DECEMBER 2023

real self-care

Pooja Lakshmin, M.D.

I thought this would be a good book to review in December, because it always happens that sometime during this month I start to get fed up with the never-ending ads for things, things, and more THINGS that will make your life (or at least your Christmas) perfect. If that’s you, too, take a look at Pooja’s book for some ideas on how to REALLY improve your life. 

There are lots of things I love about this book. Most importantly, Pooja has a completely different outlook on how women should deal with their overwhelming lives than any other “self-help” author I have EVER read. Her main idea is NOT: let’s help YOU deal with all the demands on you. Instead, it’s this: the SYSTEM is rigged, and has been rigged since basically the beginning of time, to take advantage of women, to hold us to impossible standards (perfect mom/partner/career woman anyone?) and, when we don’t meet the impossible standards, to make us feel like it’s OUR FAULT. A-men. 

Pooja (I hope she doesn’t mind if I use her first name, as I feel like I got to know her in reading the book) goes on to call BS on the idea that a pedicure, or a massage, or a yoga class will really fix this for us. Of course it won’t. We know that. If our lives are overwhelming, we will have a massage and zip right back to our overwhelming lives. 

Her proposal for Real Self-Care? Start to flex some power and work on making our lives the way WE want them, not how other people want them to be. Spoiler: it’s a lot harder than getting a massage, but will pay off big time long term. 

The keys to flexing our power, which the book guides us through getting comfortable with, are boundaries (yep), values, and self-compassion. In other words, stop beating yourself up about not meeting impossible standards in a rigged system, figure out YOUR OWN values that you want to live your life by, and set and keep clear boundaries so that people don’t mess with that. The book guides the reader through some ways to work through these things, with some examples from Pooja’s own patients. There are also exercises to practice. If there was one thing I would change about the book, I would have more of these practice exercises, because I think that this is not going to be an easy process for most women. 

Pooja, thanks for saying this all out loud. This is a book that’s going to stay on my shelf and inform my own coaching.