Introduction
In her book "How to Be a Bawse: A Guide to Conquering Life," YouTube sensation Lilly Singh shares her secrets to success and offers valuable advice on how to excel in various aspects of life. Singh, who has amassed millions of subscribers on her YouTube channel, provides insights into the mindset and actions that lead to true success. This book is not just for aspiring YouTubers but for anyone looking to achieve their goals and become a "bawse" in their own right.
Becoming Friends with Your Mind
One of the key ideas Singh emphasizes is the importance of befriending your mind. Your mind can be both an asset and an obstacle, so it's crucial to develop self-awareness to make it work for you.
Peeling Back the Layers
Singh suggests that every issue we face has at least three layers that need to be peeled back to reach the root cause. She illustrates this concept with her own example of avoiding romantic relationships:
- First layer: Claiming to be too busy with work and career
- Second layer: Believing a relationship would impede progress toward goals
- Third layer: Not knowing how to balance career aspirations and a healthy partnership
- Fourth layer (root cause): Childhood experiences that led to believing relationships only bring out people's ugly side
To resolve personal issues, it's essential to dig beneath these layers and identify the exact root cause while being completely honest with yourself.
Managing Thoughts and Emotions
Another crucial step in developing self-awareness is learning to manage negative thoughts and emotions. Singh offers two key pointers:
Don't take things personally: When someone brings out a negative reaction in you, remember that their behavior is likely influenced by issues in their own life that have nothing to do with you.
Focus on happiness as a motivator: Work towards things that make you happy rather than being driven by fear.
By identifying root causes and managing negative thoughts and emotions, you can develop the self-awareness needed to become a bawse.
Training Your Mind for Success
Just as you would train your body to become physically stronger, Singh emphasizes the importance of training your mind for success. She offers three methods for exercising your self-control muscle:
Set goals: Establish specific targets for completing tasks within a certain timeframe, and challenge yourself to beat your previous records.
Reward yourself: Create a system of rewards for reaching your goals, such as asking a friend to hold your phone hostage until you complete a task.
Break bad habits: Challenge yourself to abstain from a bad habit for a set period, resetting the clock each time you slip up.
The Importance of Taking Breaks
While practicing self-control is crucial, Singh also stresses the need to give your mental muscles time to recover. She learned this lesson firsthand when she became so burnt out during a celebrity retreat that she could barely focus during a meeting with Pharrell Williams.
Meditation as a Tool for Mental Sharpness
To stay sharp and avoid burnout, Singh recommends incorporating meditation into your routine. She emphasizes that meditation can be flexible and tailored to your needs. For Singh, her preferred practice involves:
- Sitting cross-legged on the ground in front of a candle
- Closing her eyes and practicing deep breathing while smiling
- Whispering her thoughts to herself to help unravel them and relax
By consistently practicing these techniques, you can develop a powerful mind that will help you achieve your goals.
Commitment and Vision: The Keys to Achieving Your Dreams
Singh emphasizes that dreams can only be attained through full commitment and a clear vision. She identifies two major obstacles on the path to success: distraction and fear.
Overcoming Fear and Distractions
To illustrate how to control fears and distractions, Singh shares her experience during a video shoot with Seth Rogen and James Franco. Despite feeling nervous and fearful about her creative pitch, she managed to push through and complete the shoot in just 45 minutes. Her strategy for overcoming fear involves imagining it as a jacket that can be taken off when needed.
Creating a Vision Board
Singh recommends creating a vision board to manifest your goals visually. This collage of images representing your aspirations should be placed somewhere visible, serving as a constant reminder of your objectives and encouraging goal-oriented behavior.
Protecting Your Vision
Singh stresses the importance of treating your vision board like a child, making necessary sacrifices to keep it safe and discarding plans that might compromise it. She advises focusing all your energy on your primary goal, as she did with becoming a famous YouTube personality.
Long-Term Perspective for Personal and Professional Growth
Singh compares personal and professional growth to building an empire, emphasizing the need for a strong foundation. She cautions against seeking quick fame through outrageous or dangerous acts, as such notoriety is often short-lived. Instead, she advocates for building a loyal following through hard, honest work over time.
Investing in Yourself
To succeed, Singh recommends establishing a foundation of knowledge, tools, and personal skills. This involves investing time, effort, and money in yourself. She shares how investing in a support team, starting with a manager, enabled her to increase her productivity and revenue.
The Importance of a Strong Foundation
Having a solid foundation not only contributes to success but also helps alleviate stress in must-win situations. With a track record of success, individual accomplishments or failures become less critical, allowing you to relax and perform at your best.
Balancing Stress and Productivity
While stress can inhibit performance, Singh notes that a completely stress-free life can lead to procrastination. She recommends setting deadlines for yourself to maintain just enough stress to stay productive. To illustrate this, she shares how setting a deadline to move to Los Angeles by December 1, 2015, helped her achieve her goal of pursuing an acting career.
Surrounding Yourself with the Right People
Singh emphasizes the importance of surrounding yourself with people who can challenge and inspire you. She advises seeking out individuals who are more experienced, talented, and knowledgeable than you, as these are the people you'll learn the most from.
The Danger of Excessive Validation
While validation can be motivating, Singh warns against receiving too much of it. An overabundance of validation can lead to complacency and decreased motivation. She credits her mother's sparing use of validation as a factor in her success.
Being the "Dumbest" Person in the Room
Singh encourages readers to strive to be the "dumbest" person in their group, citing Snoop Dogg's approach to surrounding himself with great people as an example of this strategy's effectiveness.
Standing Out from the Crowd
To differentiate yourself from others, Singh suggests two key strategies: breaking the rules for the right reasons and being fully present.
Breaking the Rules
Singh shares her experience of breaking Hollywood etiquette to meet her childhood hero, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. By directly messaging him despite it being considered inappropriate, she was able to arrange a meeting that might not have happened otherwise.
Being Fully Present
To stand out in professional settings, Singh emphasizes the importance of being fully present. She illustrates this with an anecdote about an interview with a YouTube channel management company, where her bold presence and genuine responses left a lasting impression on the CEO.
Tools for a Powerful Presence
Singh offers two tools for embodying a powerful presence:
- Focus on the situation at hand, taking in the room's energy and turning off your phone.
- Be your genuine self, smiling when there's a reason rather than simply to be pleasant.
Cultivating Positivity and Strong Values
Singh stresses the importance of positive thinking and having clear values to achieve success.
Developing Positive Thinking
To train yourself in positive thinking, Singh recommends two steps:
- Practice stopping yourself from saying negative things by treating them as personal secrets.
- Prevent negative thoughts by actively seeking out positive traits in new people you meet.
Creating a Personal Manifesto
Singh advises creating a list of actionable moral guidelines that you want to live by. This personal manifesto should be learned by heart, read weekly, and recited daily to ensure your values are put into action.
The Power of Kindness and Promoting What You Love
Singh emphasizes that kindness creates opportunities and that promoting what you love is more effective than criticizing what you hate.
Proactive Kindness
To be kind like a bawse, Singh recommends being proactive about niceness. This involves actively thinking up and behaving in ways that will make a positive impression on others. She shares her practice of thanking everyone involved in her video shoots as an example of proactive kindness.
Promoting Positive Values
Instead of engaging in negative discussions or drama, Singh focuses on promoting what she loves and respects. She illustrates this with an example of how she responded to a question about drama between Katy Perry and Taylor Swift by highlighting their positive qualities as strong and inspirational figures for young girls.
Final Thoughts
Throughout "How to Be a Bawse," Lilly Singh provides valuable insights and practical advice for achieving success in various aspects of life. Her key messages include:
- Developing self-awareness and befriending your mind
- Training your mind for success through goal-setting and self-control exercises
- Committing fully to your dreams and creating a clear vision
- Adopting a long-term perspective for personal and professional growth
- Surrounding yourself with the right people and avoiding excessive validation
- Standing out from the crowd by breaking rules when necessary and being fully present
- Cultivating positivity and strong values
- Practicing proactive kindness and promoting what you love
By implementing these strategies and maintaining a strong foundation of hard work, discipline, and values, readers can work towards becoming successful and confident "bawses" in their own lives. Singh's book serves as a guide for those looking to conquer life's challenges and achieve their goals, regardless of their chosen field or aspirations.
The book's actionable advice and relatable anecdotes make it accessible to a wide audience, from young adults just starting their careers to established professionals looking to take their success to the next level. Singh's personal experiences as a YouTube star and her journey to becoming a multi-faceted entertainer lend credibility to her advice, while her humor and straightforward approach make the book an engaging read.
One of the most valuable aspects of "How to Be a Bawse" is its emphasis on personal growth and self-improvement. Singh encourages readers to take responsibility for their own success by developing self-awareness, managing their thoughts and emotions, and continuously working on themselves. This focus on personal development sets the book apart from other success-oriented guides that may focus solely on external factors or quick fixes.
Another strength of the book is its holistic approach to success. Singh recognizes that true success involves more than just professional achievements; it also encompasses personal relationships, mental well-being, and living according to one's values. By addressing these various aspects of life, the book provides a comprehensive roadmap for readers to become well-rounded, successful individuals.
The concept of being a "bawse" – someone who exudes confidence, takes charge of their life, and conquers their goals – is central to the book's message. Singh's definition of a bawse goes beyond traditional notions of success, emphasizing the importance of kindness, authenticity, and personal growth. This nuanced approach to success is particularly relevant in today's world, where people are increasingly seeking meaning and fulfillment in addition to professional accomplishments.
While the book offers numerous strategies and techniques for success, it's important to note that implementing these ideas requires consistent effort and dedication. Readers should approach the book with the understanding that becoming a "bawse" is a journey that involves continuous learning, self-reflection, and personal growth.
In conclusion, "How to Be a Bawse" by Lilly Singh offers a fresh and engaging perspective on achieving success and conquering life's challenges. Through a combination of personal anecdotes, practical advice, and actionable strategies, Singh provides readers with the tools they need to become confident, successful individuals in all areas of their lives. Whether you're a fan of Singh's YouTube content or simply someone looking to improve yourself and achieve your goals, this book offers valuable insights and inspiration for your journey to becoming a bawse.