HILDA TACKLE YOUR INNER NAYSAYER, GET OUT OF YOUR OWN WAY, AND UNLEASH YOUR BADASSERY Jennie Mustafa-Julock HILDA: Tackle Your Inner Naysayer, Get Out of Your Own Way, and Unleash Your Badassery Copyright © 2016 Jennie Mustafa-Julock. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher at the address below: Coach Jennie The Audacity Coach www.coachjennie.com/contact Illustrations: Renee Bates Cover Design: Megan Atkinson First Edition Hilda by Jennie Mustafa-Julock ISBN 978-0-9979838-0-7 Contents A Letter from Hilda ............................................................... ii Meet Coach Jennie .................................................................. 1 Cue the Vulnerability ......................................................... 6 Meet Hilda ............................................................................. 11 How She Operates ............................................................ 14 Demented Documentarian ............................................... 16 But Hilda Means Well ...................................................... 18 How We’re Gonna Shut Her Up ..................................... 19 Name Your “Hilda” ............................................................ 20 Self-Sabotage 101 .................................................................. 23 Fueled by Fear ................................................................... 28 Hilda #IRL .......................................................................... 30 A Little Science to Back Me Up ....................................... 32 Moving Forward ............................................................... 34 Handy Dandy Hilda Cheat Sheet ..................................... 36 Handy Dandy Hilda Cheat Sheet ..................................... 37 BS Belief #1: I Can’t ............................................................... 39 Who Do You Think You Are? ........................................ 42 You’re Not Qualified ......................................................... 45 You Suck ............................................................................ 47 You’re Not Worthy .......................................................... 50 You’re Just Not Good Enough ......................................... 53 They’re Just Being Polite .................................................. 55 There’s no way you can pull this off ............................... 57 You’re just not relationship material .............................. 59 Why Bother? ..................................................................... 62 You Can’t Be Serious ........................................................ 65 You CAN ........................................................................... 69 BS Belief #2: I Shouldn’t ....................................................... 73 Oh, Behave ......................................................................... 77 They’re all gonna laugh at you ......................................... 81 You’ll never live up to expectations ................................ 83 Why Can’t You Just Be Grateful? .................................... 86 It Must Be Nice................................ .................................. 89 These are the Goals You Should Want .......................... 92 Why Can’t You Be Like So-and-So ................................ 95 You’re Gonna Become a Douchebag ............................... 99 How Embarrassing! ....................................................... 102 You Should Never Say No ............................................. 105 You SHOULD ................................................................ 109 BS Belief #3: I Don’t Know ............................................... 111 You Know Nothing ........................................................ 114 Are You Sure About That? ............................................117 You Don’t Know Enough Yet ...................................... 119 Not Yet, But As Soon As . ......................................... 123 But What If . ................................................................127 You Can’t Choose .......................................................... 130 No Pressure, It’s Only Life or Death ............................ 133 Someday .......................................................................... 138 What About These Other Things? ............................... 141 You’re Not Ready ............................................................ 144 You KNOW .................................................................... 146 BS Belief #4: I Don’t Wanna .............................................. 149 But You Don’t Feel Like It ............................................ 151 But It’s Not Perfect Yet ...................................................154 You Just Can’t Today ..................................................... 157 It’s All or Nothing .......................................................... 160 It’s Not Gonna Work for You ...................................... 163 Life Got in the Way ....................................................... 165 It’s Just Too Damn Hard ............................................... 168 There’s Something Wrong with You ...........................172 Just Quit While You’re Ahead ...................................... 175 But You’ve Got a Great Excuse! ....................................178 You WANT This ........................................................... 183 The Solution ........................................................................187 For the Next Time Hilda Pipes Up . ......................... 188 What to Do When Hilda’s Right ................................. 191 So What? ......................................................................... 192 My Letter Back to Hilda ..................................................... 194 Join the Movement ............................................................ 198 Acknowledgements ............................................................ 199 Further Reading ................................................................. 201 Hidden Hilda Stories in Film ............................................ 203 About the Author ............................................................... 205 Dedicated to Meredyth The only person on the planet who is strong enough to put up with me and my Hilda If you're reading this book, you aim to lead a life that matters. I totally love that about you. The following is a book about self-sabotage. P REFACE A Letter from Hilda cannot believe you are reading this book right now. I did everything I could possibly think of to derail Jennie from writing Ithis book. Seriously. Everything imaginable. I told her that she didn’t know what she was talking about. I repeatedly drilled into her head that she didn’t have enough to fill an entire book. I distracted her with shiny objects, like the time I encouraged her to do hours of online shopping for the perfect pocketbook that she never bought. I convinced her to only consider traditional publishing because I knew that her fear of rejection would keep her from ever submitting a book proposal. That one worked for almost a year. I reminded her that self-published authors never make any real impact and that she didn’t have what it takes to be one of those stand-out indie publishers who makes it big. I interrupted every writing session with copious amounts of self- doubt. I convinced her that she was a shitty writer. That writing a HILDA • III book would be too hard. And even harder for her than anyone else. Obviously. I served as her co-conspirator in self-sabotage daily. Like the time we binged on 19 episodes of Game of Thrones in one weekend. Impossible to write when the laptop is occupied with HBONOW. I made her believe she was too busy and too basic to write a decent book. Who does she think she is? Tony Robbins? Oprah? Please. And it worked like a charm . for a while. But somehow she pressed on despite all of my painstaking efforts to keep her from putting herself out there. To keep her safe. Whatever. She doesn’t listen. It’s infuriating. But whatever. So here you go. A book about me. Not like it’s gonna help anyway. I NTRODUCTION Meet Coach Jennie efore you dive into this book, I bet you’d like to know a bit about who I am. My name is Jennie Mustafa-Julock, The B Audacity Coach (yep, the “The” is purposely capitalized). Everyone just calls me Coach Jennie. In 2006, I hung out my shingle with that confident title and I have built my life and business coaching practice around it. I specialize in helping ambitious badasses who are on the brink of something spectacular figure out how to make it happen. The word how in that pithy little elevator pitch is extremely loaded. While much of the work I do with clients involves crafting a vision for their spectacular dream and developing a smart strategy for making it happen, that’s honestly only part of the how. The rest of the how is in dealing with their self-sabotage. Every. single. client. Not one of them has been immune to the Hilda. I’m an expert in self-sabotage, inside and out, whether I intended to be or not. I have worked