Book review: You Got This by Bryony Gordon

As it is Mental Health Awareness week this week, this seems like a good book to kick off with…

I am a big fan of Bryony Gordon. It is rare in this world to find somebody as authentic and refreshingly honest and there has never been a time when teenagers have so badly needed to hear these words of wisdom. Bombarded by “perfect” images on social media and reduced to a numerical grade/level by the education system, it is little wonder that so many teenagers are suffering from mental health issues.

I was so inspired by this book that I took my daughter to a talk which Gordon was giving at the Southbank Centre last weekend, where she spoke openly about how when she was asked as a child what she would like to be when she grew up, her honest reply was that she “wanted to be a little bit less like (herself)”. This really resonated with me. I think that many of us, particularly teenagers, when imagining a future self tend to imagine somebody not at all like ourselves. The main message of the book, however is that we ought to be celebrating our own unique selves.

Gordon begins the book by describing the reproductive process humorously and in detail to get the reader to appreciate the miniscule chance of us existing in our current form at all (NOTE: if you are squeamish about your son/daughter being exposed to sexual references, then this book is not for you). However, her point is that “something out there in the cosmos really wants you to be here. And it wants you to look exactly as you do,” which is a really important message. Why are we always trying to change ourselves when we are ultimately brilliant exactly as we are? Bryony Gordon writes about her biggest successes in life unexpectedly coming from being wholly and completely herself.

Gordon uses some great analogies. Amongst my favourite is where she encourages the reader to “think of themselves as a delicious chocolate” to explain how to deal with the problem of somebody not speaking to you anymore:

Just because somebody can’t eat you anymore, it doesn’t mean that you are no longer delicious – it just means that maybe they’ve got a diagnoses of diabetes, or for whatever reason, they are denying themselves sugar. Who wants to be friends with someone who denies themselves sugar anyway?! This person sounds like they’re experiencing a total fun famine. You, meanwhile, are still a delicious chocolate.

I love this.

Anyway, I wish that I had been able to read this book when I was 12 years old, but having said that, I think I’ve gained a great deal from reading it at 40.