The CrossFit superstar and author of the bestselling The Badass Body Diet is back with a day-by-day guide designed to encourage habit change through fun, dynamic daily tasks challenging your mind, body, and spirit. Christmas Abbott knows the importance of a badass lifestyle; physically, mentally, and spiritually. The key is using essential daily practices for the mind, body, and soul. The Badass Life is her month-long-program based on building positive daily habits, to help you achieve a higher quality of life and a heightened sense of self-worth. It takes 30 days to break a bad habit and 30 days to create a good one. Christmas provides a daily challenge for your mental, physical, and spiritual awareness to help you develop positive thinking and successful behavior and boost your brainpower. Each day is centered around a specific "action theme," such as "Eliminate Excuses," "Lean on Mentors," and "Feel Sexy, Be Sexy." Christmas shows you how to create a better blueprint for your daily habits to maximize their beneficial effects, and includes suggestions for healthy eating, fun puzzles, life questions, and brain teasers to get you thinking in new directions. Christmas also emphasizes the need for daily spiritual wellness, and gives you ideas for practicing intended acts of connection, such as helping a complete stranger unconditionally, setting specific intentions, and recording what you appreciate about yourself. No matter your level of health wellbeing, The Badass Life will help you channel the power of the mind-body-spirit connection to become your best self in every way. Includes 32 pages of color photos.
When you get up, be thankful for the day, and begin with a healthy breakfast. From the time you wake up until bedtime, make a conscious effort to be fully engaged in living and enjoying those hours. And finally: Count your blessings, not calories. Get active. Physical activity will blast away any trouble, worry, or stress faster than you can say "badass." Be kind to yourself - in thoughts and actions. Know your strengths and put them to work. Spend time in stillness. Let go of your stuff. Avoid negative thoughts and negative influences. Don't go out of bounds. Laugh often and much. Connect with those you love and those who love you. Live your purpose and your legacy. Get excited about what will happen if you do all these things. See you in the badass lane!
I really enjoyed this book. I initially only read it because Christmas is on Big Brother this season, and at first I didn't think I would enjoy it as much as I did. You're supposed to space this book out and read a chapter per day, as well as keep a journal with it, but I didn't have time to do so because the book is due back to the library tomorrow with multiple holds. It would be a neat way to see how far you progress in 30-days time however. Everyday you are supposed to write about daily mental, physical, and spiritual goals as well as a writing about whatever the topic of the day is. These topics include positive affirmations, decreasing clutter, eliminating excuses, being authentic, loving yourself, getting rid of stress, adjusting your attitude, and many more. This book is a fantastic read and really gave me some different perspectives on how to live right.
A quick read and some bromides, but also some useful reminders about getting on track to good habits. Some Buddhist-type approaches, a little motivational speaker, some sports coach, and so on.
I was under the impression that this was going to be more a light-hearted, humorous approach (sort of like Sarah Knight's books or the You Are A Bad Ass book by Jen Sincero) but instead I found it to be very serious and sort of "guilt trippy". I didn't get much out of it but I am also not crazy into cross fit...which I found she talked about quite a bit. I was obviously not the right reader for it.
The structure of this book is daily entries that include:
-A passage on something vaguely health related -A self-affirmation -Goals for the day of differing categories -Gratitude -Reflection on successes -Reflection challenges
I stopped reading the passages after Day 13ish when I was told to grind up a $5 bill in the garbage disposal every time I made a mistake. Um - no. I think that is also illegal. My self-affirmation for that day was “I am smart enough not to grind up my money.”
I actually really did enjoy the next few parts - setting aside time daily for self-affirmation, goals, and gratitude was really helpful. Or mostly, having a place to write them. I’m not sure the book taught me anything about them, but it reminded me to do it.
Reflection on successes just became the same thing as what I’m most grateful for so was a little redundant - maybe that is a me thing. And I didn’t love ending on “what was the most challenging.” I preferred to end with gratitude and started skipping the rest.
So 3/6 parts of this book were useful. 3/7 if you include the 15 pages of the author doing model shots for each daily theme. (The pictures were not attached to each day but rather grouped in the middle like you have the option to rip them out as posters or something? Idk) Still, I’m glad I was given the book because it did start a daily practice.
I get it. I'm not her target audience. I work with 20 and 30 somethings, millennials, who don't understand that there are rules about using profanity and around whom. I'm not against profanity, but its liberal use in a book is tiresome and annoying. If you have a vocabulary, use it. If you don't, hire a good ghost writer and editor.
The concepts in the book are good, and I think her book would have broader appeal had she chosen to use less profanity. Then again, there are millions of millennial women, and that's the target audience of this book. Never mind the Xs and the Zs. I say that because as a teen, and then as a young woman in my 20s, I would have enjoyed a book like this - without the excessive profanity. It weakens her message.
Due to the workbook nature of this book, I would suggest her publisher have a web site with downloadable pages, so that someone doesn't have to write in their book.
The book contains a lot of good information, and it's organized in a user friendly way. The images of Ms. Abbott are inspiring because she's fit and beautiful.
I'm glad I was able to check it out from my library. And yes, I bought I copy.
For the most part, each chapter is a day (for 30 days). In this one day, a theme is introduced, and you are asked to set goals, record how you feel, etc., based on that theme. There is space to write directly into the book, but I think it would be more feasible to buy a separate journal, where there is more room to write your thoughts. Some chapters include quizzes to complete.
The book is filled with tips and suggestions on how to overcome certain obstacles, like negative thoughts and fears. For me, this book didn’t really provide any new or different information that I haven’t already read in other books. To be fair, I did not complete the challenges, because, as mentioned above, I read this while doing cardio, so I just kept flipping pages until my cardio was complete.
I did enjoy reading some of the personal parts of the book, i.e. her history and struggles, and how she got to where she is today.
I would recommend this book to someone who enjoys journaling, or to someone who’s completely committed to a life overhaul. I just didn’t have the desire to put into it.
The book was so close to what I hoped it would be. I almost gave it a 3-star rating.
I approached the book from a biased point of view. I have a friend who raved about it. I am not a self-help book type, so I did not get very much out of it. On the flip side, to take responsibility for my actions/inactions, I did not put as much effort into the program as my friend. The book probably would have stuck with me more if I were in a different season of my life. But, for right now, this program was not for me.
If you read this book to follow the program, please know that you will probably want to buy a hard copy or make plans to keep a journal in conjunction with the book's exercises. If you are considering the book, I recommend borrowing a digital copy from your local library. If you like the first 1-4 days, I have a feeling that you will like the entire 30 days and bonus content.
I personally became a little bored through some of the book, but I think that is only because I have already done so much research on habits and how to change them, to make them part of a lifestyle change I’ve created, that most of the information felt mundane.
However, that is no fault of Christmas Abbott. For anyone beginning and learning how to transform their bad habits into good habits this is a perfect place to start! (And she does a wonderful job with motivation and explaining how it can be done).
I did enjoy her personal stories and triumphs in life and she still gave me revived inspiration beyond the information.
Definitely a must read for beginners of learning habits, remembering how it’s done or trying to find a new Avenue of inspiration.
Your basic self-help book, with some novel inspiration. "The 30 Day, 1 Page a Day, Challenge a Day" format is nice, but the journaling portion of the book often doesn't really align with the challenge of the day. Poorly written in some places. The photo section is a gratuitous space-taker that didn't inspire me so much as make me roll my eyes at it's Instagram "entirely staged in a failed attempt to look spontaneous" style. But Abbot's own story is itself pretty inspirational, and her no bullshit coaching style is refreshing, if a little brusque and "upper middle class white woman." Not awful, but also not life-changing.
This was really quite a good, motivational book! I started listening to it and it turned out that by the end of the first chapter I had to buy a copy so I could utilize the journaling strategies. I learned lots of excellent tips from this book and really have made a lot of positive changes based off of it. But no way could this all happen in just 30 days! These are huge lifestyle changes and layering them on so quickly, before getting used to each one, is just a recipe for failure. This is much better as a whole week per each challenge or even longer if needed. I did a challenge a week and it was not stressful and still resulted in a lot of good, positive changes!
I did exactly what the author tells you not to do: I listened to the book in one go, rather than reading each day on it's own. There are a lot of great bits of advice in this book and it's written in easy chunks to read daily. She has your standard encouraging quotes, personal stories of success, and (my favorite) statistics from studies!
I wouldn't say this is the best of the best, but it's a quick read and the take aways are solid.
Loved this book. I have to say that the majority of the content was not new to anyone who reads these books, but she did have some kick ass comments in it. I did listen to it, but wish I would have read it instead and mark it up. Not to mention, there is a support document that supports it which is unavailable to the audio book.
A lot of stuff I already knew, but if I hadn’t already known it, this book would’ve been 5 stars. She’s supportive and encouraging throughout, has a great testimony, and gives easy to implement life strategies. I only wish I wasn’t heavily pregnant when I read it so I could actually implement them!
If you’ve never read a self help book, this is for you. If you have, but want to review the absolute basics, this book might also be for you.
Overall, it was fine. There was absolutely no new information and many of the inspirational quotes are the same ones I’ve read in many other books of similar topic.
yikes i finished this a while ago and forgot to write about it or review it. therefore i don't remember a lot but i really liked it! it focused on fitness, organizing your life, and more and i think there were some great tips would def recommend
I found this book incredibly helpful. Now that I’m finished with the 30 days, I’m starting it over. It was great to have a short lesson each day and focused journaling to help you reflect and plan the day.
Doing all the tasks and reading within 1 month would be a tough challenge, because reading, the exercises and reflection would take 1-2 hours per day. It's very fitness focused too, which is not for everybody.
I give this 3.25 stars. It contains a few gems interspersed here and there that will definitely inform my journaling, but I had higher expectations for this book. I’m not the target audience, but it was a useful read nonetheless.
I was hoping for more than this. The author is all over the place with self improvement ideas. Many have been suggested by other authors and some do not apply to me at ALL.
I actually have the book so I cannot comment on the audio.
She helped me quit some dumb habits. I didnt want to give a good rating but it worked. Not all great advice but she steals advice from the best. You've heard this before but I felt motivated.