Why You Should Break the Habit of Being Good

We want to do everything right.

We want to be good. We want other people to approve of us, give us jobs, invite us to their parties, introduce us to the handsome single men they know.

We’ve got this vision in our heads of who we want to be. A woman who has it all. Kind and compassionate. Strong and confident. Ballsy yet likable. Gorgeous yet accessible.

But it’s a long journey ahead.

Who we are right now is nowhere near where we want to be.

So we work hard. We pay close attention to experts, role models and mentors. We follow their advice as best we can. We want to succeed. We want to do this!

Does that sound like you?

It sounds like me.

Or rather, it sounded like me.

I’m a personal development junkie. I’ve been reading advice columns since I was 13, flipping through my mother’s Ladies Home Journal’s and Good Housekeeping’s because there was nothing in the house to read.

It’s amazing how many people think they know how we should live our lives. The business of being an expert is booming. It’s booming because we have such a craving to be the best version of ourselves possible.

But that admirable goal hides a darker truth:

We don’t think we’re good enough as we are.

We don’t know how to live our lives. We’ve mucked things up. Left to our own devices, we make some pretty bad choices. Our only possible salvation is to invite others to guide us. People who know better than we do.

As a result, we’ve turned away en masse from our inner wisdom. We don’t trust ourselves anymore. We’ve plugged our ears to intuition.

When people to go life coaches for help, they’re often hoping to be told what to do. Follow these steps, and your life will become amazing.

Instead, great coaches do something different. They coax your inner truth out of you. They help you realize that you do, actually, know what to do. You just couldn’t see it because of the cacophony of thoughts in your mind.

But I’ve got an even easier tip for you.

If you don’t know what to do, ask your #InnerBadGirl what she’d do.

Who’s your Inner Bad Girl?

So glad you asked.

She’s the part of you in shadow. The part of you who’s selfish, who wants what she wants and doesn’t care about being reasonable or patient.

You were very much in touch with your Inner Bad Girl when you were young. She was the immature part of you who didn’t understand that you have to follow the rules and get along with everyone.

As you grew older, you learned to shut her up. She wasn’t helpful. What she wanted you to do was often counterproductive or even destructive. She wasn’t going to help you get into grad school or impress a potential boss.

But…

The less you listened to her, the more you lost touch with yourself.

You learned to want what other people told you you should want … rather than what you really wanted.

You learned to distrust your gut instincts, because you automatically assumed they were coming from a bad, selfish place. You didn’t want any part of you to be bad. Not when society expected you to be good at all times.

Sometimes your Inner Bad Girl broke down your walls. She urged you to do things you knew were wrong. “Have another glass of wine.” “Go home with him tonight.” “Spend the money, you deserve it.”

Every time you listened to her, you regretted it. You clamped down even tighter. You were in control of your life, not her.

But ignoring her came at a cost.

You lost some joy in your life. You felt guilty about indulging in your true desires.

You compromised your integrity to follow what you’d been told.

You genuinely believed you should feel satisfaction in the pleasure you bring to others, not your own selfish pleasures.

And maybe you found yourself feeling inexplicably angry every now and again. Frustrated that your life wasn’t going how it should. You were doing everything right—where was the reward?

Your Inner Bad Girl sat back, twiddled her thumbs, and smirked.

I invite you now to say hello to your Inner Bad Girl.

Show her that you know she’s there.

Maybe it’s hard to feel friendly towards her right now, especially if she’s led you to do destructive things in the past, but ignoring her won’t help.

She’s part of you. She’s deserving of love.

And sometimes she really does have good advice.

You see, she knows more than anyone what you really want.

She doesn’t censor her desires. She doesn’t make them palatable to society or your parents. She’s unapologetic.

You don’t have to do everything she tells you, but you should listen to her.

Get her take on your situation.

Dig down deep to be radically honest with yourself.

You might just find that the perfect advice was inside you all along.

Want to learn more?

• Then check out my online course THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE, where I’ll teach you the secrets of the bad girl.
• Enjoy the brilliant and heart-wrenching novel City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert. Take it from Liz: “At some point in a woman’s life, she just gets tired of being ashamed all the time. After that, she is free to become whoever she truly is.”
• Your Brilliance expert author James Bauer agrees that guy love bad girls. Here’s his advice on how you can swipe the bad girl’s allure.