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anything less is as pointless as a river thinking that it’s got too many curves or that it moves too slowly or that its rapids are too rapid. Says who? You’re on a journey with no defined beginning, middle or end. There are no wrong twists and turns. There is just being. And your job is to be as you as you can be. This is why you’re here. To shy away from who you truly are would leave the world you-less. You are the only you there is and ever will be. I repeat, you are the only you there is and ever will be . Do not deny the world its one and only chance to bask in your brilliance.
    We are all perfect in our own, magnificent, fucked-up ways. Laugh at yourself. Love yourself and others. Rejoice in the cosmic ridiculousness.

CHAPTER 6:
    LOVE THE ONE YOU IS
If we really love ourselves, everything in our life works.
—Louise Hay; author, publisher, the Godmother of Self-Help who was doing it way back when it still wasn’t cool
    I was hanging out at my brother Bobby’s house one day, lying on the couch, watching his then-two-year-old son waddle around. At one point, someone knocked something off the coffee table, and my little nephew bent down to pick it up. Bobby turned to me and said, “Did you see that? The guy knows exactly how it’s done. He bends at the knees, keeps his back straight, hips squared, stomach tight—flawless!”
    Thrilled to have such a willing and skilled Exhibit A, Bobby then proceeded to spend the next couple of minutes dropping more thingson the floor—a spoon, a TV remote, an empty can of beer—and my nephew, in perfect form, continued to pick it all up as my brother kept up a running commentary on his posture, muscle usage, seriousness of manner, and the fact that my nephew was pulling it all off with great dignity even though his diaper was sagging.
    “It’s incredible. The kid could flip over a car without straining his back. I can barely pull up my pants without having to be rushed to the hospital.”
    When we’re born, we have an instinctual understanding of some of the most important basics of life that includes, and goes way beyond, bending at our knees, instead of our lower backs, to pick a beer can up off the floor. We’re born knowing how to trust our instincts, how to breathe deeply, how to eat only when we’re hungry, how to not care about what anyone thinks of our singing voices, dance moves, or hairdos, we know how to play, create, and love without holding back. Then, as we grow and learn from the people around us, we replace many of these primal understandings with negative false beliefs, fear, shame, and self-doubt. Then we wind up in emotional and physical pain. Then we either numb our pain with drugs, sex, booze, TV, Cheetos, etc. Or we settle for mediocrity. OR we rise to the occasion, remember how truly mighty we are, and set out to relearn everything we knew at the beginning all over again.
    It’s like we’re born with a big bag of money, more than enough to fund any dream of ours, and instead of following our instincts and our hearts, we invest in what other people believe we should invest in. Some people invest in believing they’re too old to go out clubbing when they love nothing more than the boogie, some invest in being tough and too-cool-for-school when all they want is love and connection, some invest in being ashamed of their sexuality instead of being their gloriously gay selves. As we continue to buy into these things that aren’t even true for us, our inner fortunes dwindle away, and it isn’tuntil we reconnect with who we truly are and start investing in what’s true for us that we start to live rich, full, authentic lives.
    And while there are countless ways that we rip ourselves off, there’s one way in particular that is, without a doubt, the most rampant and the most devastating of all: we invest everything we’ve got in believing that we’re not good enough.
    We arrive here as perfect little bundles of joy and then set about the task of