As a society, we are often taught to put others first and choose their needs over our own in the name of selflessness. We are given this speech about the necessity of sharing and being a team player before we’ve even showed that we are incapable of such. This rulebook that is cemented into our minds is a product of who society wants us to be, yet we never got the chance to learn the consequences on our own. I guess I never actually realized that it was an option to choose what was best for me rather than what was convenient for other people, until I picked up this book.

During the grand quest that I make biweekly to Books-A-Million in search of new finds, I stumbled across this (aesthetically pleasing) self-help book “You-Do-You,” by Sarah Knight. I found this incredibly relevant to my perfectionist/ everyone has to like me/ I’m not happy unless you are attitude. It had never struck me that being somewhat careless and letting go of what caused me stress could be turned into a positive thing.

In the book, Knight introduces the idea of mental redecorating which, in her terms, means to first discard and then to organize your priorities. She discusses how to preserve what is important and how to kick out the things in life that only bring you down. She highlighted certain topics that spoke to me personally, like that party you don’t to attend but also don’t want to seem like an antisocial outcast.

This book helped me understand the fact that simply choosing to do what I want to do doesn’t necessarily have to inconvenience others. For example, if I didn’t want to go to that rager that is supposed to be the the most intoxicated party in all of Texarkana, no one will care if I skip out if it’s just not my scene. For some reason or another we have this idea stuck into our heads that if we don’t show up this one time, we will be exiled from our friend group for being self centered.

Choosing to look at your inconveniences as optional obstacles instead of mandatory ones makes living life a lot simpler (it might also get you a few more hours of shut eye). Not only did this book help me learn to let go of some of my unnecessary problems, but it also taught me that it’s okay to take a day off.