The Entrepreneur's Guide to Keeping Your Sh*t Together

2. 1. Overview & Core Premise

This book is the first serious attempt to address founder mental health from the perspective of a clinical psychologist (Sherry Walling, PhD) who is also married to a successful bootstrapped entrepreneur (Rob Walling, founder of Drip, TinySeed, and MicroConf). It is not a productivity book. It is not a self-help platitude collection. It is a clinical guide to the specific psychological challenges of entrepreneurship, grounded in research and illustrated with real founder stories.

The Central Thesis

"Without a healthy founder, it is impossible to have a healthy business. To fully enjoy the freedom of the entrepreneurial life, a founder must take responsibility for the balancing act that places the well-being of the self at the center."

The book argues that mental health is not a nice-to-have for entrepreneurs — it is the foundation upon which everything else is built. Your mood on a given day, your level of sleep, how much you drank the night before — these directly affect your bottom line. Creativity, intellect, motivation, and patience drive whether a venture is thriving or falling apart.

Why This Book Exists

The book was born from the Wallings' own near-divorce during a particularly brutal period in 2007 — Sherry pursuing a fellowship at Yale, Rob transitioning from consulting to products, a new baby, a dead furnace, a dying grandfather, and complete emotional disconnection. They came within a custody disagreement of ending their marriage. The book is their answer to the question they have spent years working on since:

"How can you do the best, most meaningful work and have a life that you love at the same time?"

Who This Book Is For

• Bootstrapped founders, indie hackers, solopreneurs
• Startup founders at any stage
• Freelancers, consultants, and anyone who signs their own paycheck
• The significant others and families of entrepreneurs
• Anyone responsible for — or who wishes to be responsible for — their own livelihood

3. 2. The Entrepreneur's Dilemma: Four Core Values & Their Shadows

The book identifies four core values that drive entrepreneurs into the founder life. These values are the "meta-goals" that shape every major decision. But each value carries a shadow — a dark side that creates specific psychological vulnerabilities.

The Founder's Paradox

"Being an entrepreneur is brutal on your mental health. It's ripe with anxiety and instability; many entrepreneurs fail time and time again and, yes, in doing so, they feel isolated and meaningless."

The very traits that make someone a great entrepreneur — the craving for autonomy, the creative restlessness, the appetite for risk, the need for purpose — are the same traits that make them vulnerable to anxiety, depression, burnout, and relationship breakdown. This is not a bug; it is a fundamental feature of the entrepreneurial life.

Rob's Story: Freedom vs. Anxiety

When Rob transitioned from consulting ($16K-$20K/month) to products, his "number" (minimum monthly expenses) was $8,000. Even though he had never experienced so much freedom, he was constantly worried about hitting that number. He felt guilty any time he was not working or thinking about work. The irony: product income is not tied to hours worked, so all the extra anxiety-driven work never translated to extra money. It took him 3-4 months to internalize that the true freedom he valued came from allowing himself the freedom to miss the number.

The Downstream Effects

When anxiety, instability, isolation, and failure go unchecked, they cascade:

• Physical health: Tense muscles, digestive problems, chronic headaches, elevated cortisol, sleep disruption
• Bad decisions: Excessive drinking, lashing out at spouse/children/employees, impulsive spending, crossing ethical lines
• Relationship destruction: Marriages destroyed, friendships ruined, parent-child bonds broken
• Business failure: Poor judgment, inability to think creatively, paralysis, self-sabotage

The Antidote: Return to "Why"

Keeping your core values — freedom, ingenuity, adventure, and meaning — in the forefront of your mind, even when you face failure, is one of the best tools you have. Returning to "why" is a steady reminder of why the entire struggle is worth it.

4. 3. Understanding Your Origins: Family Patterns & Founder Psychology

The book makes an evidence-based case that your childhood is not just background noise — it is the operating system running beneath every business decision you make. Your past shapes how you handle risk, disappointment, success, fear, relationships, and conflict.

The ACE Study: Hard Evidence That the Past Matters

The CDC-Kaiser Permanente Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study assessed over 17,000 people across 10 categories of childhood adversity: physical, sexual, and psychological abuse; family violence; a mentally ill caregiver; an incarcerated parent; an addicted parent; physical neglect; emotional neglect; and parental divorce.

The key insight is not that childhood trauma destines you to fail. Rather, unresolved issues from the past lead to difficulty regulating emotions, which leads to unhealthy behavior patterns (excessive drinking, impulsive spending, drug use, overeating, lack of exercise, self-sabotage). The chain is: adverse experience → unresolved emotion → unhealthy coping → health/business breakdown.

The Founder Origin Stories Project

Sherry conducted in-depth interviews with entrepreneurs from diverse backgrounds and identified four common threads that tie great entrepreneurial minds together:

The Family Stories Framework

Marshall Duke, a professor at Emory University, found that families that tell their own stories are the happiest and most resilient when tragedy happens. The same is true for founders and companies:

"Being a founder is not a job; it is an identity. Your success depends in part on how you understand your own story and your role in the story of your business."

When your app is having a bad month, it helps to remember the story of when you were 15 and trying to build your first webpage — and it sucked, and you didn't stay there. That moment passed. You learned, you grew. The story shapes how you respond to future struggles.

5. 4. Entrepreneur Types: Strengths & Shadows

Drawing on Carl Jung's concept of the "shadow" — the instinctive, irrational, largely unconscious part of personality that contains behaviors and memories we try to hide — the book identifies four common founder archetypes. Each has distinct strengths and dangerous blind spots.

Tips by Type

Golden Child:

• Inoculate against failure — routinely do things that stretch your comfort zone. Practice failure in low-stakes environments (dance class, trivia night, public speaking).
• When criticized, decide if there is merit. If yes, take it. If no, release it. Do not try to convince critics they are wrong.
• Use your confidence to build up those around you — your team may not share your foundation of acceptance.

Loner:

• Build a professional network intentionally, even if it feels unnecessary. Use email or social media if easier.
• Seek feedback from trusted customers and colleagues. Let others' perspectives be an additional data point.

Pleaser:

• Cultivate your own internal voice, separate from others' perspectives. Keep a daily record of highs and lows to practice listening to your own preferences.
• Choose your "attunement station" carefully. Not all perspectives are equally valuable. Tune in to a carefully selected group, not everyone.

Survivor:

• Record and celebrate successes. Keep a gratitude list or journal. Let the satisfaction of how far you have come fuel your drive.
• Transform painful experiences into a superpower. Consider mentoring someone else who had a rough start.

Facing the Shadow: Eight Practices

1. Let your memories be your teacher. Do not avoid or ignore them — learn from them.
2. Know your personal demons as well as you can. Contemplate them. Let someone else in for a look.
3. When things go wrong, pause to consider self-fulfilling prophecy or self-sabotage.
4. Do not force what has never worked. Move in your natural direction.
5. See your weaknesses as liabilities and plan around them.
6. Live in the moment. Practice noticing and attending to what is happening right now.
7. Contemplate your story. Who are you and where did you come from?
8. Connect your past to your present: "This is where I come from, and this is who I am."

6. 5. Self-Knowledge: Emotional Organization, Personality & Mindset

The book provides three frameworks for self-assessment that every founder should understand. Your mind is not always honest with you — you can be self-deceiving and reality-distorting without knowing it. These frameworks help you identify where you fall and what adjustments to make.

Framework 1: Emotional Organization (Chaos vs. Rigidity)

Drawing on British psychotherapist Philippa Perry, the book argues that all mental disorders can be placed on a spectrum between chaos and rigidity:

Self-assessment question: Do you tend toward chaos (acting on every emotion, drama-driven) or rigidity (suppressing emotions, over-controlling)? Your goal is to find the flexible middle.

Framework 2: Personality (Introversion vs. Extroversion)

Neither is better for entrepreneurship, but each requires different strategies:

• Introverts: Recharge alone. Risk isolation, burnout from too much social interaction, and neglecting relationship-building. Must intentionally schedule connection with others.
• Extroverts: Recharge with others. Risk neglecting deep work, making impulsive decisions for social validation, and burnout from lack of solitude. Must intentionally schedule focused alone time.

Framework 3: Fixed Mindset vs. Growth Mindset

Based on Carol Dweck's research:

Counterbalancing Strategies

Once you know your tendencies, you can build counterbalancing practices into your life:

• If you lean toward chaos → build routines, rituals, and structure into your day.
• If you lean toward rigidity → intentionally introduce novelty, spontaneity, and emotional expression.
• If introverted → schedule regular connection (masterminds, co-working, calls).
• If extroverted → protect deep work blocks and solitude time.
• If fixed mindset → practice reframing failure as data. Use "not yet" instead of "I can't."

7. 6. Mind Games: Cognitive Distortions & Mental Traps

The book draws on cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) to identify the specific thinking errors that plague entrepreneurs. These are patterns of thought that feel true but are systematically distorted.

Common Cognitive Distortions for Entrepreneurs

De-Stinking Your Thinking

The book's approach to combating cognitive distortions:

1. Catch the thought. Notice when you are in a distorted thinking pattern. Name the distortion.
2. Challenge the thought. Ask: "Is this actually true? What is the evidence for and against?"
3. Replace the thought. Substitute a more balanced, evidence-based interpretation.
4. Practice regularly. This is a skill that improves with repetition, not a one-time fix.

Sherry's Conference Talk Story

After giving a well-received talk in Barcelona, one man told Sherry the next morning that her talk "dragged on and was boring." Her mind immediately raced to catastrophic conclusions. But she stopped herself and intentionally recalled:

• The many people who complimented the talk afterward
• People who emailed requesting more information
• Lines of people waiting to ask questions

Key insight: "If I were on that stage purely for myself, I would crumble under criticism. But because I believe that the work exists for a purpose bigger than myself, I find the power to fight my tendency to run from negative feedback."

On Gratitude

The book recommends gratitude as a concrete, evidence-backed practice for combating negative thought patterns — not as a feel-good platitude, but as a deliberate cognitive reframing exercise. Regularly noting what is going well rewires the brain's tendency to fixate on threats and shortcomings.

8. 7. Coming Undone: Depression, Anxiety, ADHD & Bipolar Disorder

This is the most clinically detailed chapter, covering the major mental health conditions that disproportionately affect entrepreneurs. The book is clear: these are not character flaws or signs of weakness. They are medical conditions that require proper treatment.

Depression

Depression in entrepreneurs often looks different from the stereotypical image:

• Loss of interest in work you once loved — not just sadness
• Persistent fatigue despite adequate rest
• Difficulty concentrating or making decisions
• Changes in appetite (over or under-eating)
• Feelings of worthlessness or excessive guilt
• Withdrawal from social contact, even with co-founders and team
• Physical symptoms: headaches, digestive issues, unexplained pain

The danger for founders: depression often masquerades as "just being tired" or "going through a rough patch." Because entrepreneurs are expected to push through, they delay seeking help until they are in crisis.

Anxiety

"Anxiety lives in your mind. It is driven by instabilities and unknowns. Shifts in revenue, conversions, an unidentifiable bug in the code. A competitor with a slightly better product. It keeps your mind swirling at 2 a.m. with 'what ifs' and 'hows' and 'maybes.'"

When anxiety is elevated for long periods, it creates a cascade:

1. Sleep disruption → impaired daytime performance
2. Tense muscles, digestive problems, chronic headaches
3. Poor decision-making
4. Longing for escape → unhealthy coping (alcohol, lashing out, impulsive behavior)
5. Relationship damage — being "edgy" or "snappy" with spouse, children, co-workers, clients

ADHD

ADHD is overrepresented among entrepreneurs. The same traits that make ADHD challenging in traditional environments (distractibility, impulsivity, hyperactivity) can be entrepreneurial superpowers in the right context: hyperfocus on interesting problems, rapid ideation, willingness to take risks, high energy. But they also create vulnerabilities around follow-through, organization, and sustained attention on less exciting but necessary tasks.

Bipolar Disorder

Bipolar disorder can be particularly dangerous for entrepreneurs because manic episodes can feel like extraordinary productivity and creativity. The grandiosity and risk-tolerance of mania can lead to disastrous business decisions (overspending, overcommitting, impulsive pivots) that feel brilliant in the moment.

Suicidal Thoughts

The book addresses this directly and without flinching. Entrepreneurs are at elevated risk for suicidal ideation due to the combination of isolation, identity fusion with their business, financial pressure, and perceived failure. The book provides specific guidance:

• Take every mention of suicide seriously — from yourself or others
• Do not leave someone alone who is expressing suicidal thoughts
• Call a crisis line immediately (988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline in the US)
• Get professional help — this is not something to "push through"
• Remember: your business is not your life. Your identity extends beyond your company.

What to Do If You Are Struggling

1. Name it. Acknowledge that something is wrong. Do not rationalize it away.
2. Talk to someone. A therapist, a trusted friend, a mastermind member, a spouse.
3. See a professional. A psychologist for therapy, a psychiatrist for medication evaluation if needed.
4. Do not self-medicate with alcohol, drugs, or overwork.
5. Separate your identity from your business. You are more than your company.

9. 8. Getting Things Done: Motivation, Goals & Procrastination

Finding Your Why

The book argues that productivity starts with clarity of purpose. Without a clear "why," you are vulnerable to procrastination, distraction, and burnout. Your "why" should connect to your core values (freedom, ingenuity, adventure, meaning) rather than external metrics alone.

Setting Goals

Effective goal-setting for entrepreneurs is not about having a 47-item to-do list. It requires:

• Alignment with your values and your "why"
• Specificity — vague goals produce vague results
• Time-bounding — deadlines create urgency
• Prioritization — you cannot do everything. Choose the 2-3 things that matter most.

Why We Procrastinate

Procrastination is not laziness. It is an emotional regulation problem. We procrastinate to avoid uncomfortable feelings:

• Fear of failure: If you never finish, you never fail.
• Fear of judgment: Shipping means being evaluated.
• Perfectionism: It is never good enough.
• Overwhelm: The task feels too large to start.
• Lack of clarity: You do not know what "done" looks like.

Four Steps to Getting Your Work Done

1. Clarify the task. Define exactly what needs to be done and what "done" looks like.
2. Break it down. Decompose large tasks into small, concrete actions.
3. Start with the smallest action. Momentum builds momentum.
4. Protect your work time. Schedule blocks for deep work and defend them ruthlessly.

On Work Schedules

The book pushes against the culture of hustle and 80-hour weeks. Rob and Sherry argue that sustainable output requires sustainable input. Rob is known for taking long weekday bike rides — not as a reward for hard work, but as a necessary component of doing hard work well. The freedom to design your schedule is one of entrepreneurship's core values; actually using it is essential to mental health.

10. 9. Stress Management: Being Human While Building a Business

Acute Stress vs. Chronic Stress

The key insight: entrepreneurs' lives are structurally designed to produce chronic stress. There is no "end" to the stress of being a founder. You must build systems to manage it, not wait for it to go away.

How to Be a Stress Ninja

The book prescribes five categories of stress management:

1. Physical practices:

• Sleep: Non-negotiable. 7-9 hours. Sleep deprivation is not a badge of honor — it is a cognitive impairment equivalent to being drunk.
• Exercise: Regular physical activity is the single most effective intervention for both anxiety and depression. It does not need to be extreme — walking, cycling, swimming all count.
• Nutrition: Eat real food. Reduce alcohol. Minimize sugar and processed food.

2. Mental practices:

• Meditation / mindfulness: Even 10 minutes daily creates measurable changes in stress response, emotional regulation, and focus.
• Journaling: Writing about stressors externalizes them, making them more manageable.
• Cognitive reframing: Using the CBT techniques from Chapter 4 to challenge distorted thinking.

3. Go to your happy place:

• Identify activities that restore you (not just distract you). Nature, music, hobbies, time with loved ones.
• Schedule them. Do not wait until you "earn" them — they are part of doing good work.

4. Take vacations:

• Real vacations. Not "working vacations." Disconnected from email and Slack.
• The book argues that vacations are not luxury — they are essential maintenance for the founder's most critical asset: their mind.

5. Go on retreats:

• Extended periods of solitude and reflection — from a weekend to a week.
• Use retreats as data for big decisions: the clarity that comes from removing daily noise is invaluable for strategic thinking.
• Retreats are not vacations — they are structured time for deep self-reflection and planning.

Fighting Stress So It Fights for You

The goal is not to eliminate stress but to transform your relationship with it. Some stress is productive — it sharpens performance and drives action. The key is keeping stress acute (bounded, specific, time-limited) rather than letting it become chronic (unbounded, diffuse, permanent).

11. 10. Mastering Disruption: Focus, Energy & Attention

Time, Energy, and Attention

The book distinguishes between three resources that founders must manage:

The Little Tasks Killing the Big Tasks

Small, urgent-seeming tasks (email, Slack, quick questions) systematically crowd out the large, important work that actually moves the business forward. The book recommends:

• Batch processing: Handle email and messages in designated windows, not continuously.
• Take back your inbox: Unsubscribe aggressively. Use filters. Set expectations for response times.
• Protect deep work blocks: 2-4 hour windows with no interruptions, no notifications.
• Learn to say no: Every yes to something unimportant is a no to something important.

Yoga for Combating Distraction

The book specifically recommends yoga not as exercise but as attention training. Yoga teaches you to notice when your mind wanders and gently bring it back — exactly the skill needed to combat digital distraction.

12. 11. Burnout & Failure: When Things Aren't Getting Done

Recognizing Burnout

Burnout is not just being tired. It is a specific syndrome with three components:

1. Emotional exhaustion: You feel drained. You have nothing left to give.
2. Depersonalization / cynicism: You stop caring about your work, your customers, your team.
3. Reduced personal accomplishment: Nothing you do feels meaningful or sufficient.

Warning signs specific to founders:

• Work that used to excite you now feels like drudgery
• You dread Mondays (but you chose this life)
• You are irritable with your team for no clear reason
• You feel like a fraud despite objective success
• You are self-medicating with alcohol, food, or screens
• Your personal relationships are deteriorating
• You fantasize about quitting or "burning it all down"

Knowing When to Quit

The book does not treat quitting as failure. Sometimes the most courageous, intelligent decision is to walk away. Questions to ask:

• Is this business aligned with my values (freedom, ingenuity, adventure, meaning)?
• Am I staying because of sunk cost fallacy or genuine belief?
• Is this business costing me my health, my relationships, or my sense of self?
• If I were starting from scratch today, would I choose this path?

When Your Business Fails

Rob's Drip near-failure in 2014 is the book's central case study: less than 45 days of payroll in the bank, three developers hired prematurely, revenue nowhere near sufficient. He describes it as one of his few regrets — not the business risk itself, but the distraction and stress he inflicted on his family during that period.

"One of the hardest parts of being an entrepreneur is that no matter how much you achieve, the threat of failure is always looming."

The book's advice for navigating failure:

• Have a plan before it happens. Decide in advance how you will cope with failure.
• Do not listen to the lies your mind tells you ("I'm not capable," "I should go work for someone else").
• Press in. Address negative thought patterns rather than running from them.
• Separate your identity from the failure. You are not your business.
• Return to your core values. They are the steady anchor when everything else is unstable.
• Accept vulnerability. It is okay to have a connection with your own vulnerability. It is essential to have a connection to your own values.

13. 12. Staying Connected: Relationships, Loneliness & Support Systems

Your Business Is Not Your Baby

The book introduces the concept of Start-Up Attachment Disorder (SAD) or Business Attachment Disorder (BAD) — the unhealthy fusion of a founder's identity with their business. When this happens:

• Business setbacks feel like personal attacks on your worth
• You cannot rest because the business "needs" you at all times
• You neglect every other relationship in service of the business
• You lose all hobbies, interests, and identity outside of work
• A business failure feels like an existential crisis rather than a business problem

The antidote: maintain a diversified identity. You are a founder, AND a spouse, AND a parent, AND a friend, AND a person with interests outside work. The more you invest in these other identities, the more resilient you become when business inevitably hits rough patches.

Why You Are Lonely When Surrounded by People

"Many entrepreneurs feel isolated not because they are actually alone in the world, but instead because they have an innate sense that they are the one who alone carries the burden of their work. No one else knows as much. No one else cares as much. No one else has as much to lose. No one else has as much to prove."

Entrepreneurial loneliness is structural, not circumstantial. You can have a team, a family, and friends, and still feel profoundly alone because the weight of the business is ultimately yours.

Building Your Support System

Having a Sounding Board

Every founder needs at least one person who can serve as a sounding board — someone you trust enough to think out loud with, who will challenge your assumptions without judging you, and who understands the context of your business well enough to give relevant feedback.

Goal Accountability and Masterminds

The book strongly advocates for mastermind groups — small groups of founders who meet regularly to share challenges, hold each other accountable, and provide mutual support. This is one of the most practical recommendations in the book. Key characteristics of effective masterminds:

• Small (3-6 people)
• Regular cadence (weekly, biweekly, or monthly)
• Structured format with time for each person
• Confidential and trust-based
• Members at similar stages of business

Deep Relationships Bring Mutual Health

The book provides research-backed evidence that deep relationships are not a nice-to-have — they are a health necessity. Loneliness and social isolation are risk factors for early death on par with smoking 15 cigarettes a day. For entrepreneurs who tend toward isolation, this is not abstract — it is a concrete health risk that must be actively managed.

Marriage and Partnership

The Wallings speak from experience about the specific strains entrepreneurship places on a marriage:

• Asymmetric risk: One partner carries the financial and emotional weight of the business while the other may not fully understand it.
• Time scarcity: The business consumes time that would otherwise go to the relationship.
• Emotional depletion: After pouring everything into work, there is little left for your partner.
• Identity tension: When the founder's identity is consumed by the business, the partner may feel secondary.

Their prescription: invest in the relationship as deliberately as you invest in the business. Schedule time together. Communicate openly about stress. Make the relationship a priority, not a default recipient of leftover energy.

On Endings

The book acknowledges that sometimes relationships end — business partnerships, friendships, even marriages. When they do, the same principles apply: face it honestly, process the grief, learn from it, and move forward. Do not let the shadow of a failed relationship become a reason to avoid future connection.

14. 13. Key Frameworks & Self-Assessment Tools

A consolidated reference of every framework and assessment tool from the book.

Framework 1: The Four Values / Four Shadows Model

Use this to diagnose which shadow is currently affecting you most:

• Am I feeling anxious? → My freedom is becoming a burden of responsibility.
• Am I feeling like a failure? → My ingenuity is being tested and I am taking it personally.
• Am I feeling unstable? → My adventure has led me into territory without a safety net.
• Am I feeling isolated? → My quest for meaning has disconnected me from others.

Framework 2: The ACE Score

Rate your exposure to the 10 categories of childhood adversity (0-10 scale). Higher scores indicate greater need for proactive mental health management. This is not a destiny — it is a risk assessment.

Framework 3: The Founder Type Assessment

Identify which archetype(s) you most resemble: Golden Child, Loner, Pleaser, or Survivor. Use the type-specific tips to counter your shadow.

Framework 4: Chaos-Rigidity Spectrum

Self-assess: Do you tend toward emotional chaos (reactive, impulsive, drama-driven) or emotional rigidity (suppressive, controlling, inflexible)? Build counterbalancing practices.

Framework 5: Fixed vs. Growth Mindset

When facing a setback, notice your self-talk. "I can't do this" (fixed) vs. "I can't do this yet" (growth). Consciously practice the growth framing.

Framework 6: Cognitive Distortion Checklist

When your thinking feels distorted, scan the list: all-or-nothing, catastrophizing, mind reading, personalization, discounting the positive, overgeneralization, should statements, emotional reasoning. Name the distortion to defuse it.

Framework 7: Burnout Self-Assessment

Three-question check:

1. Am I emotionally exhausted? (Nothing left to give)
2. Am I cynical about my work? (Don't care anymore)
3. Do I feel ineffective? (Nothing I do matters)

If you answer yes to all three, you are in burnout — not just tired. This requires intervention, not just rest.

Framework 8: The Business Attachment Disorder Test

Ask yourself:

• If my business failed tomorrow, who would I be?
• Can I describe myself without mentioning my company?
• When was the last time I did something I enjoyed that had nothing to do with work?
• Do I have relationships that are not mediated through my business?

If these questions are hard to answer, your identity is dangerously fused with your business.

Framework 9: The Support System Audit

15. 14. The Founder Mental Health Action Plan

A synthesis of the book's most actionable recommendations, organized into daily, weekly, monthly, and as-needed practices.

Daily Practices

Weekly Practices

Monthly / Quarterly Practices

As-Needed Practices

The Book's Final Message

"It's about being an integrated person — someone who thrives in work and 'life.' It's about learning to listen to yourself; learning to trust your own wisdom. It's about facing the hard parts of the entrepreneurial life. It's about problem-solving, coping, and managing the monsters in your mind. It's about giving yourself permission to craft the life that you want."

The ultimate question is not "How do I build a successful business?" It is: "How can I do the best, most meaningful work and have a life that I love at the same time?" The answer, according to this book, starts with keeping your sh*t together.