11 Aug The Book Review: Cut The Crap by Jess Turunen
Title: Cut The Crap
Caption: “A real-life guide to losing the excuses and creating your own future”
Author: Jess Turunen
From the back cover:
Are you stuck in life and feel like you’re getting nowhere?
Do you feel like everything happens to you, and you just can’t catch a break?
Do you feel like you don’t know who your real friends are, and you’re being weighed down, held back, and don’t know where to turn?
Well, honey, you’re not along. I’m here to give you a virtual intervention: to call you out on all your bullsh-t belief systems and say, “Cut the crap! Stop making excuses! Let’s get your sh-t together and create your amazing future.”
If you want radical change, transformational breakthroughs, and real-life guidance, then Cut The Crap is the perfect place to start.
Jess has overcome enormous hurdles and created the most incredible life for herself using these techniques and systems. Using real-life examples, conversational language, and some good old-fashioned cuss words, Jess shows you how to create the life you’ve always dreamed of and leave your belief systems trailing behind in the dust.
Are you ready for a change? Let’s do this!
About the author:
Jess Turunen is an international pageant titleholder on a mission!
Starting out as Mrs Australia, she travelled into the big city of Las Vegas and wowed the judges with her overwhelming passion for self-development and triumphed as Mrs Continents 2018.
After a major spinal surgery at 13 years old, brushing hands with death at 15 in a motorcycle accident, and struggling with depression and anxiety for most of her life, Jess uses her background in life and mindset coaching, along with her fascinating life experiences to help women all over the world overcome their worst enemies – themselves!
Jess has worked extensively with women one-on-one and now shares her knowledge on “getting real” and losing excuses to “Cut The Crap” from your life for good.
Jess is a busy wife and mother to two young boys and lives on the Gold Coast in Queensland, Australia.
About the book:
In her introduction Jess says “On the surface, I probably look like the girl who’s got it all: international pageant titleholder with a big-ass crown, killer job, amazing husband, two beautiful kids, living in the best part of Australia right near the beach, and everything aligned in a peachy setting with hedges, roses and a white picket fence.
All of those things are absolutely true for my life (apart from the hedges, roses and white picket fence) but not for lack of intense hardship and sheer hard work that shaped me but no longer defines me. I’m going to take you back in time to when I was twelve years old and tell you about how life treated me for the next fifteen or so year from there. I think you’ll look at my life very differently after that! Our lives are made up of a series of events that we allow to either build us or consume us. At one point, my life was definitely consuming me, but I want to show you how I turned it around.”
Spoiler alert – she delivers on that promise.
For this introduction, you’re going to need a tissue or two… don’t worry, I’ll believe you when you say ‘it’s definitely just something in your eye’ 😉
Cut The Crap is set out simply and easily, you can follow this thing like a workbook – BYO notepad and pens! The Contents shows you what you can expect at each step of the way, starting with Part 1: Are You Ready? Chapter One – Commitment and Validation – addresses the questions what you are currently committing your life to, where you’re seeking validation and addressing whether those behaviours are serving you or not. At the end of the chapter, Jess has put together some questions to help you work through your own ‘stuff’ and work out where you are (truthfully) at.
Chapter Two – Get Your Shit Together – is exactly as it sounds, a kick up the butt to get yourself organised so you can #liveyourbestlife. It’s full of real-life examples to help you clean up your act and put your best foot forward. Jess takes the time to explain how to prioritise your life, we all have things that we ‘have to do’ but the key is giving the important things priority – and taking action. Heads up! Jess also gives away organisational tips and templates on her website, you’ll find the link for those in the book 😉
Part 2: Let’s Get Started has four chapters: Chapter 3 – Passion and Purpose, Chapter 4 – Goal Setting, Journaling, and Vision Boarding, Chapter 5 – Meditation, Visualisation and Visioning, and Chapter 6 – What the Hell Is Manifestation? This entirety of Part 2 is perfect for the person who knows they need a change but can’t quite work out what they need to do, or perhaps they used to know but now that direction doesn’t seem to ‘fit’ anymore. Wherever you are in your life, this section will help you identify your passions, values, how you can use your talents and experience to help others, how you want to be remembered, and how to move forward. Jess writes in a way that feels like she’s having a casual conversation with you, so her tips and explanations are easy to follow. While Jess does talk about energy, manifesting, visualising and mentions the universe – it’s never ‘woo woo’ and, as she says on page 41, ‘What have you got to lose? Try it, and see what results you get.’
Part 3: Surrounding Influences and Relationships is all about your relationships – with your friends, family, romances and even a hot and steamy topic – Casual VS Committed (Chapter 10). Jess is blunt, and I seriously appreciated the sh*t outta her for the entirety of Part 3. We’ve all experienced people in our lives who weren’t a ‘good fit’, or perhaps those we grew apart from, or we realised the relationship was toxic, or we had to ourselves from them for a whole litany of other reasons. This part of the book is the big sister advice that you needed then, and you’ll certainly need again someday – as chapter seven is titled ‘Beware of the Bitches.’ Jess also talks about those soul connections, soul mates and twin flames, Taoism’s yin and yang, Gary Chapman’s book The Five Love Languages, the idea of unconditional love, and then goes into the ever controversial topic – casual sex vs committed relationship. These few chapters will give you cause to examine the relationships in your life, the way you might behave, how you want to be treated, who you want by your side and what you believe to be true about love and sex.
As Jess says at the beginning of Part 4: Sh*t Just Got Real, Chapter 11 – Check Yo’self Before You Wreck Yo’self – “This chapter is all about the beautiful task of self-reflection.” She reminds us that we become like the five people we spend the most time with, and perhaps that’s not necessarily a good thing – depending on the company we keep! The exercises in this chapter demand honesty from you, talk about a truth bomb. There are three pages of questions on self-reflection (don’t worry they’re spaced out and weirdly satisfying, like the tingling feeling after tearing a bandaid off) which will certainly get your mind going. The next chapter is about authenticity and vulnerability going hand in hand, while chapter thirteen – Ego: The Necessary Asshole – is both hilarious and confronting. “Everyone has an asshole, and everyone has an ego. And if your ego is inflated, you will probably be referred to as an asshole.” I mean, where does she come up with this stuff? I’m laughing even now, it’s funny because it’s true! This chapter is all about ego, the ‘alter ego’, the benefits and the draw backs and self-sabotage. Finally, chapter fourteen will walk you to the mirror and ask you to evaluate your values, your beliefs and whether they are actually serving you.
Next up Part 5: Better Every Day which is straight up, honest and real. Jess takes you through each chapter on loving your f*cking life (she did promise some cussing), happiness or more so ‘The Happiness Trap’, Ditching the Dead Fish (oh, the imagery!), Philanthropy, and the idea that ‘Failure Is the Mother of Success.’ Again, Jess doesn’t just talk at you, she offers you exercises to participate in. Taking the time to do the work takes you right back to chapter one and two – commitment and getting your shit together – how’s that for a well-rounded book?
We arrive at the final chapters, aptly named Part 6: The End of the Book: The Beginning of You. This is the shortest of the six parts but possibly the most profound. In the final two chapters, The Fifteen Commandments and Metamorphosis, Jess offers a fabulous round up of the book and fifteen simple life-guidance rules.
My experience with this book was that I couldn’t put it down once I started – and I’ve heard the same from others too. Jess Turunen has a talent for writing in a way that feels like you’re having a chat with that friend who knows you better than you know yourself. It may not be new advice, but it’s delivered in a way that you can both hear and understand. From little kicks in the butt, to ‘you got this girl!’ encouragement, Cut The Crap is full of the good stuff, without the typical ‘Self-Help Guru Bullsh-t’ that tends to come along with it. What a breath of fresh air!
To get your copy of Cut The Crap click here. It comes in E-Book, Softcover and Hardcover, starting from $4.99. If you’d like more information on Jess Turunen, or want to get in touch with her, visit her website www.jessturunen.com.au
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