Book Review: Mastering Your Mean Girl

“But I don’t have an inner mean girl!” That’s what I was inwardly yelling upon picking up Mastering Your Mean Girl. Of course, the voice in my head that responded (i.e., the Mean Girl) was telling me that I had been the victim of mean girls, that I was mousy, too quiet, too loud (at the same time), too fat, and too quirky to really benefit from from author and coach Melissa Ambrosini was writing about. Self, meet “Mean Girl.”

As defined by Ambrosini, a former dancer, entertainer and luxury-liver extraordinaire, the Mean Girl on the inside is simply the ego. The Mean Girl is the never-ending source of negativity, self-deprecating talk and fear-based ponderings. Ambrosini rooted out her Mean Girl at proverbial rock bottom while I found mine as I endeavored to start my own business while attending school full time and trying to get out of debt. Regardless of the point of contact, the author purports that everyone has their own Mean Girl telling them they can’t, they won’t, and they’re not good enough to do whatever they are dreaming of.

Mastering Your Mean Girl doesn’t attempt to eradicate every life experience or negative thought you’ve ever had, as many self-help books attempt. Instead, it focuses on how one key component — love — changes your perspective from one who lives with a negative-Nancy mentality to one with love for yourself, others and for life. At first glance, the concept seems campy and overdone, but Ambrosini focuses on the value of loving yourself first from the honest perspective of someone who knows the dangers of not doing so.

In the first part of the book, she tackles the force that so often keeps us limited by our Mean Girl: fear. She challenges the reader to look at the genuine motivation behind each decision and whether it is fear or love.

One that hit me particularly hard was taking every job or gig I was offered (even if I hated it) out of fear that there wouldn’t be another and I would run out of money. Love says that you deserve to hold out for the right opportunity, so stop taking the wrong ones, while fear says grab all that you can because there is only so much. She throws down another gauntlet by challenging readers to unconditionally love themselves, instead of only showing self-love when they accomplish a goal or handle something just so. The primer on love rounds out with a comment on self-worth. Someone who loves herself and understands the value of doing so believes that she is worth things; she is worthy of success, joy, and most of all, reciprocated love.

From this foundation, Ambrosini challenges her readers to live from the position of being loved, asserting that only once they love themselves and believe themselves to be worthy of love can they live from love and send it onward. What does that look like? Taking care of your body and having a healthy relationship with food, pursuing only what makes your heart come alive (because you’re worth something that you’re passionate about!), having a positive relationship with money, and nurturing healthy connections with others. Ambrosini says it’s living from these “love yourself” points that starves your Mean Girl and shuts her up for good, and it’s from that happy place that the self-confident and “love-centered” girl that can give back to the world.

Do these tenets work, or are they another self-help ploy meant to inspire and pump up the reader without producing tangible results? The real kicker is the fact that Ambrosini writes with conviction based in a wealth of negative and positive personal experiences. As I read her book, I found myself nodding along because it’s not only believable, I can hear her heart and soul in the pages. She has lived these moments and has seen the impact loving herself had. As a reader, I appreciated her message and the candid way it was delievered, and I will likely return to these pages for inspiration as I battle my own Mean Girl with loads of self-love.

One thing that I feel is important to note is that Mastering Your Mean Girl doesn’t read like a traditional self-help book, but as a companion journal to a life that once was marred by self-destruction and is now a testament of victory over fear, self-hatred and self-abuse. Some testaments should be taken seriously and honored as they are; love yourself, take time to cultivate positive, healthy relationships with your world and those in it, and watch that Mean Girl take a hike.

Mastering Your Mean Girl: The No-BS Guide to Silencing Your Inner Critic and Becoming Wildly Wealthy, Fabulously Healthy, and Bursting with Love
TarcherPerigee, March 2016
Paperback, 288 pages
$17.00