An excerpt of Mindy Kaling’s new book is filled with confidence tips. We love them.
Mindy Kaling has achieved a TON, being the queen she is. At 36, she’s an SAG award-winning, Emmy-nominated Hollywood director, writer, and actress. She’s been on countless magazine covers and in major campaigns. Oh, and she’s a best-selling author. NBD.
All of this and more is why we’re SO excited for her brand new fabulous book entitled Why Not Me, which will be officially hitting shelves on September 15th. Unfortunately, that’s over a month away, but GUYS, Glamour just published an excerpt from it called “Mindy Kaling’s Guide To Killer Confidence”, and she’s already dropped a ton of truth bombs that we totally love.
In the excerpt, Mindy tells a story about being on a panel for a Q&A. She was asked by a young woman of color, “Mindy, where do you get your confidence? Because I feel like I used to have it when I was younger but now I don’t.” Mindy, who was exhausted, gave a response that she later wished had been better. “Wow, I don’t know,” Mindy told the girl. “I think it’s from my parents always telling me I could do anything. I wish I had a better answer for you.”
Mindy decided to write an essay in honor of that girl. “So this essay is for that girl who went out of her way to be vulnerable in front of so many people, to whom I gave such a sh*tty, unhelpful response,” Mindy explained in the excerpt. “Because I’ve thought about it now and I have my real answer. Hopefully she hasn’t stopped liking me and moved on to Laverne Cox, though if she did, how could I blame her? She seems inspirational as hell and her legs are like whoa.” LOL, typical Mindy.
And then, Mindy broke it down. First, she wrote about hard work, explaining that it’s something that people don’t speak enough about when they talk about confidence. “Hard work is such a weird thing,” she explained. “As children and teenagers you are told it’s a really good thing, but for adults it suddenly becomes the worst thing in the world.” In so many movies, “workaholics” are deemed to be this awful thing — but she doesn’t think this is a fair assessment. “. . . the truth is, I have never, ever, ever met a highly confident and successful person who is not what a movie would call a ‘workaholic,’” Mindy wrote. “We can’t have it both ways, and children should know that.”
She then wrote that “the tiniest bit of bravery” is the next ingredient in confidence, explaining that she gets a lot of hate for how she looks as a Hollywood star. “People marvel that I am on TV because I don’t look like other people who have been on TV. . . One of the unexpected and wonderfully fair things I have learned in my career is that if Hollywood were filled just with perfect-looking people, then soap operas would be the most-watched things in the world,” she said, as we slow-clapped in the background. “But they’re not. Looks are great, but they’re not compelling enough.”
And that’s why, as Mindy explained, bravery is so important to be confident. “People get scared when you try to do something, especially when it looks like you’re succeeding. People do not get scared when you’re failing. It calms them,” she wrote. “But when you’re winning, it makes them feel like they’re losing or, worse yet, that maybe they should’ve tried to do something too, but now it’s too late. And since they didn’t, they want to stop you. You can’t let them.”
Then, Mindy spoke directly to that young girl whom she wished she could have given a better answer:
Petition for Mindy to hold a mic forever so she can drop it every other sentence?
If you want to pre-order Mindy’s book, you can do so here. In the meantime, read the full excerpt here, and don’t be surprised if the entire thing ends up being your mantra.
(Image via IMDb)
