How to Become the Person You’ve Always Wanted to Be

KEYPOINTS

• 01

  Let yourself want what you want, without apologizing

  Mel's main lesson from Chelsea Handler's book I'll Have What She's Having is that most of us see something we'd love, like a first-class seat, a beautiful house or being a good dancer, and immediately decide 'people like me don't get that.' Handler adds a second step: don't just decide you deserve it, also stop apologizing for wanting more. She notes that men rarely apologize for ambition, while women struggle to claim what they want and to talk about what they got.

• 02

  Seeing what you don't want can be just as clarifying

  Handler, the youngest of six, grew up with money problems: phones were cut off and there was no extra. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed she wrote that the two people in charge of her family were the two she had the least confidence in. Mel points out that most people look around and say 'I want that.' Handler looked at her home and said 'I don't want that.' By six or seven she had pictured a fierce, independent woman who would lead rather than follow.

• 03

  You are never too far gone

  Whether you're in a marriage, job or city you don't want, or even sick, Handler says you can still take control of your life and stop tying your happiness to other people. 'No one is unrecoverable. You're never cooked.' She adds that you aren't responsible for other people's happiness. She chooses to spread joy on stage, but nobody can require it of her.

• 04

  Mel's definition: confidence is the willingness to try

  Mel says Handler models confidence as simply being willing to try: wanting something and going after it, having a problem and moving. Proof that you're capable comes from the trying. Handler separates this from banging your head against the same wall. Be willing 'to make a fool out of yourself one time,' because it might work out. She says real confidence took her more than 25 years of stand-up to build.

• 05

  Your worst mistake can open a door

  Handler's DUI at 21 led to 48 hours in jail and a DUI class where everyone had to tell their story. Terrified of public speaking, she hid at the back for about 12 weeks until the last session, when she told her story and the room laughed. Classmates told her to try stand-up. The next week she waited about 24 hours in line at the Laugh Factory for a three-minute set. She is clear she is not proud of the DUI.

• 06

  One failure doesn't decide your future

  After bombing her big showcase at the Montreal Comedy Festival, Handler sat in her hotel room wondering if she would have to work in an office. Within about 72 hours she had crushed a set at Luna Park for an NBC executive who hadn't been in Montreal, and she got her first development deal. Her lesson is that you only need one person to say yes, and that 'lightness and darkness follow each other around like partners.'

• 07

  Anger is usually hurt in disguise

  Handler's brother died when she was nine, and her father 'fell apart at the seams.' Her nine-year-old brain heard her brother's 'I'll be right back' as a lie. She covered the grief with anger, drugs, alcohol and bombast, and she didn't cry about him until she was 40. In therapy she learned that anger is a shield against vulnerability, that resentment usually means you're hurt and never said what you needed, and that annoyance and judgment say more about you than about the other person.

• 08

  Growth can feel like losing yourself for a while

  Therapy with Dr. Dan Siegel, whom she met when he was a guest on her Netflix talk show, lasted about two years. One lesson was 'you don't have to be everyone's entertainment.' She went quiet at dinner parties, and friends said they wanted the old Chelsea back. For about two years she felt ungrounded and questioned everything: whether she was unlovable or a narcissist, and why she didn't want a husband. She stopped gossiping, lost some friends and gained better ones, and took about six years off stand-up after burning out in her 30s.