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You Deserve the Truth: Change the Stories that Shaped Your World and Build a World-Changing Life
An award-winning media maker and social critic shares her truth to inspire a generation, teaching how to use the power of story to ask critical questions and build bold, new lives.
Behind the social media smiles, many people in their twenties and thirties are living frustrating overwhelmed and exhausted by the gap between their realities and the image they are expected to project to the world. Erica Williams Simon recognized that this generational malaise was a recipe for disaster, one that she was experiencing firsthand.
At twenty-seven, she abruptly walked away from a high profile career as a rising political media star. She stepped off the “treadmill to nowhere” to find her own truth, unpacking the advice and cultural norms that had shaped her life as she knew it. Along the way she became “story smart,” was finally able to reject the lies that society had taught her, and rewrote a brand new values-driven narrative that has helped her create a life worth living.
You Deserve the Truth is a masterclass in how to challenge the stories surrounding fear, work, money, identity, success, faith, and love that millions have unconsciously adopted. Each chapter includes the heroic and heartbreaking lessons learned from Erica’s journey and during her tenure inside the highest levels of politics, media, and tech.
Part memoir, part self-help, You Deserve the Truth provides a blueprint for anyone seeking a new way to live; one that is authentic, empowered, and ultimately world changing.
Behind the social media smiles, many people in their twenties and thirties are living frustrating overwhelmed and exhausted by the gap between their realities and the image they are expected to project to the world. Erica Williams Simon recognized that this generational malaise was a recipe for disaster, one that she was experiencing firsthand.
At twenty-seven, she abruptly walked away from a high profile career as a rising political media star. She stepped off the “treadmill to nowhere” to find her own truth, unpacking the advice and cultural norms that had shaped her life as she knew it. Along the way she became “story smart,” was finally able to reject the lies that society had taught her, and rewrote a brand new values-driven narrative that has helped her create a life worth living.
You Deserve the Truth is a masterclass in how to challenge the stories surrounding fear, work, money, identity, success, faith, and love that millions have unconsciously adopted. Each chapter includes the heroic and heartbreaking lessons learned from Erica’s journey and during her tenure inside the highest levels of politics, media, and tech.
Part memoir, part self-help, You Deserve the Truth provides a blueprint for anyone seeking a new way to live; one that is authentic, empowered, and ultimately world changing.
256 pages, Hardcover
Published May 7, 2019
40 people are currently reading
1079 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
July 15, 2019
When Erica Williams Simon found herself burned out in a job she hated and quit, she realized quickly it wasn’t just about the job. It was an overarching disappointment in the fact that she’d worked so hard to achieve the external markers of success society said she should, yet those collected markers did not translate to promised financial stability or happiness. She found herself at a “life-altering crossroads of ambition, dissatisfaction, and confusion.” And as she looked around to her Gen Y peers, she saw many of them feeling similarly disillusioned and unsatisfied.
Much of that dissatisfaction, she believes, is not just the mismatch between dominant stories in society and people’s lived reality, but the fact that people have the tendency to blame their own personal shortcomings for that mismatch, i.e. equate the person with the problem.
Simon also notes there are so many conflicting stories about what we should think, believe, buy, and desire, we’re all in a state of constant overwhelm.
She believes there’s a few reasons why we’re overwhelmed by these stories now more than ever: first, there number of stories we’re exposed to daily has grown exponentially, and those stories have creeped into every facet of our lives: people are hawking messages inside messages everywhere you look. She offers the examples of photoshopped celebrities hawking diet teas on instagram, and “ ‘everyday people’ being paid to tell us believable yet wholly untrue tales about tooth whiteners and waist trainers in the midst of their stories about going to school and being a working mom.”
The second reason we’re overwhelmed by conflicting stories is that there are many fewer gatekeepers, filters, or guides to the flood of stories, and because neurologically humans are hardwired for story, they are particularly vulnerable to the flood. She writes, “it started to hit me just how little agency I had exercised in determining what I believed to be true about myself, my life, and the world around me.”
Simon’s solution is to interrogate the cultural stories around fear, dreams, work, money, time, faith, and love with a four part process: 1. What is the story, what do I believe, where does it come from? 2. Does this story serve me and my values? 3. What if I believed something else? 4. What can this new story (created by my new belief on this topic) look like for me?
Simon’s process for interrogating the stories that make us feel bad are markedly similar to techniques in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Narrative Therapy, Katie Byron’s “The Work”, and The Sedona Method. Additionally, there are dozens of books with “change your story” in the title, including recent bestselling books /Live the Best Story of Your Life: A World Champion's Guide to Lasting Change/ by Bob Litwin, and /The Insight Cure: Change Your Story, Transform Your Life/ By John Sharp, both of which offer variations on this theme.
However, while this book owes a debt to the work of psychologists and coaches that came before it, it contributes a beautiful new link between psychological conditions and social reality. Readers are encouraged to interrogate the areas of life where the American story has turned toxic and painful, to find the right truth for themselves. (I.e. just because the Kardashians nit-pick their men doesn’t mean you have to behave this way to your sweet, committed, but flawed-as-we-all-are bae).
And as readers find that truth, Simon encourages them to turn around and tell it to others to combat toxic narratives and inspire others to move towards their own truth and what is right for them and their values in terms of money, love, work and more.
This book is important in connecting the personal with the social, in helping Millennials particularly to apply this framework of inquiry to the toxic social stories that are often used as a means of reproducing the status quo, and then to challenge them. Recommended reading for people who have read the “change your mind change the world” stuff but have had a hard time drawing a link between the two.
Much of that dissatisfaction, she believes, is not just the mismatch between dominant stories in society and people’s lived reality, but the fact that people have the tendency to blame their own personal shortcomings for that mismatch, i.e. equate the person with the problem.
Simon also notes there are so many conflicting stories about what we should think, believe, buy, and desire, we’re all in a state of constant overwhelm.
She believes there’s a few reasons why we’re overwhelmed by these stories now more than ever: first, there number of stories we’re exposed to daily has grown exponentially, and those stories have creeped into every facet of our lives: people are hawking messages inside messages everywhere you look. She offers the examples of photoshopped celebrities hawking diet teas on instagram, and “ ‘everyday people’ being paid to tell us believable yet wholly untrue tales about tooth whiteners and waist trainers in the midst of their stories about going to school and being a working mom.”
The second reason we’re overwhelmed by conflicting stories is that there are many fewer gatekeepers, filters, or guides to the flood of stories, and because neurologically humans are hardwired for story, they are particularly vulnerable to the flood. She writes, “it started to hit me just how little agency I had exercised in determining what I believed to be true about myself, my life, and the world around me.”
Simon’s solution is to interrogate the cultural stories around fear, dreams, work, money, time, faith, and love with a four part process: 1. What is the story, what do I believe, where does it come from? 2. Does this story serve me and my values? 3. What if I believed something else? 4. What can this new story (created by my new belief on this topic) look like for me?
Simon’s process for interrogating the stories that make us feel bad are markedly similar to techniques in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Narrative Therapy, Katie Byron’s “The Work”, and The Sedona Method. Additionally, there are dozens of books with “change your story” in the title, including recent bestselling books /Live the Best Story of Your Life: A World Champion's Guide to Lasting Change/ by Bob Litwin, and /The Insight Cure: Change Your Story, Transform Your Life/ By John Sharp, both of which offer variations on this theme.
However, while this book owes a debt to the work of psychologists and coaches that came before it, it contributes a beautiful new link between psychological conditions and social reality. Readers are encouraged to interrogate the areas of life where the American story has turned toxic and painful, to find the right truth for themselves. (I.e. just because the Kardashians nit-pick their men doesn’t mean you have to behave this way to your sweet, committed, but flawed-as-we-all-are bae).
And as readers find that truth, Simon encourages them to turn around and tell it to others to combat toxic narratives and inspire others to move towards their own truth and what is right for them and their values in terms of money, love, work and more.
This book is important in connecting the personal with the social, in helping Millennials particularly to apply this framework of inquiry to the toxic social stories that are often used as a means of reproducing the status quo, and then to challenge them. Recommended reading for people who have read the “change your mind change the world” stuff but have had a hard time drawing a link between the two.
November 29, 2021
Stop telling yourself limiting stories.
We are the stories we tell ourselves.
What if I believed something else?
Never simplify what is complicated and never complicate what is simple.
Make how you live, do the work, in the places you spend your money, the food that you eat, the products that you buy and the way you utilize your time.
We are the stories we tell ourselves.
What if I believed something else?
Never simplify what is complicated and never complicate what is simple.
Make how you live, do the work, in the places you spend your money, the food that you eat, the products that you buy and the way you utilize your time.
July 16, 2019
My 30-year-old self would have benefited greatly from Erica's strong voice. Beautiful work. Perhaps also a perfect predecessor to reading Rohr's "Falling Upward."
February 5, 2020
You deserve the truth... but you will only get a very small dose of it here.
The book starts off promisingly with the author's realization that her disatisfaction with the hamster wheel of her life of incredible privilege (wonderful supportive family, great education, cushy non-profit job, happy marriage, profiled in Essence, etc.) has something to do with the stories that she has stuck in her head. She has the trappings of success, but feels she should be acheiving more world-changing magic-millenial-unicorn-type work. She feels she is falling short of a long contradictory checklist of truly bizzare and self-contradictory expectations that, in her perception, are being set by the culture.
She has a classic 'quarter-life crises' and impulsively turns in her resignation and takes a moment to take stock of young life so far. When you are standing in a crooked house, she realizes, it is hard to find your bearings to stand up straight.
A good first step... but from that chapter forward, not much progress is made. The focus from here on out is on how the stories we tell ourselves must change... but only so those stories "serve us better." The illusion of "the self" a-spinning these stories is never challenged. No Buddha, and certainly no Hume, Kant, or Schopenhauer here.
Instead the standard mainstream culture "enemies" are trotted out, flogged, and shoved back into their prefab boxes. At first I thought these caricatures were going to be straw men, they are painted is such broad strokes. I expected the author to turn around and say "and then I realized that these, too, were just stories..." and she'd go on a Chris Arnade style journey outside of the stories we tell about "the other" to actually meeting people who think very differently than she does. But [spoiler alert]... nope.
Sure, there is a moment of self-realization that maybe being the next Oprah is the kind of thing that doesn't land in your lap, but for the most part, we just are shown time and again that it's those darn outgroup folks who don't have the same stories that "serve you" that are the problem. (Gosh. Outgroup must be a bunch of monsters who read some self-help book that they should find stories that serve *them*. Those fools!)
So, it is outgroup and outgroup culture pushing all these false stories. Ingroup makes understandable mistakes, whereas outgroup is irredeemably biased. Ingroup evolves, outgroup will only change if they are forced to by ingroup. Ingroup loves their children, outgroup only wants to teach their children how to hate. Why, look at this long list of prejudices that I wrote up that I have pre-judged outgroup as holding. Shocking. It is a sign how new and strange and out-of-control the times we live in have become that there is this weird outgroup out there. Millennials are the first generation that have ever had to confront such a unique problem, and so must get fiercer to overcome outgroup. Etc. etc... and I started skimming from there.
When you stumble out of the fun house, there is a big temptation is to build a new house to your own plans, one that makes your now habitually-stooped posture look right without you needing to stretch or adjust too awfully much. And the author here mostly gives into that temptation.
It is important to challenge the narrative, but if your replacement narrative is just the realization that everything is rigged.... well, may I gently suggest to the younger people reading this very, very old type of story for the first time that the entity doing most of the spinning of the false, comforting stories here isn't "the culture" or "society"?
Well, this all is coming across as more critical than I meant it too. It's just that I, too, was a young woman once, and so most of the criticism levelled here are actually aimed at my younger self. "Great Expectations" is a perennial for a reason.
The book starts off promisingly with the author's realization that her disatisfaction with the hamster wheel of her life of incredible privilege (wonderful supportive family, great education, cushy non-profit job, happy marriage, profiled in Essence, etc.) has something to do with the stories that she has stuck in her head. She has the trappings of success, but feels she should be acheiving more world-changing magic-millenial-unicorn-type work. She feels she is falling short of a long contradictory checklist of truly bizzare and self-contradictory expectations that, in her perception, are being set by the culture.
She has a classic 'quarter-life crises' and impulsively turns in her resignation and takes a moment to take stock of young life so far. When you are standing in a crooked house, she realizes, it is hard to find your bearings to stand up straight.
A good first step... but from that chapter forward, not much progress is made. The focus from here on out is on how the stories we tell ourselves must change... but only so those stories "serve us better." The illusion of "the self" a-spinning these stories is never challenged. No Buddha, and certainly no Hume, Kant, or Schopenhauer here.
Instead the standard mainstream culture "enemies" are trotted out, flogged, and shoved back into their prefab boxes. At first I thought these caricatures were going to be straw men, they are painted is such broad strokes. I expected the author to turn around and say "and then I realized that these, too, were just stories..." and she'd go on a Chris Arnade style journey outside of the stories we tell about "the other" to actually meeting people who think very differently than she does. But [spoiler alert]... nope.
Sure, there is a moment of self-realization that maybe being the next Oprah is the kind of thing that doesn't land in your lap, but for the most part, we just are shown time and again that it's those darn outgroup folks who don't have the same stories that "serve you" that are the problem. (Gosh. Outgroup must be a bunch of monsters who read some self-help book that they should find stories that serve *them*. Those fools!)
So, it is outgroup and outgroup culture pushing all these false stories. Ingroup makes understandable mistakes, whereas outgroup is irredeemably biased. Ingroup evolves, outgroup will only change if they are forced to by ingroup. Ingroup loves their children, outgroup only wants to teach their children how to hate. Why, look at this long list of prejudices that I wrote up that I have pre-judged outgroup as holding. Shocking. It is a sign how new and strange and out-of-control the times we live in have become that there is this weird outgroup out there. Millennials are the first generation that have ever had to confront such a unique problem, and so must get fiercer to overcome outgroup. Etc. etc... and I started skimming from there.
When you stumble out of the fun house, there is a big temptation is to build a new house to your own plans, one that makes your now habitually-stooped posture look right without you needing to stretch or adjust too awfully much. And the author here mostly gives into that temptation.
It is important to challenge the narrative, but if your replacement narrative is just the realization that everything is rigged.... well, may I gently suggest to the younger people reading this very, very old type of story for the first time that the entity doing most of the spinning of the false, comforting stories here isn't "the culture" or "society"?
Well, this all is coming across as more critical than I meant it too. It's just that I, too, was a young woman once, and so most of the criticism levelled here are actually aimed at my younger self. "Great Expectations" is a perennial for a reason.
December 3, 2021
This is one book I wish all my millennial friends would read. Simon Williams reflects on the confusing, often conflicting cultural stories that shape this generation's often distorted views on money, success, religion, love, among other topics. Sharing her own personal insights and struggles in these areas, she deconstructs the broader cultural stories by offering rich context (based on research, case studies, and personal anecdotes), and even offers tools to consider alternative ways of thinking and being. This book is for people who are looking for new ways to create a values-based life that feels authentic to them.
January 11, 2019
This book is a great read. I adore the writer’s stories of herself and her vulnerability with hard topics.
I am utilizing her methods for reworking the stories in my head and after less than a week I’m already seeing shifts in my thought patterns
I would recommend this to anyone, it was worth a read for sure.
I am utilizing her methods for reworking the stories in my head and after less than a week I’m already seeing shifts in my thought patterns
I would recommend this to anyone, it was worth a read for sure.
June 16, 2019
It can be hard to stand up straight and orient yourself, says Erica Williams Simon in "You Deserve the Truth," when your surroundings are tilted. While she speaks primarily to Millenials buffeted by the unpredictable twists of a fast-changing economy and society, that statement holds true for anybody of any age in almost any circumstance. In the case of the changes going on at my place of work, my surroundings aren't tilted so much as still very much under construction, but the concept that it can be hard for employees to keep themselves oriented to the company's enduring mission while roles and spaces change remains.
Standing up straight and being oriented, though, can be done, Williams Simon argues, by realizing the stories we've used to define ourselves and the world we think exists around us. We are, in fact, surrounded by stories: those that are just in our heads; those we believe as a result of something we've experienced, seen, or been told; those that are produced, or created, by others for a specific purpose (of which there are exponentially more now than ever before); and those that take on the nature of cultural myths. Realizing the stories, though, is just the first step; the second one is the ability to realize which stories still work for you during times of change, which ones need to be let go of, and how to gain new ones, how to redefine yourself, in other words.
Rabid adherence to one narrative to the exclusion of all others guarantees a fundamental miscalculation of reality, she continues. We must cultivate narrative intelligence, which will help us redefine how we look at change. As the company I work for experiences unprecedented growth and the changes that come with it, people might have the tendency to worry that change is bad, that it leads to unpredictability, or that it might even affect the stability of their job, at worst. Or, they might at least worry that they won't know how to adapt to the changes. They might believe this because a previous life change went bad, or because they handled a previous unpredictable work situation poorly, or simply because they worry a lot about providing for their family all very real fears.
What would help them, no matter their worry, is to redefine the stories they're telling themselves. The author provides several examples of stories we all tell ourselves around things like fear, dreams, work, money, time, faith, and love. Regarding fear in particular, she says the cultural myth is that were supposed to be fearless. Really, though, we're all scared in some way or another. Fear is natural. It doesn't mean that were weak. The way to conquer our fears is to recognize that they're imaginary.
The fear of undesired outcomes makes total sense, but what those outcomes will truly mean for your identity and your life may not, she says. Like an anchor, [fear] can keep you safe in a storm but stuck when its time to move. The redefining, in this case, would not be letting go of the fear, or
ignoring the risks and living like a daredevil. It would be saying, "Yep. This restructuring and move is scary. Now, what do we do about it?" Faith isn't the absence of fear. It is trust and hope through the fear.
So much wisdom was offered in this book, from a sympathetic, knowledgeable, and articulate soul, that I have to give it five stars!
Standing up straight and being oriented, though, can be done, Williams Simon argues, by realizing the stories we've used to define ourselves and the world we think exists around us. We are, in fact, surrounded by stories: those that are just in our heads; those we believe as a result of something we've experienced, seen, or been told; those that are produced, or created, by others for a specific purpose (of which there are exponentially more now than ever before); and those that take on the nature of cultural myths. Realizing the stories, though, is just the first step; the second one is the ability to realize which stories still work for you during times of change, which ones need to be let go of, and how to gain new ones, how to redefine yourself, in other words.
Rabid adherence to one narrative to the exclusion of all others guarantees a fundamental miscalculation of reality, she continues. We must cultivate narrative intelligence, which will help us redefine how we look at change. As the company I work for experiences unprecedented growth and the changes that come with it, people might have the tendency to worry that change is bad, that it leads to unpredictability, or that it might even affect the stability of their job, at worst. Or, they might at least worry that they won't know how to adapt to the changes. They might believe this because a previous life change went bad, or because they handled a previous unpredictable work situation poorly, or simply because they worry a lot about providing for their family all very real fears.
What would help them, no matter their worry, is to redefine the stories they're telling themselves. The author provides several examples of stories we all tell ourselves around things like fear, dreams, work, money, time, faith, and love. Regarding fear in particular, she says the cultural myth is that were supposed to be fearless. Really, though, we're all scared in some way or another. Fear is natural. It doesn't mean that were weak. The way to conquer our fears is to recognize that they're imaginary.
The fear of undesired outcomes makes total sense, but what those outcomes will truly mean for your identity and your life may not, she says. Like an anchor, [fear] can keep you safe in a storm but stuck when its time to move. The redefining, in this case, would not be letting go of the fear, or
ignoring the risks and living like a daredevil. It would be saying, "Yep. This restructuring and move is scary. Now, what do we do about it?" Faith isn't the absence of fear. It is trust and hope through the fear.
So much wisdom was offered in this book, from a sympathetic, knowledgeable, and articulate soul, that I have to give it five stars!
July 23, 2019
This book spoke to my deepest insecurities and opened my eyes to a new way of looking at the stories that have shaped my identity and expectations. All those things you can’t say about feeling aimless, confused, and frustrated about your job, money, relationships, and faith? Well, Erica says them and gives a different path forward in which you are more honest with yourself and others about the stories that shape your life. Not only does she talk the talk but she walks the walk right beside you by giving personal narratives as to how she uprooted her life for the better. I felt truly seen while reading this book and would recommend to anyone looking to reshape their lives around more productive stories. My only complaint is the political undertones were a bit much making this a 4 star book for me.
December 10, 2019
I found this book at the library, picked it up out of curiosity and loved it! The author's unique voice and point of view differentiates the message from many other self help books that drone on about getting over fear. I liked the way she challenges the reader to take a fresh look at their life and retool the stories that create their reality. If you are a looking for a book to challenge your thinking and provide actionable ideas to transform your thinking and life, then I recommend you give this book a read.
August 19, 2019
Oh man. While I 100% agree with her analysis of the problems, her solutions definitely were not for me. (What?? A religious, millenial communications professional's life experience doesn't resonate with me? Who would have thought!) Still an interesting read (although a couple of times I felt like a creepy old weirdo, spying on the young kids next door.)
March 4, 2021
Dated, simplistic, basic.
October 2, 2025
Excellent book to get you intouch with what is teal and what is not with respect to how you are moving through and living life. A reality check in a book. Highly recommend. This might find its way into several Christmas stockings this year!!!
April 7, 2022
Not my favorite book. I finished it just to say it was over and done with. For a lot of the book, I felt like the author was tooting her own horn.
January 1, 2022
Not perfect, but I enjoyed this and will read future books of hers.
February 10, 2022
I thought this book was general audience, and didn’t realize it was specifically written for millennials. As a GenXer, I couldn’t relate to much of it (any of it, really). The stories-shape-us presentation was interesting, but the solutions were a mishmash of self-help advice that’s been around for decades; I didn’t discover anything new. Younger readers in the target demographic might not pick up those older works, though, and might find these ideas fresh and new. The writing is very good, with a personable voice and style, so it might be a helpful and encouraging text for the right reader. Just wasn’t for me.
September 3, 2019
I really enjoyed this book, and would recommend it to readers who were trying to find comfort/wisdom/validation in 'Girl, Wash Your Face' but were sorely disappointed and hurt by that book's approach. Williams Simon does a fantastic job of speaking frankly but compassionately about some of the harder facets of "adulting." I worried at the beginning of the book that it would veer into the Christian self-help subgenre; though the author is up-front about her faith, I found it interfered minimally with her advice.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews