10 Life-Changing Lessons I Learned From Marie Forleo

Great advice from one of my heroes.

Marie Forleo is an American life coach, motivational speaker, author and web television host of Marie TV. She is the author of Everything Is Figureoutable, owner of Marie Forleo International, B-School and MarieTV.

Millions of young women look at Marie for inspiration, while Oprah Winfrey called her ‘the leader for the next generation’.

She’s one of my heroes, and here are the ten lessons I learned from her.

Be Yourself No Matter What

I have a tattoo that says “Be Yourself” on my left arm, as an evergreen reminder of this important lesson. But no, I didn’t make it because of Marie Forleo. I had it way before I heard her talk about this.

Marie Forleo is an expert at being herself. If there’s one thing she does well, it’s this.

According to Marie, when people feel stuck, depressed and deprived of energy — it’s usually because they’re not expressing themselves fully. They probably have a concept of who they should be, and it’s playing with their head.

“It’s only when I started to be this wacky, a little bit crazy person, that things started to work for me,” says Marie, describing her early years.

Don’t Focus On One Thing

The conventional wisdom says, “Focus on one thing, go dominate a niche and you’ll achieve success,” but what if you can’t? What if you’re interested in many things at once?

I know I am. Even though I love writing as an art, there are too many things I want to try and do, and if I feel bad about cutting out the other ideas that I have.

That was the case with Marie when she just started her career. She was interested in dancing, writing, life coaching, and being an entrepreneur all at once — and she had a hard time focusing on one thing.

“Every time I tried following that advice, I felt like I was cutting off a limb,” she says.

Eventually, after weeks of soul-searching, journaling, and thinking, Marie realized that if she would stick to the traditional notion of success (be good at one thing), she would fail.

“I got to a point when I just said, ‘Fuck it!’ — I can’t do this,” instead of following that traditional view of what success should entail, Marie decided to let go and just do what she wanted. She became, as she calls herself, a multi-passionate entrepreneur.

In her book, Marie writes:

“Sure, some people instinctively and happily devote their lives toward a single field. They’re clear and enthusiastic, sometimes even as children. I must become a ____. Writer. Builder. Musician. Neuroscientist. Sales executive. Mathematician. Engineer. Inventor. Lawyer. Actor. Etc. We love those folks. You may be one of them.

But some of us aren’t designed that way.”

The lesson here is to be the real you. Don’t cut yourself short because you don’t fit in some standard created by society. Instead, redefine that standard and make it work for you.

Everything is “Figureoutable”

My text editor highlights the word ‘figureoutable’ as an unknown word. It’s true, Marie invented it. Not her — her mother did.

As Marie Forleo reminisces in her book, Everything Is Figureoutable, her mother gave her life-changing advice:

“Don’t be silly. Nothing in life is that complicated. You can do whatever you set your mind to if you just roll up your sleeves, get in there, and do it. Everyting is figureoutable.”

I love this phrase because it’s empowering. Instead of saying, “I don’t know how to do XYZ,” you ask yourself, “How can I figure this out?”

When you believe that everything is manageable, everything is figureoutable, opportunities open up for you. As the saying goes, whether you believe that everything is doable, or everything is not — you’re right.

It’s a choice. And it’s yours. As the opening quote for Marie’s book goes, “The power isn’ out there, it’s in you.”

Start Before You’re Ready

I learned this lesson by getting wet.

Two years ago I attended Draper University — a program for entrepreneurs, hosted by the billionaire Tim Draper in Silicon Valley.

We were standing by the pool, and Tim said, “The first lesson in business is not to think too much…it’s in making the JUMP!” — and then he jumped in the pool. With his suit on.

One of Marie’s key advice to budding entrepreneurs is the same: start before you’re ready. When your mind tells you you’re not ready, it’s a lie. You can’t be ready unless you try doing what you want.

If you’re just starting, chances are, you’re bad at it. And that’s OK — everyone is bad when they’re just starting. The key is to get in the water, get your feet wet, and learn by making mistakes. That’s how you become great.

Marie says, “Failure is an event, not a characteristic.” I’d add to that: projects fail, people don’t.

Listen to Your Gut

Voices. Everybody has them in their heads. Some of them are positive. But mostly, they’re negative. That’s how our psyche is built: it wants to protect us from sabertoothed tigers, even though there aren’t any around.

The voice can say, “You are not ready” (see above) or “You aren’t good enough” or it will just make you overthink stuff to the point when you’re too paralyzed to start acting.

The key, according to Marie, is to shut those voices off. Completely. Instead of engaging in your thoughts, trust your gut. And then act your way to success.

There’s knowledge inside each of us, and it goes beyond IQ.

What does your intuition tell you? How does it feel? Do you feel the light, fun, expansive feeling when you think about a certain activity? Or do you feel fear, contraction, and sadness?

People who are good at thinking, tend to overthink. The best moments in my life happened when I listened to my gut instead of my rational thought. Ideally, you would have both on board with your decision: both the rational thought and the emotion.

As Steve Jobs said, “Listen to your heart. It somehow already knows where you need to go.”

Be Fully Engaged

I don’t know about you, but I suck at being in the moment. Whenever I am doing something, a part of my mind drifts off and starts wondering, “What if I did XYZ instead?”

Although Marie is a multi-passionate entrepreneur with a lot going on, she took each new project one at a time. When she bartended, she was fully engaged. When she was writing her book, she didn’t feel down because she wasn’t doing something else.

In the age of attention deficit, we need to manage our attention, not our time. Attention-management is more important than time-management.

Whatever you do, do something fully. Give it your full attention. Be in the moment.

Behave Like You’re the Best

“Imagine you’re the best in the world at what you do. How would that change what time you wake up in the morning? How would that change the food you put in your body? How would that change the people you hang out with and how you spend your time throughout the day? Whether or not your work from a schedule?

How would you behavior change, if you were world-class at what you do?”

This one is my personal favorite.

I am a strong believer in the following rule: if you want something to become great, you have to treat it that way.

If you want blogging to become your full-time job, you need to act like it’s your full-time job. You need to treat your blog the following way. And if you want to become world-class at what you do, you need to start doing the things you would, if you already were.

Once I started asking that question, I let go of the unnecessary pressure which I thought was necessary before. I stopped waking up at a certain time. I stopped writing a certain amount of words per day, and I focused on quality more than quantity. My writing became better, too.

Behave like you’re the best, and you will be the best.

Progress, Not Perfection

Hello, my name is Sergey, I am (almost) 22 years old and I am a perfectionist. I am. I blame myself too often for things I shouldn’t. I have a hard time starting doing something new (even though I have so many ideas!) because I want to make it all perfect.

I wish I was easier on myself.

It’s a known fact that perfectionism is closely tied with suicidal behavior, mental disorders, anxiety, and early death. Perfectionists (like me) wear themselves out with their high standards.

Marie Forleo teaches an important lesson through her content: Make progress, not perfection.

What matters is, “Have you made progress today?” — not how much money Jessie made last month. It has nothing to do with you, and comparing yourself with others will only make you depressed.

Whatever you’re creating — whether it’s a business, music, blog or something else, you can’t expect your life to be as romantic as they show in the movies. It’s not that if you’re passionate about something, great stuff will immediately pour from you. It just doesn’t work that way. You will be bad at first, and then you’ll become better.

Perfection is unattainable. What matters, is that you make progress today.

Don’t Steal From the World

By imposing self-limiting belief, you’re stealing something very important from the world. You’re stealing the gifts you could have given to the world.

Seth Godin says that the definition of art is a gift that changes the recipient.

Where are your gifts? Where is your book/song/business/blog/idea that hasn’t yet been executed? There is nothing new under the sun, the words and bytes and music notes are the same, but you can see them in a way that only you can.

Marie says this at the end of every MarieTV episode, and it’s so true: the world needs that special gift that only you have.

Look around. Everything around you was once created and then built by people no smarter than you are. What if they didn’t act on their creative impulses? Don’t forget that Hitler was a frustrated artist, who got beaten by Resistance.

Mind the Gap

I live in London. And every day on the Tube I am reminded to keep my eyes open, to be aware and to “find the gap between the train and the platform”.

When you are starting as a creative, a maker of things, a gap exists in your life. You started in whatever you’re doing because you have good taste. Yet, what you’re doing — will be bad for the first few years.

The gap between your good taste and your not-so-good art becomes intolerable to many artists, which makes them quit. But what if you stayed? What if you fought through?

This lesson is not from Marie Forleo directly, but rather from Ira Glass — the host of This American Life NPR show, which she quoted in her book:

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap.

For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit.

Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this.

And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work.

Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”

Neil Gaiman has a similar “1 million words that are rubbish” rule — when you’re an aspiring author, you need to get them all out.

I feel this gap every day. My perfectionist mind used to think that it’s my fault that the work is not as good as I want it to be. But it’s true for all artists.

You start creating because you have good taste. You have role models, who inspire you — and they are probably where you want to be someday. But until you get there, your only job is to keep on creating.

To break through this gap. To be patient. To wait. And keep on creating.

Mind the gap.

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