Looking for a hilarious, can’t put it down good read? “Why Not Me?” by Mindy Kaling will not disappoint you. Throughout this memoir, Mindy Kaling describes her journey through adulthood experiences to depict to her readers life lessons to live by. Mindy’s main life lessons throughout this book are to find your confidence, find your motivation, learn to let go, conquer your fears, go after your dreams, and do not obsess over your looks. Mindy uses a humorous tone throughout the book to get these messages across to her readers and she is quite successful in doing just that!                                           

Mindy Kaling’s life lessons can be useful because most people are not able to live by these life lessons. Mindy picks these life lessons along with others because they are important to her and she lives by each of them. Mindy Kaling, throughout the book, stresses to find your confidence and believe in it.

Mindy ends the book by regretting not giving a good enough answer to a nervous little girl about how Mindy has so much confidence. Mindy answers this little girl in the last chapter hoping that she will eventually read this book one day getting her proper answer. Confidence is important in an individual’s life because it shows that we are not afraid to be us and go after our dreams. It shows that we believe not only in our dreams but also in ourselves to achieve them.

Another life lesson of Mindy Kaling’s is to find your motivation. In the book, Mindy attempts to go on a twenty-one day juice cleanse because she will be filming with the actor, James Franco. In this case, Mindy found her motivation to do the juice cleanse because she thinks James Franco is mysterious and sexy. Mindy teaches that your motivation can be the smallest thing possible or the biggest thing possible, just as long as it motivates you to keep going until achievement is reached.

Mindy also teaches her readers to learn to let go. In the memoir, Mindy describes that if she truly wanted to lose weight that she would have. She didn’t want to put so much effort into thinking about everything that enters her body without ever stopping. Mindy found this boring and time-consuming to focus on something so meticulously.  Mindy learned to let go of successfully losing weight because she knew she did not want to put in the effort towards something so boring and time-consuming.

Mindy also tells her readers to be able to conquer their fears, which is an important skill to have because conquering your fears can boost your confidence and open more opportunities. “I’m the kind of person who becomes silent when I get scared, because I hope Death will not notice me if I am very still and very quiet,” Mindy writes

This is Mindy’s way of saying that when you are scared that is when you need to be brave, not quiet. This is not the time to be silent and just wait things out and hope to not be noticed. Take chances. Life is about taking risks, making mistakes, learning from them, starting again, and doing things you want to do even when it’s scary. The last message that Mindy gives her readers is to not obsess over looks. “If you’ve got it, flaunt it,” she writes. “And if you don’t got it? Flaunt it. ‘Cause what are we even doing here if we’re not flaunting it?”

Mindy tells her readers this piece of advice because you should love who you are no matter what size, gender, race, or sexuality you are. It is important to feel good about yourself and to let anyone make you feel like you are not good enough. Every piece of advice that Mindy gives throughout her book can be applied to any life experience because Mindy told her true story and was honest, raw, and real in how she told her story.

Mindy Kaling was able to use the writing strategy, humorous tone, in order to develop each message with a strong stance. Any reader can connect with some of the messages in this memoir because Mindy touched upon so many themes including friendships, romance, self image, working hard, going after and making your dreams a reality, being confident, and being brave. Her humorous tone will captivate the reader to keep turning the pages, but when you get the deeper meanings you will realize at the end you learned many valuable lessons that will relate to your life, past experiences, or even what is still to come.