Bossed Up Book Review

Bossed Up

A Grown Woman's Guide to Getting Your Sh*t Together

by Emilie Aries

This book starts with the author introducing herself and confessing being a "hot mess" in recovery. Emilie (the author) talks about her personal experience trying to excel at what she did, like college assignments and planning events. She then mentions how it quickly became very hard to do once she changed college life to what she chooses to call "real life". She mentions problems about her past relationship and more personal stuff.

Chapter 1 - Combating the Martyr Mindset: Where the author introduces her mother and how she was always on overload. A very charitable nurse that works 12hs shits to this day and uses her free time to provide care for less developed countries. She mentions how her mother loved her job and career, but always overworked herself. 

This chapter continues comparing her mother with numerous women that also overwork themselves. Women that have a full-time job, take care of the household and children and always choose other first. Women that leave them for last. How the modern gender roles are a mix of old fashioned ones, with women still having most of the responsibility for kids and household, but now also working outside or running their own business.

In this section of the book, I found a sentence that really touched me, paraphrasing it says that working hard is one thing, but suffering to get what you want can be a matter of intensity, and to see the difference we should ask ourselves if we are just constantly filling our plates with obligations.

The book also shares "spotlights" with personal stories of different women. These sections are highlighted to separate them from the main book content and appear thru-out the book. If you enjoy reading about personal experiences and stories, you will enjoy these section 

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Then it continues with a section titled "back to basics" the author talks about Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Very famous and present and discussed in various psychology books, and continues to talk about the earnings gap compared between genders and also between minorities. Finally featuring the very first statement about what she considers the first step of being "bossed up" which is to make sure not to overwork or overload yourself. The author presents an exercise so you can asses your needs. A very simple exercise that shows the basic needs of shelter, nutrition, meaningful work, rest, relationship, and security/safety inside a circle and you asses your feelings towards these needs.

"Bounce Back from burnout" proposes that you first need to pinpoint the cause for it. Agency, Purpose, Rest, and Community. And follows by recommending that we should replace the Martyr mindset with sustainable success. 

All this is merely the contents of chapter one, and the book contains a total of 6 chapters (also introduction and closing). All of them just as full of information, advice and mainly lots of the author's opinions. 

Because there is so much content I will limit myself to sharing the snippets that impressed me the most, but know that there is more to the book.

Chapter 2 - Cultivating your Boss identity: The importance of seeing yourself as the boss of your own life and decisions is the main concept discussed in this chapter that struck me the most. As this applies to everyone. You don't need to be a boss at work, to adopt the boss identity, because you can always choose to be the boss of your own life. But you will not be left alone with this process, as the author outlines another exercise to help you in this area. Also, more spotlights appear. 

Chapter 3 - Progress over perfection: The title says everything. More advice, more spotlights, and exercises. The one that I appreciated the most is "Celebrate your efforts over achievements". Although I will still continue to celebrate my achievements, I found this to be fantastic advice, as I tend to oversee my efforts and only celebrate results. But we all know that big achievement doesn't come every day, but we can celebrate how many steps we gave today towards or goals or desired achievements. This is definitely a habit I plan to adopt.

Chapter 4 - Speak it, Be it: Another chapter overloaded with content. But the section I appreciated the most is "tricks of the trade" because is full of strategies and best practices. You might not agree with all of them, but is certainly good info to consider and put into perspective. I wasn't fully appreciative of the section labeled "dear white people" since it talks about certain issues that people of "color" (as she says it) have in life. To be honest, if anyone has issues, they are already aware of it. I am Latina, and I'm not blind to certain issues that seem to be common for us, but I also don't see all "white people" as bad or with privilege, while is true to some extent, absolutes are rarely encountered in this world. The term "of color" used to refer to anyone, not "white" is also a bit bothersome to me, and although this book has sections that I don't agree with, still presents various sections that are rather valuable, so I will just keep what works for me and learn to improve myself. After all, we all have issues in life, some are stereotypical, others are not. The fact is we still have to deal with them.

Chapter 5 - Be a goal digger: The power of vision, breaking down goals to steps, overall planning, and focusing on progress. More spotlights, and using your calendar as a forecasting tool. This chapter is a bit shorter than the other ones but still has great information. 

Chapter 6 - Your community of courage: In this chapter, the author presents her ideas and opinions about working in the community. About how cultivating a community of supportive peers can be beneficial for you and the community itself. More spotlights with personal stories, and steps to work on community building. When referring to the community she talks about networking and other professionals, friends, and finally partners. 

The conclusion is short and sweet. Is like a pep talk that tells you that is going to take some work but it can be done. It reminds you of leaving the martyr mindset and also touches on ideas presented in previous chapters. Is a mix of a good-bye and encouragement to take action.

You can find a copy of Bossed up HERE