Yes Please - by Amy Poehler

Published:

Yes Please - by Amy Poehler

Read: 2025-01-19

Recommend: 8/10

I learned that the author provided the voice of Joy in the Inside Out films, which explains why her voice sounded so familiar. I also appreciated her discussion of the ‘demon’ within, and how she confronts her own critical inner voice.

Notes

Here are some text that I highlighted in the book:

  1. I believe great people do things before they are ready.

  2. I think we should stop asking people in their twenties what they “want to do” and start asking them what they don’t want to do. Instead of asking students to “declare their major” we should ask students to “list what they will do anything to avoid.” It just makes a lot more sense.

  3. I HATE HOW I LOOK. That is the mantra we repeat over and over again. Sometimes we whisper it quietly and other times we shout it out loud in front of a mirror. I hate how I look. I hate how my face looks my body looks I am too fat or too skinny or too tall or too wide or my legs are too stupid and my face is too smiley or my teeth are dumb and my nose is serious and my stomach is being so lame. Then we think, “I am so ungrateful. I have arms and legs and I can walk and I have strong nail beds and I am alive and I am so selfish and I have to read Man’s Search for Meaning again and call my parents and volunteer more and reduce my carbon footprint and why am I such a self-obsessed ugly asshole no wonder I hate how I look! I hate how I am!” There have been forty million books and billions of words written on this subject, so I will assume we are all caught up. That voice that talks badly to you is a demon voice. This very patient and determined demon shows up in your bedroom one day and refuses to leave. You are six or twelve or fifteen and you look in the mirror and you hear a voice so awful and mean that it takes your breath away. It tells you that you are fat and ugly and you don’t deserve love. And the scary part is the demon is your own voice. But it doesn’t sound like you. It sounds like a strangled and seductive version of you. Think Darth Vader or an angry Lauren Bacall. The good news is there are ways to make it stop talking. The bad news is it never goes away. If you are lucky, you can live a life where the demon is generally forgotten, relegated to a back shelf in a closet next to your old field hockey equipment. You may even have days or years when you think the demon is gone. But it is not. It is sitting very quietly, waiting for you. This motherfucker is patient. It says, “Take your time.” It says, “Go fall in love and exercise and surround yourself with people who make you feel beautiful.” It says, “Don’t worry, I’ll wait.” And then one day, you go through a breakup or you can’t lose your baby weight or you look at your reflection in a soup spoon and that slimy bugger is back. It moves its sour mouth up to your ear and reminds you that you are fat and ugly and don’t deserve love. This demon is some Stephen King from-the-sewer devil-level shit.

  4. I looked in the mirror at my flat chest and my freckles and heard a sound. It was the demon, suitcase in hand. He moved in and demanded the top bunk.

  5. I am pretty good at snooping around. It started in my own house, where I would go through every drawer and every pocket in my parents’ room. Luckily, I didn’t find much at home except for some well-worn copies of Playboy that seem positively charming compared to the up-close butt fisting that pops up on my computer these days when I am trying to order salad tongs from Target. I honed my snooping skills when I babysat. It was then that I saw my first diaphragm, laxatives, and stacks of cash in an underwear drawer. I have basically ransacked every house I have been allowed into. My snooping tendencies have now abated somewhat, but I still have to fight the urge to immediately go through people’s shit. I am not proud of this and I realize that by admitting this I am limiting future opportunities to be a houseguest.

  6. If you are lucky, there is a moment in your life when you have some say as to what your currency is going to be. I decided early on it was not going to be my looks. I have spent a lifetime coming to terms with this idea and I would say I am about 15 to 20 percent there.

  7. Being considered beautiful can be tough. I know this because I work in Hollywood, which is filled with the most conventionally beautiful people in the world. Beautiful people can get objectified and underestimated. They didn’t do anything to earn their genes so they have to struggle to prove they are more than their hot bods. People assume they are happy and good in bed, and most times this is not true. Plus, some beautiful people get a little addicted to being told they are beautiful and have real trouble when they get older, get less attention, or have their spouse cheat on them with someone considered “plain.”

  8. Hopefully as you get older, you start to learn how to live with your demon. It’s hard at first. Some people give their demon so much room that there is no space in their head or bed for love. They feed their demon and it gets really strong and then it makes them stay in abusive relationships or starve their beautiful bodies. But sometimes, you get a little older and get a little bored of the demon. Through good therapy and friends and self-love you can practice treating the demon like a hacky, annoying cousin. Maybe a day even comes when you are getting dressed for a fancy event and it whispers, “You aren’t pretty,” and you go, “I know, I know, now let me find my earrings.” Sometimes you say, “Demon, I promise you I will let you remind me of my ugliness, but right now I am having hot sex so I will check in later.” Other times I take a more direct approach. When the demon starts to slither my way and say bad shit about me I turn around and say, “Hey. Cool it. Amy is my friend. Don’t talk about her like that.” Sticking up for ourselves in the same way we would one of our friends is a hard but satisfying thing to do. Sometimes it works. Even demons gotta sleep.

  9. The legacy of my generation will be that we have truly expanded the idea of what “family” means. It is no longer unusual for people who choose surrogacy, gay adoption, IVF, international and domestic adoption, fostering, and childlessness to live side by side and quietly judge each other. We can all live in peace thinking our way is the best way and everything else is cuckoo. I was lucky. I tried for a little while to get pregnant, and at thirty-seven I did.

  10. I hung up the phone and told Jon and the hair and makeup people that my doctor had just DIED. And I was DUE TOMORROW. And that I knew it seemed like a weird punch line, but my beloved and dear Italian grandpa was not going to be able to help me. I felt so terrible about the fact that all I was thinking was “What about meeeeeee!” I cried and cried in my Mad Men dress. Jon Hamm held me by the shoulders and looked at me and said, “I know this is very sad, but this is a really important show for me, so I’m going to need you to get your shit together.” This made me laugh so hard I think I peed. Going from crying to laughing that fast and hard happens maybe five times in your life and that extreme right turn is the reason why we are alive, and I believe it extends our life by many years.

  11. Doing comedy for a living is, in a lot of ways, like a pony and a camel trying to escape from the zoo. It’s a ridiculous endeavor and has a low probability of success, but most importantly, it is way easier if you’re with a friend.

  12. Shame is difficult. It’s a weapon and a signal. It can paralyze or motivate. My friend Louis CK likes to say that “guilt is an intersection.” Getting out of it means making a choice and moving forward. I felt guilty and I felt shame, but I didn’t really move. For years. I parked my car in the intersection and let it sit there until the battery ran out.

  13. But as my dear friend and relationship sponsor Louis CK has noted, “divorce is always good news because no good marriage has ever ended in divorce.”

  14. I recently hurt myself on a treadmill and it wasn’t even on. I was adjusting my speed and stepped wrong and twisted my ankle. I felt a moment of frustration filled with immediate relief. I didn’t have to actually work out, but I still got credit for trying.

  15. fall, and then figure out what to do on your way down

  16. Do you want to know how I do it? I can do it because I have a wife. Every mother needs a wife. My wife’s name is Dawa Chodon. Sometimes it is Mercy Caballero. It used to be Jackie Johnson. Dawa is from Tibet and Mercy is from the Philippines. Jackie is from Trinidad. Over the past five years they have helped me and Will take care of our children. We are lucky. Some people cannot afford this option and have little family support. Every mother needs a wife. Some mothers’ wives are their mothers. Some mothers’ wives are their husbands. Some mothers’ wives are their friends and neighbors. Every working person needs someone to come home to and someone to come get them out of the home. Someone who asks questions about their day and maybe fixes them something to eat. Every mother needs a wife who takes care of her and helps her become a better mother. The women who have helped me have stood in my kitchen and shared their lives. They have made me feel better about working so hard because they work hard too. They are wonderful teachers and caretakers and my children’s lives are richer because they are part of our family. The biggest lie and biggest crime is that we all do this alone and look down on people who don’t.

  17. We would spend the day wearing giant cat heads or dinosaur masks, harassing people with bullhorns in Washington Square Park and handing out flyers to our show. We spent the nights performing and writing and dreaming and scheming. It was sketch and improv 24/7. We had no one to take care of but ourselves.

  18. New York can be a lonely place. I think we stuck together during hard times and provided a home for people to feel less alone.

  19. You have to care about your work but not about the result. You have to care about how good you are and how good you feel, but not about how good people think you are or how good people think you look.

  20. You will never climb Career Mountain and get to the top and shout, “I made it!” You will rarely feel done or complete or even successful. Most people I know struggle with that complicated soup of feeling slighted on one hand and like a total fraud on the other. Our ego is a monster that loves to sit at the head of the table, and I have learned that my ego is just as rude and loud and hungry as everyone else’s. It doesn’t matter how much you get; you are left wanting more. Success is filled with MSG.

  21. I stomped upstairs and felt angry for about five minutes, and then I watched the anger travel through my body like a wave and leave. Emotions are like passing storms, and you have to remind yourself that it won’t rain forever. You just have to sit down and watch it pour outside and then peek your head out when it looks dry.

  22. Gavin de Becker talks about this in his wonderful book The Gift of Fear. He talks about how the word “no” should be the “end of the discussion, not the beginning of a negotiation.”

  23. We did the thing. Because remember, the talking about the thing isn’t the thing. The doing of the thing is the thing.

  24. The day after cocaine is rough. Same with ecstasy. I remember a wonderful UCB New Year’s Eve party where we all danced and drank water and loved each other. I also remember the next day when I thought I had no friends and I was so sad I wanted to sink into the carpet and permanently live there. The next day is the thing I can’t pull off anymore.

  25. Drugs suck. They ruin people’s lives. They kill people too early. They destroy hopes and dreams and tear families apart. •Drugs help. They pull people from despair. They balance our moods and minds and keep us from freaking out on airplanes. •Drugs are fun. They expand our horizons. They create great memories and make folding our laundry bearable.

  26. My phone is trying to kill me. It is a battery-charged rectangle of disappointment and possibility. It is a technological pacifier. I keep it beside me to make me feel less alone, unless I feel like making myself feel lonely. It can make me feel connected and unloved, ugly and important, sad and vindicated.

  27. The only way we will survive is by being kind. The only way we can get by in this world is through the help we receive from others. No one can do it alone, no matter how great the machines are.