• Girl, Stop Apologizing (Audible Exclusive Edition)

  • A Shame-Free Plan for Embracing and Achieving Your Goals
  • By: Rachel Hollis
  • Narrated by: Rachel Hollis
  • Length: 8 hrs and 10 mins
  • 4.6 out of 5 stars (20,557 ratings)

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Girl, Stop Apologizing (Audible Exclusive Edition)

By: Rachel Hollis
Narrated by: Rachel Hollis
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Publisher's summary

Rachel Hollis points out the pitfalls, challenges, and excuses that stop us from achieving our aspirations.

Rachel Hollis has seen it too often: Women not living into their full potential. They feel a tugging on their hearts for something more, but they’re afraid of embarrassment, of falling short of perfection, of not being enough.

In Girl, Stop Apologizing, #1 New York Times bestselling author and founder of a multimillion-dollar media company Rachel Hollis sounds a wake-up call. She knows that many women have been taught to define themselves in light of other people—whether as wife, mother, daughter, or employee—instead of learning how to own who they are and what they want.

In this book, Hollis helps you to:

  • identify the excuses to let go of,
  • the behaviors to adopt,
  • And the skills to acquire on the path to growth, confidence, and believing in yourself.

Hollis shares stories and principles with raw honesty that inspires her audiences to discover and take the practical steps that will put them on a lifelong path of personal growth.

Girl, Stop Apologizing is the life-changing guide you need to dump your excuses, embrace your dreams, set boundaries, and gain real confidence in life.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library on your web browser, along with the audio.

©2019 Rachel Hollis (P)2019 Rachel Hollis

Go Behind the Scenes of Girl, Stop Apologizing

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Our favorite moments from Girl, Stop Apologizing

Most of us hold on to limiting beliefs
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You have to decide that you are going to take hold of your life
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They matter more than you do…right?
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If you can’t move forward, you will never cross the finish line
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Don’t be afraid of failure, be afraid of never achieving anything because you were too afraid to try
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  • Girl, Stop Apologizing (Audible Exclusive Edition)
  • Most of us hold on to limiting beliefs
  • Girl, Stop Apologizing (Audible Exclusive Edition)
  • You have to decide that you are going to take hold of your life
  • Girl, Stop Apologizing (Audible Exclusive Edition)
  • They matter more than you do…right?
  • Girl, Stop Apologizing (Audible Exclusive Edition)
  • If you can’t move forward, you will never cross the finish line
  • Girl, Stop Apologizing (Audible Exclusive Edition)
  • Don’t be afraid of failure, be afraid of never achieving anything because you were too afraid to try
Rachel Hollis

About the Author and Performer

Rachel Hollis is a #1 New York Times and #1 USA Today bestselling author, a top business podcaster, and one of the most sought-after motivational speakers in the world. As a bestselling author and wildly successful lifestyle influencer, she has built a global social media fanbase in the millions. She is known as the Tony Robbins for women because of her motivational, high energy style and her unique ability to empower and embolden a female audience. She’s a proud working mama of four and big fan of the small town in Texas hill country that the Hollis family calls home.

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girl, listen.

Boiled down, this book is about embracing and expressing who you are without apology. That message I can get behind. The general layout is first addressing the excuses to let go of that keep you stuck, adopting great habits that set you up for success, and then acquiring the skills necessary to make growth possible.


I’m breaking my review into three parts because I have complicated feelings towards Rachel Hollis. She is a motivator and an inspirational speaker – that you cannot argue with. She knows how to pump you up and how to kick you in the butt to get you going. So there are some things I got out of this book. As with anyone and anything, there are some personality quirks and little things that just aren’t my favorite or not my style. Beyond those annoyances and style differences though, there are some truly problematic things that RH says in this book. She has a large cult following who overlook these things, but they are not okay.


As a disclaimer: I have read her previous book, followed her online for years, viewed her documentary, seen countless live videos and Instagram posts, read tons of email newsletters, and been a general fan of RH for a long time (up until the last few months). So this is not a negative nancy review coming from a cranky curmudgeonly troll. This is someone who sees the immense power in her influence and wishes she’d listen and do better.


Positive things I got out of this book and/or things I am glad she said: 

- Rachel discusses how as children we pick up on the behaviors that are going to get us attention, which we generally equate to love. If we aren’t extremely self-aware, these behaviors will remain well into adulthood as ways to earn love and affection, and these habits and believes about who we’re supposed to be can be damaging to our adult growth. 

- Letting other people’s support of you/appreciation of you determine how you embrace yourself or live your life is just stupid. “Are you a shadow of who you’re meant to be because someone in your life doesn’t fully appreciate you?” 

- She actually addressed feminism and how we culture little boys and girls as children to become the grown men who can actually function in society and grown women who are crippled by the idea that their worth is found in how good they are for other people.

- Basic boundary and schedule stuff. It’s old news for me but a lot of women still have no idea they can actually say no to people, leave toxic relationships, or change their schedule so they’re not exhausted 24/7. So I’m sure this was beneficial for many readers.

- Set aside 5 hrs/week to reach your goal, and treat that time as sacred.

- Aim for feeling centered/grounded, not balanced.

- “Mommy guilt is bullshit.” *claps all around*

- I honestly loved her bit about guilt & shame, specifically in reference to the religious community she grew up in and how it translated into her sex life as an adult.

- “Are you humble enough to suck for as long as it takes you to become better?”

- You’re allowed to do things that inconvenience other people. And in reference to that, “If you’re willing to do it for them, you better be willing to demand they do it for you.”

- I also love her tough love that if you can’t find an hour in your day to yourself, you’re not really living. My first gut reaction is to get defensive of the moms she’s speaking to, but I really do believe this for most people most of the time, and I think this is one of those things that you need someone to tough love you on.



Little things I was not personally a fan of: 

- A LOT of pop culture references. The book starts off with a story about a Demi Lovato song, and there are references to Beyonce, Oprah, the Kardashians, Lady Gaga, Kendrick Lamar, and more throughout. 

- She is a wealthy woman, and it makes her extremely unrelatable. At one point she said, “You know how when you meet with a nutritionist for the first time and they have you write down everything you eat in a week?” I actually laughed out loud at the idea of her thinking hiring a nutritionist is relatable content. She also recommends you take a weekly date night with your spouse and talks about how they keep their marriage healthy by going on “extravagant vacations every year without kids.” 

- Felt a little like a not-so-humblebrag. Lots of talk about her goals being bestseller list, flying first class, her follower count, her makeup, her hair, plastic surgery and her resulting great boobs… Just a lot of status symbols as goals. 


Problematic things that are objectively not okay in this book:

- Rachel doesn’t seem to realize that 90% of the things she says are extremely albeist and harmful to people with chronic illness, mental illness, and/or disabilities. Examples: “Still using a diaper at 32? That would NOT be cute.” She says that if there’s anything wrong with you or you’re suffering in any way, in pain at all or unhappy, that you’re not focusing enough on your own self-care, that you just don’t GET “self-care.” I’d like to see her say that straight to the face of someone with chronic illness or chronic pain. She also mentions several times that if you’re not in tip-top shape physically and emotionally, you will have a lot harder time reaching your goals and being successful. 


- Rachel is obsessed with weight, appearance, exercise, and body size. Unhealthily obsessed, and it’s not okay. She traipses into fat-shaming several times in this book, which I wasn’t surprised by, but the sheer quantity of mentions of “getting in shape” and “sticking to your diet” and “losing that weight” was actually baffling, I wish I had counted them. Examples: She quotes herself as “severely overweight,” yet has said in multiple places that she was a 12 (maybe a 14?) at her heaviest – to call a 12-14 (smaller than the average American woman) “severely overweight” is objectively unhelpful, stupid, harmful, and fatphobic. She summarizes being overweight as being not the best version of yourself and not the best mom you could be. “It’s so simple to lose weight. It’s so simple to get in shape. It’s simple, but it’s not easy.” - further reinforcing that if you’re overweight it’s because you’re lazy, shortsighted (because you can’t hold out for the joy of a future hot bod when that Chick-fil-A sauce is calling your name), and you don’t have the willpower to look attractive. And my favorite – “There are no overweight animals in nature.” Literally RIGHT after she says that it doesn’t matter what size you are or what your weight is, she says, “There are no overweight animals in nature.” and “The only animals that are overweight are the ones that live in our homes. Pets are overweight. You are not a pet. You are a powerful, beautiful, bold woman, and you will treat yourself as such.” I truly have NO words. And a second favorite – she’s discussing her breast size after babies and says she went from a perfect B to an E cup: “E. That’s a cup size. E as in ELEPHANT, as in ENORMOUS, as in YOWZA.” No joke. Still I have no words for this woman’s opinion of larger bodies.


- Along with weight, she doesn’t seem to know exactly what she wants to tell you about it. Several times she’ll tell you not to live in the “I’m too fat” feelings, and encourages you to change your mindset by writing yourself a letter about all the times your body was incredible, but then she tells you a story about how much she hated her post-baby boobs so instead of learning body positivity, she spent thousands of dollars on plastic surgery. There’s nothing inherently wrong with plastic surgery, but be straight up about whether or not your solution to hating your body is a healthy perspective/mindset shift OR if it’s just doing whatever it takes to make your body look like the idea you have in your head. (Which is obviously destructive, and she doesn’t give quantifiers for people with eating disorders and/or unhealthy relationships to food. All she cares about is – “if you don’t feel good about the way you look, what are you waiting for????”) 


- She walks this weird line between acknowledging her privilege and thinking she is where she’s at because of her own merit alone. There was a whole rant in the book about how disappointed she was in some celebrity for not acknowledging they had help with raising kids and running a business, and she talks a lot about all of the professional help they have around the house and with the kids, but still in other places it felt like she just doesn’t get it. She talks about how when she wanted to start her wedding planning business, she just went and got an unpaid internship and dealt with abuse from clients for a long time so she could learn the skills and network. I don’t know about any of y’all, but I couldn’t afford the sacrifice of time (choosing to work for free means sacrificing time you could work for money, so it does in fact cost money to do an unpaid internship), and I don’t even have children. She could afford to do that because her husband had a crazy job at Disney and could afford for her to not make any money, AND they had a freaking nanny full-time. But instead she just says that she worked hard and traded her current comfort for the future end result she wanted. She continues to talk about how she built her business with only hard work, hustle, and a Google search, but also takes the time to point out all the people who helped her in the early stages of her business, even going so far as to say that no one is truly self-made. It’s very confusing.


- Rachel Hollis has a major problem with stealing people’s intellectual property. It’s been in the news for a long time, and I was honestly skeptical that she was maliciously stealing mommy blogger’s quotes and info, but after reading this book, I’m much more of a believer. I counted at least 15 quotes in this book that she pretended were her own idea. No attribution, no citing, no reference to the person who originally said the phrase. She just rolled it into her own content, pretending she came up with it. A list for you: “Hope is not a strategy.” “I love Jesus but I cuss a little.” The quote about how if you’re not in the arena taking punches you can’t criticize me (Teddy Roosevelt quote originally and Brené Brown has been applying it to her work for years). “You can’t take care of anyone if you don’t take care of yourself first.” The quote about aiming at what you can hit vs. aiming higher and flying (has been rendered many times but isn’t original to her). “Be interested more than you strive to be interesting.” “If everything is important, then nothing is.” “If it’s not true for everyone, it shouldn’t be true for anyone.” “You are a combination of the 5 people you hang out with most.” The quote about how the only way you fail is if you don’t try at all and don’t accomplish anything as a result. “If you want to change someone else, change yourself” (seems to be a pretty close rendition of Gandhi’s quote about changing the world). “Other people’s opinions of you are none of your business.” “Don’t compare your beginning with someone else’s middle.” “If you want something you’ve never had, you have to do something you’ve never done” (Thomas Jefferson). “You cannot control the circumstances of your life; you can only control your reaction to them.” SHE DID NOT WRITE THESE QUOTES OR COME UP WITH THESE IDEAS.


- Rachel has a serious problem with the working class, and it’s not okay to toss your mom under the bus for making you boxed cake every year for your birthday. C’mon. That’s tacky.


- She states in her section about her mom leaving her dad that it was essentially ridiculous for her mom to move out because “you cannot assert your independence if you don’t have the financial means to back it up.” I don’t have the time or energy to go into how destructive this is as an idea for women in abusive relationships, but it’s severely disappointing that she’d say something like this without thinking it through and that none of her very well paid editors caught this massive mistake. There are other ways she could have communicated the same general idea if she really wanted to talk about how traumatic it was for her to not be wealthy as a child (I grew up fairly poor, so I understand the underlying feelings, but I would share them in way less immature ways), she could have done that. Instead, she tossed out a careless statement that can and will be used to make women in abusive relationships feel like they cannot leave if they don’t have financial independence to do so, and that’s definitely not something we need more of in the world.


- She states that you can go cold turkey on addiction if your why is strong enough (as she did with smoking), and that’s not great. She doesn’t understand addiction or mental illness and continues to pretend she is the equivalent of a mental health professional and continues to spew the garbage that if you only have a strong enough willpower you can get rid of any mental illness or addiction you may have. 



The Audible version does include two bonus features: a session from the Rise conference (I didn’t listen to it – the book was already too much and I’ve seen the documentary already) and a meditation on gratitude (which I did listen to. I appreciated her trying to teach meditation, but she could have first done a little research into how to guide meditation well – she didn’t leave enough quiet space for anyone to actually meditate with her. She talked nonstop for the 5 minute duration). 



Overall, I would not encourage you to read this book. There were some positive things, but I think the negative and destructive ideas she continues to push at her readers are too bad for me to recommend this book in good conscience

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Girl, you need to apologize!

I really wanted to love this book! Loved Girl, wash your face. I pre- ordered the book and was ready to get fired up. RH was able to connect with her audience with her first book and this one doesn't even come close. The zero sense of reality other than her upper middle class is bs. One example, when you go to see a nutritionist for the first time, as if this is something we can all relate to. The obsession with weight. Is fat shaming okay? Saying she took an internship and didn't get paid, but not mentioning she had her husbands paycheck to rely on. "You can't assert your independence if you don't have the financial means to back it up." Say that to the woman listening who is in an abusive relationship. It's reckless! The pop culture references. She starts the book off obsessing over Demi Lovato. Did she forget this lady just had a major set back with her own addictions? Oh yes, but we should be able to just give up addictions. The moment she knew she didn't want to be poor at her birthday party where her mom made her a box cake and she had no decorations. Been there RH and that didn't make me think I didn't want to be poor it made me appreciate my parents and that they did all they could for me. Being wealthy doesn't make you rich! The whole chapter on asking her husband before she did anything."Grown up women don't ask permission!" I ask him out of respect, not because I have to. Huge difference! She gets so heated about the word Boss Babe and how disrespectful it is. But The entire book is allll about RH! It's extremely narcissistic and toxic to woman. One minute she's humble the next it's a brag session. There was some good in this book but the bad out weighs the good. I can't and won't recommend this to anyone I know.

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Rambling humble brag

I’ve been looking forward to this book after being a faithful listener to Dave and Rachel’s podcast. There is some really good, useful insights in this book, but they are buried under a load of irrelevant ramblings. We get it. She’s successful. She’s busted her ass to get here. But there is only so many “I’ve built a successful company” “I work harder than anyone” “I am building an empire” that can be in the book before it feels like the message is being shoved down your throat.

I wouldn’t recommend but I wouldn’t tell someone not to read it. There are good messages throughout if you have the willingness to wade through everything else.

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Ugh, just another self-help guru making millions

I bought this audio book with no knowledge of who Rachel Hollis was but simply because the title made me laugh out loud and, perhaps more importantly, I wanted to know how to stop repeatedly apologizing, even when I had done nothing wrong. The book, however, does not address this issue. Rather, it launches into 8 hours of rah rah, you have potential, never mind that you are a mother, you can do anything, you, too, can make millions, and NEVER feel guilty. Perhaps most telling, she says "Reach for it. You can do as little as write poetry or as huge as starting a multi-million dollar company." Something very near that, anyway. That statement that the desire to write poetry is "little," I would suggest, some people might find rather astounding. The one simple fact that all motivational, prosperity preachers fail to mention (while they take their millions to the bank and not from any legitimate business to be sure) is that the U.S. economy is one of capitalism (just stating the obvious truth; don't go after me) which means that it is necessary to have millions of worker bees at relatively low salaries in order to enrich a few. Indeed, the average salary for a white female in the U.S. in 2017 according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics was $41,000 (https://www.thebalancecareers.com/average-salary-information-for-us-workers-) while CNBC reported that most Americans believed that a million dollar a year salary was necessary to be "financially comfortable," at the same time that fewer than 10% of the American population actually made such a salary or higher (https://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/23/how-many-americans-are-millionaires.html). This book is a worthless piece of you know what.

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Wanted to love it but can't

I liked Rachel's first book, though I realize now it was the first "self help" motivation book I had read. After listening to Brene Brown and many others, this one is just too basic. Her advice is common sense and her personal story can come across as bragging or non-relatable. I couldn't get half way through it. It seemed repititive of her first book too.

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Wow, just wow...(not in a good way)

Oh my.... where to begin... This book is by a woman who has clearly become so detached from the world and those who are marginalized by socio-economic level, race, religion, gender and/or trauma that she believes her own sad/selfish story. Shame on you Rachel... There surely must be more that you believe and do to encourage, support and inspire women. Clearly your materialistic goals fulfill you now but, as a person who works with those at end of life, all of your material and relationships that are overly scheduled will mean nothing at this end of this life. Yes, we are born and we die but, we can live everyday and your laughable joy of that great purse or outfit or child’s accomplishment that you feel as your own will never be enough. You can do better, be better... take a real look at yourself and please, please, please educate yourself on social stratification and generational oppression and maybe just maybe rewatch A Christmas Carol and really learn the message it can send.... shameful, self indulged book... yuck!

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Repeat 101 level self development

Rachel says “I won’t repeat my first book” and yet she does. Royal disappointment. Is this the end of the road or will every keep buying it? I returned this book.

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Save money and read the first book

It was so similar to the first book. I’d save your money and just read Girl Wash Your Face

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Slightly disappointed...

I really wanted to love this book. I had very high expectations, especially considering how much I loved the precious.
Unfortunately, this book fell flat for me.
There were enjoyable moments, but I felt as though it was very repetitive and classic “life coach” lines.
I praise the author for all that she’s accomplished; however, my impression was further solidified by listening to the “bonus” at the end of a short audio clip of one of her conferences.
At this very moment, I realized it’s all about sales.
Yes, she wants to empower and help other women to succeed, but not without personal gain.
I could hear one of her surrounding members say, “insert this clip in the back, it’s sure to boost ticket sales!”
Then, I looked up just how much those tickets cost- $50.00-1,800.00! Whoa! You want to help women to... go into debt? Follow their dreams less $1800.00 while you’re flying first class to speak? It’s as though they’re paying nearly $2,000.00 for a friend. Eek.
Cursing aside, this makes me appreciate someone like Andy Frisella that much more. This man has somewhat outed this community of “self-help entrepreneurial gurus”.
This is just my opinion... and like ____________, everybody has one.

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Girl, Don't Buy This Trash

Rachel Hollis is ugh. Don't waste your money or your time. Try literally any other self-help book. I especially enjoy genuine, caring and supportive folks like Glennon Doyle.

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