فصل 06

CHAPTER 6

The Lie

NO IS THE FINAL ANSWER

When asked to be a keynote speaker at a conference, I usually get to choose to some extent what I will talk about. Sometimes it’s about business, life, or a more niche area of expertise, such as event planning. But the one thing most of my speeches have in common—the one thing I truly believe myself to be an expert on—is being told no. Truly, I’ve been told no in so many different ways and by so many different people that sometimes it seems as if life itself is saying no. I am an expert in rejection—or more specifically, I am an expert in bouncing back from rejection and fighting my way toward my goal.

I suppose if I can gift you anything in the reading of this book, it’s that no is only an answer if you accept it. So allow me to use one chapter of this book to—I hope—light a fire under your butt. I want you to be so pumped up you can hardly stand it. I want you to have one of those nights when you stay up until one a.m. writing long lists of big dreams and plans. You know those nights—when you’re so excited you can’t shut off your brain and you end up having to take a Benadryl just to fall asleep?

Yes!

I want these words to excite you that much. I’m hoping some of my excitement rubs off on you—which, granted, would be way easier if I were giving you this speech in person—but I promise to use lots of italicized words for emphasis and to tell you about the word no and the role it’s played in my life.

I waited years for the opportunity to explain my relationship with rejection . . . a lifetime, maybe.

About six years ago Inc. Magazine named me as one of their top thirty entrepreneurs under the age of thirty. Ooh la la!

It was a huge honor (I mean, clearly, because I’m still talking about it), but the really interesting thing that most people don’t know is that when you get a prestigious title like that, almost immediately you begin to make hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

Just kidding!

No, what happens is, every college within a hundred-mile radius immediately starts calling and asking if you’ll come and talk to their students. Since I haven’t stopped speaking since the moment I figured out how, of course I accepted every single request. Each of those sessions lasted about an hour, which consisted of thirty minutes of me chatting about my career and my company and thirty minutes of questions and answers. After a while, I could almost time to the minute when I would hear the classic question “Hi, Rachel,” they’d always begin (because apparently we call adults by their first names now like we’re a bunch of hippies!). “Can you tell us the secret of your success? Like, what’s the one thing that truly gives you an advantage over others?”

First of all, God bless our youth. God bless these wee infants who believe that a lifetime of hustling and working and sweating and stressing and building, building, building a company could be summarized with one single answer.

But I tried.

At first when I was asked this question, I would give generic answers hard work, dedication, making yourself indispensible, blah, blah, blah. But the more I went to schools and realized it was going to be the one question I got asked every time, I decided I’d better figure out the truth. So I began to ask myself questions.

What led to this massive platform and all of these fans? How did I get book deals and TV appearances? Why was I the one standing at the front of the classroom answering questions? Why not somebody else?

I think the obvious place to start is my family connections.

So, after graduating from Yale, and then later Harvard Business School, I began working in my family’s oil business. I later went on to be a part owner of the Texas Rangers before becoming governor of that great state and then—I mean, most everyone knows that my father was a former president, so when I decided to run for president myself . . . Wait, no, that’s not me.

That’s George W. Bush!

No, as a reminder, I grew up in a place called Weedpatch. That wasn’t a cute name for locals; that’s literally its moniker on any map that wants to include it. The point is, family connections haven’t been the secret to my success.

Seriously, though, after I moved to Los Angeles I started to gain some pretty influential friends within the entertainment industry. Paris Hilton and I became incredibly close. Later I went on to date Ray J (remember him?), and it really shot me into celebrity status. I used the attention from that relationship to get my own show on E! and then made millions with many kinds of products. When Kanye asked me to be his wife, well . . . Wait, shoot, nope. That’s Kim Kardashian.

The secret to my success isn’t celebrity status.

All joking aside, my success has a lot to do with waking up early, being the hardest-working person in the room, asking for help, being able to fail over and over again, and working constantly to improve both myself and my brand. But plenty of people do those things and don’t experience the kind of success I have.

You want to know what it is? Why I believe I’m the one writing this book right now when people who’ve tried to do exactly the same things I have haven’t succeeded?

It’s simple, actually.

It’s not about talent, skill, money, or connections.

It’s because when they went after their dreams and came up against a roadblock, when they experienced rejection, or when someone or something told them no . . . they listened.

I am successful because I refused to take no for an answer. I am successful because I have never once believed my dreams were someone else’s to manage. That’s the incredible part about your dreams nobody gets to tell you how big they can be.

When it comes to your dreams, no is not an answer. The word no is not a reason to stop. Instead, think of it as a detour or a yield sign. No means merge with caution. No reminds you to slow down—to re-evaluate where you are and to judge how the new position you’re in can better prepare you for your destination.

In other words, if you can’t get through the front door, try the side window. If the window is locked, maybe you slide down the chimney. No doesn’t mean that you stop; it simply means that you change course in order to make it to your destination.

I realize, though, that not everybody looks at no the way I do. In order to inspire you to run headlong after your dreams, I may have to shift your perception of no. I’m going to give you everything I can think of to get you there . . . and I’m going to start with this question

What if life isn’t happening to you?

What if the hard stuff, the amazing stuff, the love, the joy, the hope, the fear, the weird stuff, the funny stuff, the stuff that takes you so low you’re lying on the floor crying and thinking, How did I get here? . . .

What if none of it is happening to you?

What if all of it is happening for you?

It’s all about perception, you guys.

Perception means we don’t see things as they are; we see things as we are. Take a burning house. To a fireman, a burning house is a job to do—maybe even his life’s work or mission. For an arsonist? A burning house is something exciting and good. What if it’s your house? What if it’s your family who’s standing outside watching every earthly possession you own burning up? That burning house becomes something else entirely.

You don’t see things as they are; you see things through the lens of what you think and feel and believe. Perception is reality, and I’m here to tell you that your reality is colored much more by your past experiences than by what is actually happening to you. If your past tells you that nothing ever works out, that life is against you, and that you’ll never succeed, then how likely are you to keep fighting for something you want? Or, on the flip side, if you quit accepting no as the end of the conversation whenever you run up against opposition, you can shift your perception and fundamentally reshape your entire life.

Every single part of your life—your gratitude, the way you manage stress, how kind you are to others, how happy you are—can be changed by a shift in your perception. I don’t have an entire book to devote to this topic, so today I’m just going to focus on your dreams. Let’s talk about the goals you have for your life and how you can help yourself achieve them.

In order to do that, you have to name your goals. You have to shout out your hopes and dreams like the Great Bambino calling his shot. You need the courage to stand up and say, “This one, right here this is mine!”

Before you continue reading, take a few moments to focus on a specific dream. Get out a piece of paper and write it down. Maybe write down ten dreams . . . maybe start with little innocuous things and keep writing until the truth comes out. Come on, girl—no one is watching. There’s nobody here to judge.

Cue elevator music.

All right. Do you have your dream?

Great! Maybe for some of you, that’s the first time you’ve admitted that dream to yourself. But I’m willing to bet that most of you have met that dream before, even if you’ve never had the courage to put it down on paper.

Hello, old friend.

Perhaps it’s been around since childhood . . . maybe it’s something you’re currently working on . . . maybe you used to work on it but gave up. Either way, if this is still a dream you have, then chances are, you’ve experienced some rejection where this dream is concerned. So my first mission is to change the way you see the word no—to take away your fear of it. Fear is driving your choices and affecting your decisions, so let’s take the fear away. The best way I know to do that is to talk about it.

The Bible says, let that which is in the darkness be brought into the light. When things are allowed to sit in the darkness, when we’re afraid to speak them aloud, we give them power. The darkness lets those fears fester and grow until they become stronger over time. If you never allow your fears out, then how in the world can you disseminate them?

Why do you think every chapter of this book begins with a lie I used to believe? Because I want to encourage you to speak your own lies into the world. The trouble is, we rarely know they are lies until someone points them out or we get past them. Before we can name them, they just disguise themselves as things we’re afraid of. Think about it.

So let’s take the fear away. Let’s go through some of the reasons why people give up on their dreams. I want you to ask yourself if any of these examples sound like you.

Some people quit because a voice of authority tells them to. Voice of authority can mean all sorts of things . . . Maybe your first boss said you weren’t right for your dream job, and you believed it. Maybe a parent—out of love or fear or caution or their own issues—told you not to try. Maybe a spouse or partner or best friend was afraid of what would happen to your relationship if you grew and so they tried to keep you anchored to the ground. Maybe that voice of authority said you’re not “right” for it. Someone said you’re too fat to train for a marathon or that you’re too young to build your own business. They said you’re too old to take dance lessons. They said you’re too female to travel by yourself.

Maybe the voice of authority is your own. Maybe the negative self-talk in your head has been playing on repeat for your entire life.

Maybe an entire industry of experts is saying you’re not right.

I have wanted to be an author for as long as I’ve understood that books were created by actual people. Like most wannabe authors, I started approximately seventy-three manuscripts but never actually finished a single one. Then, several years ago, I decided to stop giving up . . . Just once, I thought. Just once I’d like to know what it’s like to finish!

So I began working on my historical-fiction-meets-time-travel book (because, I mean, why not write that on weekends?). Out of the blue I was approached by a literary agent. (Okay, just to give context, I suppose it wasn’t out of the blue. I was a popular blogger and had built up a following of fans as well as a lot of publicity as a celebrity party planner by this time.)

The lit agent asked me if I’d ever considered writing a book. Of course I started regaling her with tales of my time-traveling historical romance—which, in case you’re wondering, is basically every literary agent’s worst nightmare as a pitch from an unknown, unproven author. So this woman, bless her, read the first twenty pages of that Dumpster fire and politely came back a week later to inform me that it wasn’t really her style. She’d actually been reaching out to see if I wanted to do a nonfiction book on party planning. Since I was expressing an interest in fiction, though, she wondered if I’d be interested in writing a roman à clef. I’d never even heard of that term, but a quick Google search informed me that it’s fiction about actual notable people. You just change the names to keep yourself from getting sued. A great example is The Devil Wears Prada. The agent’s question was whether or not I had any juicy stories after having survived years of celebrity events.

Boy, did I ever!

As soon as we got off the phone, I knew the story immediately. I knew the story because it was my story. I’d moved from a small Southern-minded town to Los Angeles as a teenager. Before I was old enough to drink legally, I was working parties for the biggest A-list celebrities on the planet. I was a fish out of water and always awkward, but somehow built a career within that space. I didn’t even have to dream up material; I had years of stories so juicy I couldn’t have made them up if I tried.

I wrote ten pages and emailed them to her right away.

Two days later she wrote back I can sell this all day long!

A literary agent . . . a real-life, legit literary agent told me that she could sell my book if I was willing to finish it. I nearly choked on my joy.

I became obsessed. I barely saw my husband or my kids as I wrote like an insane person until my first draft was finished. I kept telling myself that the only reason I didn’t have a book deal already was because I’d never actually finished a manuscript . . . so I believed this book was fated. I imagined in intricate detail what it would be like to hold the published copy in my hands.

I did finish the book, and the literary agent sent it to every publisher in New York. The initial responses were so kind and encouraging. Editors would write long emails back explaining why it wasn’t for them but telling me how much they’d enjoyed it. My belief that we were going to sell it only increased when three other publishers asked for conference calls to discuss it.

When I dialed into the first call, I thought I was going to pee my pants.

When we got on the phone, the publishing team started by telling me how much they liked me, my online presence, my writing style, etc. They praised the book as funny and cute . . . good things, as far as I knew.

“Our concern,” said the editor, “is that it’s too sweet.”

I had no idea what that meant, but since it was my first book, I assured them that anything like that could be fixed in an edit.

“We were hoping you’d be open to changes.”

“Of course!” I assured them. I’d be open to ritual sacrifice if it meant selling my first book.

“So you’d feel comfortable adding some steam?”

Y’all, I had no idea what she was talking about. My brain conjured up the image of a manhole cover with steam coming out.

“What exactly did you have in mind?” I hedged.

“Sex. It needs sex, Rachel. No young woman in her early twenties who lives in LA is a virgin. Nobody will believe this love story. If you spice it up, this could be a bestseller.”

I’m trying to remember if I’ve ever been so uncomfortable in a professional setting in my life.

For context, it’s important to note that this was right when Fifty Shades of Grey was breaking into the book world. Since publishing chases trends like any other industry, every editor was hyperfocused on trying to tap into that fan base.

I had zero idea how to respond to them. Y’all, I’m no saint. I’ve read books with sex in them before (don’t tell my Mema!), but I had no earthly clue that someone would ever ask me to write it. Also, I loved that the heroine of my book was naïve and innocent—and I thought that’s what made her special. The more they tried to convince me to write steam into my book, the more I wondered if I was in an after-school special. Like, Hey, Rachel, just smoke this crack and we’ll be friends with you.

I politely declined.

“We totally understand,” they told me. “But without that element, this book is too sweet for the market. Nobody will buy it as is.”

I was devastated.

Two more calls with publishers went exactly the same way.

Then one after another, every publisher left on our submission list turned it down. It was a Friday afternoon when the very last publisher passed. I remember locking myself in the bathroom and sobbing. And, you guys, these were not gentle, beautiful tears. This was like, my dreams are over / everyone hates my book / I am a terrible writer UGLY tears.

I can’t tell you how long I stayed down on the bathroom tile, but I can tell you that I eventually got back up. I dried my tears and walked to the kitchen to pour a glass of wine. Then I sat down at my crappy laptop where I’d written my terrible prudish manuscript that nobody wanted and Googled, How do you self-publish a book?

In February 2014, I self-published Party Girl about a naïve, sweet, and, yes, virginal party planner in her early twenties living in LA.

That first weekend I think it sold fifty copies—and likely forty-five of those were bought by Dave. Every week, though, I’d sell a few here and a handful there. The sales kept growing, and people were passing it around to their friends. As it turns out, the sweetness of the main character was the exact thing that people liked about the book. Six months later a publisher called and asked if they could buy it from me and offered me a deal for two more books to turn it into a series.

To date, that single book, the one I was told no one would buy, has sold over a hundred thousand copies. It also launched my career as an author.

Here’s the most important piece of that whole story. Are you paying attention?

If I had listened to the experts, that book would still be sitting on my computer today.

Nobody—not a voice of authority, not your mama, not the foremost expert in your arena—gets to tell you how big your dreams can be. They can talk all they want . . . but you get to decide if you’re willing to listen.

Another reason people give up on their dreams? It’s difficult and/or it’s taking too long.

Goals and dreams are hard. I get it. Actually accomplishing them is so much harder than you think it will be. Maybe you’re making progress, but it’s only an inch at a time—meanwhile, your friend Tammy has been promoted twice, your sister is married with two kids, and you feel as though you’re still way back there at the start when everyone is passing you by. Some days you feel so discouraged you want to cry.

Go ahead and cry.

Rend your garments and wail to the heavens like some biblical mourner. Get it all out. Then dry your eyes and wash your face and keep on going. You think this is hard? That’s because it is. So what? Nobody said it would be easy.

You’re tired? How many times in your life have you been tired but you found a way to keep going? How many of you reading this right now have given up on a dream because it was exhausting to keep chasing it? In that same vein, how many of you have ever gone through labor? Even if you haven’t before, I know you can understand the gist. No matter how you bring a baby into the world (even through adoption), it’s emotionally and physically exhausting—but somehow you find a way through. You dig down deep for strength you didn’t know you had because the process is literally life or death.

Don’t tell me you don’t have it in you to want something more for your life. Don’t tell me you have to give up because it’s difficult. This is life or death too. This is the difference between living a life you always dreamed of or sitting alongside the death of the person you were meant to become. That’s what it feels like to me when I’ve given up on a dream, even for a little while—as if I’m at a wake. As if I’m sitting in a room and looking at the evidence of what could have been. I’m sure many of you know what that’s like, and you either want to change it or keep yourself from getting there in the first place.

You have to do something about it. You have to reach down inside yourself and remember the reason you started this. You’d better find the will to keep going, because if you don’t, I promise you someone else will. If that happens, girl, you will watch someone else achieve your dreams and enjoy the spoils of their hard-fought battle. And if that happens, you will understand one of the greatest lessons in this life the only thing worse than giving up is wishing that you hadn’t.

You think your dream is taking too long? It took Julia Child ten years to write Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Her work changed cooking for people all over the world and launched her career. James Cameron worked on Avatar for fifteen years, and it is the most successful film in the history of time.

On January 3, 1870, ground was broken for the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge. The project took ten years, and during that time, the lives of so many men on the building crew were lost. But, you guys, the Brooklyn Bridge still stands as a symbol of New York, and 135 years later, it brings forty-three million cars to and from Manhattan every single year.

Don’t you get it? Nothing that lasts is accomplished quickly. Nobody’s entire legacy is based on a single moment, but rather the collection of one’s experiences. If you’re lucky, your legacy will be a lifetime in the making.

Between my event company and the media business I run now, it’s taken me thirteen years of work to get to this place—and not one of those years was wasted. I needed thirteen years to gain the knowledge to write to you about this topic. I needed thirteen years of speaking to college students, MOPS groups, and panel discussions to build my skill enough to give the keynote speech that served as the inspiration for this chapter. I needed to fail at public speaking and make mistakes over and over again to learn how to do that. I needed to write crappy manuscripts that I never finished and then one that nobody wanted to buy. I needed to fight my way into the publishing industry and spend years making my presence known before I was in a place where someone would give me the opportunity for a book like this.

I needed to endure personal hardships and discouragement and one rejection on top of another—all so I could stand right here and say to you, “Your dream is worth fighting for, and while you’re not in control of what life throws at you, you are in control of the fight.”

The last reason people give up on their dreams?

Something traumatic gets in your way. Disaster is the ultimate excuse. Divorce or illness or something far worse happens to you, and sometimes the goals slip quietly into the background and get left there. We leave them because this trauma is so heavy we just can’t carry one more thing. Sometimes trauma happens, and if we’re being honest, a part of us rejoices, thinking, Well, now nobody can expect anything else from me because it’s miracle enough that I’m upright.

Let me take a moment to tell those of you who are dealing with and fighting through something painful it is a miracle that you’re sitting here. You are nobly doing your best to battle your way through it. You are a warrior because of the trials you are going through, but don’t you dare squander the strength you have earned just because the acquisition of it was painful.

Those are the most important stories to share.

You can use that strength to pave a path for others to follow along behind. I’ve shared many of my own painful stories in the chapters of this book, and none of them have been easy to talk about; but I do it because I hope that by sharing them I’m able to help some of you who’ve walked through similar things. I’ve also talked about my own goals and dreams and the ways I’ve pushed myself to achieve them. Every single one of those dreams has served a purpose in my life. Sometimes it was a small change and sometimes it was life-changing, but in every circumstance, I grew for having walked through it. Friends, it’s not about the goal or the dream you have. It’s about who you become on your way to that goal.

When a voice of authority says it’s taking too long, you’re too “fat, old, tired, or female” for it, or your trauma is too big . . . do you know what they are giving you?

Permission to quit.

You’re already scared, you’re already second-guessing yourself, and when someone or something comes along and speaks into that exact thing you were already questioning, you think, Yep, that’s what I thought. I give up.

Look again at those dreams you wrote down on your paper at the start of this chapter. Now listen to me

You do not have permission to quit!

I revoke that permission! I take away the power those people or circumstances put over your life, and I give it back to you.

You think it’s not that easy? Of course it is. This is all about perception, right? Your perception of what’s holding you back is currently big and bad and terrifying, but those obstacles are only real if you believe in them.

It’s all in your hands now. Everything that happens from here on out is entirely up to you. This is the hard part because I will tell you right now nobody will ever care about your dream as much as you do. Ever.

Do you hear me, sister?

Whether you want to lose weight or write a book or be on TV or travel the world on a speaking tour, you are the steward of your own dreams! Maybe you want to own your own home, get your degree, or save your marriage. Maybe it’s a shop on Etsy, opening a small business, or getting the lead in the local production of Oklahoma! this fall. Whatever it is, big or small, grandiose or simple, nobody can care about it the way you do!

Even if you have a supportive family. Even if you have the greatest friends alive. Even if your spouse is the most uplifting, encouraging human and your number one fan . . . even then, girl, they will not want it as much as you do.

It doesn’t keep them up at night. It doesn’t light their soul on fire.

It’s your dream.

Your own special wish that your heart made long before you were even conscious of it. You want to see it come to fruition? Well then, you have to understand that nobody can take it away from you and ultimately nobody is going to help you achieve it. Not really.

You have to decide to pursue your wildest dreams. No matter what they are, no matter how simple or extravagant. No matter if they seem ridiculous to others or maybe even too easy . . . it doesn’t matter. They’re your dreams, and you are allowed to chase them—not because you are more special or talented or well-connected, but because you are worthy of wanting something more.

Because you are worthy of not letting your past dictate your future.

Start today. Start right now, this very second, and promise yourself—heck, promise me—that you’ll reach for the big stuff.

Do you want the big stuff for your life?

You won’t get there by saying yes. Yes is the easy part. You’ll get there by not giving up when you hear the word no.

THINGS THAT HELPED ME . . .

1. Audacity. It’s pretty audacious to ignore what other people, even experts, are telling you is right. I think we could all use a little more audacity around these parts. I don’t mean that you need to become militant or disrespectful; I just mean you should keep your eyes on your goal, regardless of what gets in your way.

2. Alternate paths. I worry when I give this advice that some random person who listens to the idea of not giving up on her dreams will hear, “Go harass people until they give you what you want.” That’s not going to get anybody anywhere, and we all know it. Use the no you hear as an indication that you should try an alternative route.

3. Keeping my goals in plain sight. It’s easy to focus on your goals when you’re fired up or excited about a new project, but focusing becomes harder when life interferes with your direct access to keep working on it. So pin up your dream somewhere you can see it. I’m a big fan of displaying visuals inside my closet door to remind me every single day of what my aim is. Currently taped to my door the cover of Forbes featuring self-made female CEOs, a vacation house in Hawaii . . . and a picture of Beyoncé, obvi.