Get Out of Your Own Way Guide to Life. Justin Loeber

to become “mouth: digital and public relations.” Now operating out of offices in lower Manhattan, Mouth has represented over five hundred clients in the “entertainment,” “beauty/health/wellness,” “nonprofit,” “food/nutrition,” “consumer/lifestyle,” “wedding,” “B2B,” “author,” and “social media” categories, to name a few.

      It seems as if the Higher Power said to my mom (before I came out of her womb), “This one’s going to go on a quirky path, but he’ll be a late bloomer and everything will be alright.” Whether I knew it or not, over my career’s twists and turbulence I built up an arsenal of street smarts, communication skills, gut instincts, a talent for rebounding and surviving, and a keen sense of how to stay relevant without getting a beer bottle thrown at me. I learned how to get out of my own way.

      So, leveraging all the moxie I’ve built up, here’s my promise to you: I can help you come to terms with whatever is hindering and haunting you from finding your close-up. Are you tired of sitting back, fed up with reading and watching other people’s success stories cut and pasted over the Internet? Are you at the point where you’re not going to accept that life is passing you by? You have been a bored audience member for way too long, but now it’s your turn to shine bright.

      #If the people around you are holding you back,

      say goodbye and walk out.

      If your conscience tells you, “The only thing holding me back is myself, and I’m tired of getting in my own way,” listen. Then, do something about it. Walk on.

      If you really want to throw out the notion you must be perfect to be successful or let go of the myth you have to have some special talent to dream big, I promise you will love reading onward.

      No one gets a free pass to live another hundred years just because they’re a Clinton or a Trump or because they won an Oscar. Our clocks tick in sync with every human being, no matter who and where they come from. And that’s also the crux of the Get Out of Your Own Way Guide to Life: to understand that, when all is said and done, we are all blips on a screen with lives that can be filmed in Technicolor or in a grainy black & white—it’s our choice. In all reality, our lives that we have worked so hard or so little on can be summed up in a line or two that our family can etch in a tombstone once we have passed. But before we croak and bite the big one, let’s work on spinning the storyline differently—especially since we’re alive and not ready for anyone to write a sympathy card with our names on it just yet.

      If I can carve out a slice of personal success, you can too. I want to encourage you to bask in your own kaleidoscope, and I don’t want your jaded conscience to edit your fortune either. Living a life in color might still sound a bit bullshitty, but why should you (or anyone) apologize for tooting your own horn if you really, really know deep down in your heart that the horn you’re blowing rings true?

      #It is NOT a crime to admit you want to be happy.

      Aren’t you and the life you are living worth it all? Now it’s time to make the donuts. Take a breath and strap yourself into the roller coaster, because you’re going to have a great ride. Please read on.

      —Justin Loeber

      Step One:

      Dream Big!

      Let me start you off with a big bang (and not the kind I saw at Club 1018).

      Draw the curtain up and listen closely:

      Dream big, my friends. Do it. Go higher than high.

      Don’t listen to the doubters, and don’t fall in with the “Negative Nellie” crowds that don’t want you to succeed. Knock those doubting, bobble-headed booby traps you call “friends” off their spring, and get focused on you. It takes as much energy to dream as small as a pea as it does to dream as big as Mount Everest. Dreaming big gives you the gas to drive your emotional car up out of the pitfalls of your own way—it’s also a roadmap to rise up, get over yourself, and stop the doubt that has held you in suspended animation.

      #Dream big and let the sun finally shine

      on the person you were born to be.

      Take a breath, look up, and, without apology, dream really big and bold. I promise I’ll make this step and exercise as entertaining and thoughtful as I have the capacity to: you will not only rise above the road to nowhere on which you’ve been stalled, but you’ll also learn a lot about yourself—good and bad—along the way. This is all about living in the now, at your maximum creative and thoughtful threshold. This is all about making every precious day matter—getting out of your own way, because you never know when today might be the last day you’ll have the freedom to start fresh and try again tomorrow.

      Speaking of freedom...I live in America, “the land of the free, and home of the brave,” to quote “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Over the course of my life, I’ve grown to be brave enough to celebrate my freedom to follow my passions and survival instinct, from acting, dancing, and music, to “Wang’ing” office work at the MTA, slinging hash in restaurants, working in publishing, and now, to being my own boss.

      #It’s not hard, but it takes a lot of work to go from

      Point A (working as a temp) to Point B (owning a company).

      If you’re lucky enough to live in a free society with a boundless ceiling for success, why not work that luck to your advantage? Are you squandering your freedom and losing an opportunity to dream big and act bold because the idea of taking a risk is too painful to contemplate? OK, so you might have had a rotten childhood and a wasted adolescence. Stop blaming your parents, your teachers, or the government. Get over the obstacles in your path, and start taking the leaps to make your ideas matter now. If you want something here and now, put on your adult diapers and stop dribbling. And if you’re a Millennial, for God’s sake, stop playing the entitled victim—that role has already been filled with the hippie-dippy set who never were able to fit into society because they smoked way too much weed. Defy your generation and act older (and bolder) than your age so that you can get out of your own way and aspire to greatness. Hang in there! If your bright ideas have merit, you’re gonna do really, really well because people will take notice.

      Here’s a thought: so what if your big dream tanks? So what if you fall flat on your face? Remember my washed-up recording career? I had the guts to miss those flying beer bottles in the UK—use that visual as a way to keep your ass on the straight and narrow. If you can visualize glass flying towards you, I promise that all of a sudden you’ll be awake, alive, and animated enough to get out of the way! If you’re in a situation you know is used up—let’s say living at home with a lot of unnecessary control over you, or sitting there later in life on the unemployment line—the first step to getting out of your own way is really to just get up, get cracking and rekindle your inner zhuzh! Yes, it is as easy as that. Get up. Get out. Sing another song, for Christ’s sake! I don’t want you to be strapped into a wheelchair at eighty, wondering “what if” you had done this or that when you were younger—or, worse, regretting that you didn’t try something simply out of fear. Do you?

      #Go cold turkey and change your attitude immediately.

      Yes, it’s easy.

      A few years ago, I was naked, doubled over in tears (in the shower!), afraid that my business was tanking. At the time of this personal implosion, my company was more than six years old, and it was the first time that not just one, but four clients reneged on their payments, and the first time I sent customers to “collections.” Talk about fear: I entered into the first quarter of the next year with only a four thousand dollar float and four employees to pay. Trust me when I tell you, it’s not that attractive for a guy with a shaved head to cry in the shower—but it can be very cathartic. At that guttural moment, I was forced to come to terms with my fear: What would be the worst thing that could happen if my business crumbled? As my pity party subsided, I came to realize there was absolutely nothing to worry about. Really.

      It’s not that my business isn’t vulnerable to suffering down years. Nearly every business is. But my waterworks of panic got in the way of