The key ideas

Unfu*k Yourself: Get Out of Your Head and into Your Life

Gary John Bishop, 2016

You want change, but every time you talk yourself into waiting. Personal growth coach Gary John Bishop is sure of one thing: we talk ourselves out of our own lives, and the cure is not soft affirmations but hard sentences that push you to act. Seven such statements form the backbone of the book. It does not pat you on the head. It gets you back on your feet and hands responsibility for your life back to you.

Who it is for

For anyone who has been meaning to change their life for a long time and has been putting it off for just as long. And for everyone who is tired of gentle motivational slogans and wants a shake-up that gets to the point.

You have the life you are willing to put up with.

What the book is about

You have wanted to change something in your life for a long time. And for just as long, you have not changed it. Every time, the same voice in your head steps in between “I want to” and “I'm doing it”: now is not the time, I won't manage, this isn't for me. Day after day, that voice talks you out of living your own life.

Gary John Bishop is a personal growth coach who is deliberately blunt. His idea is simple: you are talking to yourself all the time anyway, and the only question is whether that talk works for you or against you. Instead of soft affirmations like “I deserve the very best”, he offers hard statements he calls assertions: short sentences that do not soothe you but push you to act. These assertions are the backbone of the book, an honest talk about personal growth with no sugarcoating.

Ahead are seven of them, one for each big idea: why wanting is worth nothing without the willingness to pay, why your life already shows what you are willing to settle for, and why there is no point waiting until you feel ready. Since this book is in your hands, you are already doing what many put off for years: taking an honest look at the part of your life that is stuck.

Idea 1. You are already having this conversation with yourself

Imagine a radio playing in your head all day, and you never switch it off. It keeps commenting: I can't handle this, it's too late, it's not for people like me. This inner dialogue never stops. Bishop says it plainly: you cannot stop talking to yourself, so the only question is what kind of talk it will be.

The usual advice here is positive thinking and affirmations: tell yourself in the mirror that you are a wonderful person and everything will be fine. Bishop calls them empty: they describe who you are and demand nothing. Assertive language is about something else. It speaks not about who you are, but about what you will do.

Most people make the same mistake: they wait for the voice in their head to turn kind on its own. It won't, and it doesn't have to. You can only talk over it: with your own sentence, followed by an action.

How to use it: today, catch the sentence you use to hold yourself back, and answer it out loud with a sentence of your own about what you will do next.

You sit down to write an important email, and the radio switches on at once: “you'll embarrass yourself, write it tomorrow”. You say out loud: “I'll write three lines right now”, and you write them. The voice is still muttering, but the email already exists.

The conversation with yourself never switches off, so the question is not whether to talk to yourself, but who is in charge of that conversation: you or your fear.

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About the author

Gary John Bishop is a Scottish-born personal growth coach living in the United States and the bestselling author of books on how to stop getting in your own way. He calls himself an “urban philosopher” and speaks with deliberate bluntness.

All books by this author: Gary John Bishop

Terms from the book

  • Procrastination
  • Perfectionism
  • Stoicism
  • Self-sabotage
  • Comfort Zone
  • positive thinking
  • personal growth: The field of books and practices about how people change themselves and their lives for the better.
  • affirmations: Positive statements people repeat to themselves to lift their mood or self-esteem. Bishop finds them of little use, because they describe what you want but do not lead to action.
  • assertions: The book's name for hard, direct statements that push you to act. It is the author's own device, not a scientific term.
  • assertive: Here: the language of direct action, which speaks not about who you are but about what you will do. In psychology, assertiveness is the ability to stand your ground firmly and calmly.
  • inner dialogue: The constant conversation a person has with themselves in their head. One of the central ideas of the book.
  • survival instinct: The inborn drive to avoid danger and stay alive. Bishop uses it to explain why we are drawn to what is familiar and safe.
  • motivation: The inner urge to act. Bishop warns that relying on it is risky: it comes and goes.
  • relentless: Bishop's sixth assertion: the resolve to keep going even after the work has stopped being inspiring.
  • self-discipline: The ability to do what needs doing regardless of your mood or what you feel like at the moment.

All terms

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