.

A promise to yourself is the easiest to break

One night Hollis came home late from dinner with friends and still ran several miles on the treadmill in her basement. A friend was surprised: why not move it to tomorrow? Hollis replied that she doesn't break promises to herself. Her friend admitted that the promises she made to herself were the first ones she broke.

The author asks you to picture a coworker who starts a new diet every three weeks and drops it two weeks later. It's hard to believe her next promise. In Hollis's view, your subconscious reasons the same way: it remembers every past lapse and stops believing what you say.

She explains it with running. If you usually run four miles, in the fifth mile your body will want to stop, because it's used to its level of training. Promises are the same: when things get hard, the old habit kicks in.

Hollis herself started keeping her word with something small: Diet Coke, which she drank every day. She lasted thirty days without it: the first week was hard, and by the third it was easy. Then, in the same way, from one mile to two, she worked her way up to a half marathon.

Her advice is simple. Start with one small goal. Only promise what you can really deliver. And take an honest look at which of your promises to yourself got canceled over the past month for the sake of other things.

Read in Livria

About the author

Rachel Hollis founded a media company for women, writes novels and gives motivational talks. The American business magazine Inc. named her to its list of the top thirty entrepreneurs under thirty.

All books by this author: Rachel Hollis

Terms from the book

  • Beverly Hills
  • White noise
  • Thanksgiving
  • Dave
  • Literary agent
  • Media company: A company that creates and distributes content for an audience: articles, videos, photos. Hollis's company ran a website and social media accounts with advice on home, family and beauty.
  • Diet Coke: Sugar-free diet cola. Hollis drank it every day for years and gave it up for thirty days.
  • Half marathon: A race of 21.1 kilometers (13.1 miles), half the marathon distance.
  • Workaholic: A person who feels they can't stop working and works at the expense of their health and the people close to them. Hollis calls herself a recovering workaholic.
  • Bell's palsy: Sudden paralysis of the muscles on one side of the face caused by damage to the facial nerve. It often goes away on its own within a few weeks or months.
  • Homeopath: A practitioner of homeopathy, an alternative treatment using highly diluted substances. Its effectiveness is not supported by scientific research. In Hollis's story he prescribed nothing, but linked her dizziness to stress.
  • Hip-hop: A street dance style with fast, sharp movements to rhythmic music.
  • Party Girl: Rachel Hollis's first novel, about a naive young party planner in Los Angeles. Hollis published it herself in 2014.

All terms

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