You've Got It Within You

Steve Harvey opens with a confession: he has learned to thank God for the bad times too. "Every time I failed, I learned a little bit more about getting up. Every time I was told no, it moved me one step closer to yes." The failures toughened his skin, taught him who he could depend on, and showed him who didn't have his best interests at heart. But the most important lesson, he says, is that through all of it, the one constant has been "me and God."

The Trap of Looking for Rescue

Harvey's central diagnosis is that most people are stuck waiting for something external to save them. "We keep looking for others to save us. We keep looking for someone else to rescue us. We always looking for some group of people or somebody to accept us." He lists the forms this takes: looking for approval, looking for credibility, looking for someone to say we matter. The problem is that when the cavalry doesn't come — when the loan falls through, when the relationship ends, when the job disappears, when the friend betrays you — people collapse into confusion and despair. They don't know what to do next because they had banked everything on an external rescue that never arrived.