Radical Confidence: 10 No-BS Lessons on Becoming the Hero of Your Own Life

Hi, I’m Lisa, and I want you to know that you don’t have to hit rock bottom to change your life.

If anyone had ever sat me down and told me, “You’ll spend eight years of your life as a housewife. It won’t be that bad; you’ll just lose your confidence, lose yourself, and squash all your hopes and dreams,” I would have run screaming from the room, leaving a Lisa-shaped hole in the wall. Maybe even going all Real Housewives and flipping a few tables on my way out. But guess what? That’s exactly what happened. I spent almost a decade living each day totally detached from my hopes and my dreams. I lost my confidence, and I lost myself. So, how the hell did that happen?

Let me tell you, it wasn’t overnight. It never is, despite the cliché of “I blinked and all of a sudden…” That’s such BS. You never just blink. Ever. Major changes, good or bad, always come about slowly. The foundation gets laid little by little, bit by bit. A wrong turn here, a pit stop there, all may seem like harmless detours. All those little diversions come before the BOOM! It can be the smallest fender bender or a massive pileup. Either way, that airbag to the face makes you stop and realize that you’re totally lost. “How the heck did I end up here?” you ask yourself. But while a big dramatic moment might be what it takes to get you to look around, the reality is that your dreams have been in your rearview for a while and you just didn’t notice they were getting smaller and smaller and slowly disappearing out of sight.

My wrong turns were small choices and situations that didn’t seem like a big deal at the time. Usually, I wasn’t even aware that I was making choices. When someone asked how I was, I answered, “Oh, you know, fine,” and I thought I was telling the truth. I certainly wasn’t doing bad. I had a roof over my head, food to eat, was married to the man of my dreams, and had puppies to scrum on. Who was I to complain? Sure, most days I felt a kind of numbing sadness that I couldn’t quite pinpoint, but so many people suffer from so much worse than anything I was going through. How bloody ungrateful was I?

The truth was that I was thoroughly and totally stuck. A place I now look back and call—dun dun dun—the Purgatory of the Mundane.

The Purgatory of the Mundane might be even more dangerous than hitting rock bottom. Rock bottom can jolt you into action, but the Purgatory of the Mundane just lulls you to sleep with a sweet lullaby and then keeps you right on snoozin’. You’re comfortable, but you’re not actually engaged. Your basic needs are met, but your hopes, dreams, and wildest desires are withering away faster than the Wicked Witch of the West at a water park. Poof! Gone.

The Purgatory of the Mundane is like an inner-tube pool floaty—easy to get into, even relaxing at first, but then it’s really frikin’ hard to get out (especially when you’re trying desperately not to spill your drink or get your braids wet). The Purgatory of the Mundane motto is “It’s not that bad.” And it isn’t that bad, but believe me, it’s a sinister trick to fall for. The Purgatory of the Mundane doesn’t want you to leave, and knows how to get you to stay right where you are, how to convince you that you don’t deserve to go after your dreams, that you’re guilty for wanting more, and that you’re just being selfish and entitled to think that your life could be any better than it already is. But, guys, the truth is that unhappiness is unhappiness, no matter how you shake or bake it. Sprinkle on as many reminders as you want (“At least I’m not still single,” “At least I have a paycheck”): That cupcake is still going to taste like boredom frosted with despair and baked through with paralysis.

Since you picked up this book and chose to spend a few of your precious minutes reading this introduction, I’m going to bet that the Purgatory of the Mundane sounds familiar to you. Maybe you already have the stamp in your passport and have even spent some time there yourself. Maybe you have frequent-flyer miles and you’re there right now, up to your ankles in all that sticky, routine, boring-as-shit stuff that you’ve come to believe is your lot in life. If that’s you, then you’ve come to the right book, and it’s time to plot your escape. It’s time to grow.

I know, I know! Growth is hard. It’s scary. It’s painful, and sometimes it downright sucks. But, homies, it’s also absolutely necessary if you want to change your life. You cannot—I repeat, you cannot—reach your goals without growth. And even then, the truth is, there isn’t a finish line. Life changes, you will change, and your goals will change. But that’s what Radical Confidence is all about. It’s a series of tools you can use time and time again, on every journey you damn well choose to go on. So, dog-ear pages! Underline sentences! Break out the highlighter! Fill it with sticky notes! This book is your game plan. Because whether you’re starting a new business, developing a new habit, ending a phase of your life that no longer serves you, or making any change in your life, really, you’ll need a game plan.

A few years ago, when I finally started to settle into the fulfilling, challenging, exciting life that I had created for myself, I started to notice something. People, usually other women, were always saying things like “But of course you can do that, you’re so confident” or “I wish I had your confidence.” My gut reaction to this was always, “Oh, helllllll to the no, not me! I’m not confident. I feel like shit about myself half the time, too.”

We’ve been taught to see a confident person as someone who’s genetically gifted. She’s unstoppable and can do anything because her confidence can withstand a million slings and arrows without even a ding. She stands out there, hands on her hips, cape billowing in the wind, bothered by absolutely nothing. She never fails, she’s never experienced negative self-talk, and she doesn’t give a crap what people think about her. This confident woman might as well be Wonder Woman, and though I loooooove a good ol’ superhero movie, this sure as hell is definitely not me.

I’m just Ordinary Woman. I fail all the time. In fact, I screw up on a daily basis. I know I really, truly suck at a lot of stuff. And I do care what people think about me. Sometimes I take criticism to heart because I know it’s right. It’s still very important to me to be a loving, supportive wife. I don’t have a suit of armor, and my negative voice plays on repeat like a skipped record, in Dolby surround sound, and half the time, that dial is stuck on the What Did I Do Wrong Today? show on WTF FM, where the DJ has a British accent.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized why people saw me as confident: because I don’t wait to feel confident to do something. I pack all my insecurities, doubts, fears, and negative self-talk into my Louis Vuitton bag, sling it over my shoulder, and off I trot. And that, my friends, is radical confidence.

Radical confidence is being honest with yourself and ditching the old excuses, like “I don’t feel confident enough to do that.” Radical confidence is knowing what you’re good at and knowing when you suck, and acknowledging both without feeling bad about yourself. It’s about being grateful for what you have and wanting more. It’s about using your insecurities to drive you. It’s about learning to control your emotions so they don’t get in your way. It’s knowing when to listen to the negative voice playing on repeat and when to pull the plug and throw the speaker out the damn window. Radical confidence is accepting yourself the way you are and, at the same time, being brave enough to believe you can change. It’s about plugging your nose and diving headfirst into a challenge without worrying about whether you’ll fail and drown. It’s knowing that if you do fail (and let’s face it, you probably will at first; failure isn’t a dirty word), you can Get. Back. Up. It’s about vulnerability and being willing to take long, hard looks at the raw answers to tough questions. It’s about facing your ego and telling that bitch to calm down. Radical confidence is the life-changing magic of figuring shit out!

As women, we’re bombarded from day one with ideas and beliefs that hold us back. Some of those are thrust on us by our families, some by our culture and society at large, and some are things that we put upon ourselves. They become so ingrained in us that we lose our ability to differentiate what we want from what we’ve been told to want. From the time we’re little girls, we’re taught that there is a certain way we should look, a certain way we should act, and a certain lifestyle we should lead. We learn to believe, like believe to our core, that we should put other people’s wants and needs first, and anything else is just downright selfish. We’re told what our future should be, and what path we should take to get there, as if our lives are like the British Parliament and everyone gets to scream and yell their opinion. So when it comes time for us to go after what we really, truly want for ourselves, we’re bloody exhausted, right? We’ve wasted all our time and energy second-guessing ourselves. Our desires. Justifying our ambitions and explaining our choices in a pathetic attempt to make sure that everyone—from our parents and friends to our teachers, and even that great aunt we haven’t seen since 2002—approves of our lives. Because I mean Goooood forbid they disapprove. This, right here, guys, is a dream killer, and we have to stop. Your life is exactly that. YOUR life. Your life isn’t run by a committee, and everyone doesn’t get an equal vote.

I was a dreamer and an artist from as far back as I can remember. I would sit in front of the TV for hours, drawing cartoon characters, dreaming I would one day be the next Walt Disney. Art AND movies? Come on! Well, that was until my mum told me it was now all made on computers. Do you hear that sound? That’s the sound of little Lisa’s heart breaking. Still, my enthusiasm for art, movies, and America remained strong. As a teenager, I spent my weekends sneaking into movie premiere after-parties with my best mate, where we’d stay one step ahead of security while I’d imagine that someday, such a party would be thrown in honor of MY movie.

I was raised in a very traditional Greek family and brought up to believe that being a good Greek wife meant that taking care of your man was priority number one. My family, from my dad to my yiayia (grandmother in Greek), often reminded me that I must learn to cook and clean so that when I got married I could take care of my husband. But I was a bull when it came to holding on to my dreams. I fought like hell to study film and media at university and then to continue my studies in Los Angeles. Where happenstance totally changed the course of my life and I met my husband, someone who was just as passionate about film as I was, and it felt like I was thiiiiiiis close to making my dreams a reality.

Shortly after we were married, my hubby and I agreed that I would stay home for a year, maybe a year and a half, to handle the personal side of our lives while he focused on going out and making enough money for us to live out our dream of making movies together. This wasn’t my ideal situation, but I jumped in with enthusiasm. The inner tube looked pretty good just floating there and seemed like something I could get down with for a little while before our next big move. If this was what it took to make movies, then of course I could do it.

One year stretched into two, two into three, and all the while, I tried to smile through it. Sure, I’d once had dreams as a kid that were so big they were colossal (and the Oscar for Best Director goes to… Lisa Charalambous!), but it took work and sacrifice to make big things happen. That’s what I told myself, even as I was bored out of my skull every day, cooking, cleaning, and laying out clothes for my husband. But I just kept telling myself it was for the greater good. The greater good. The greater good. The greater… good?

Maybe you’ve been in a situation like this before. Where you sacrifice and sacrifice, and then you get to a point where you realize your sacrifices are good for everyone BUT you. Maybe it’s with your family, with your job, or a relationship that has you tossing your own dreams in the trunk, back there with all the junk and spare tires, so that someone else’s dreams can drive. You might even be able to convince yourself it’s not such a bad idea: “I mean, it’s not forever,” you remind yourself. But it’s hella stifling in that trunk, so while you’re just trying to enjoy the scenery, your dreams are slowly suffocating. But here’s the thing—no matter what you might think, no matter what someone else might try to tell you—it’s never too late to let your dreams breathe. When you cut through the shoulds and start aiming for a life that’s honestly fulfilling—that, my homies, is the greatest good.

But this can be scary. If you’re like me, and you’ve spent much of your life being a people pleaser, putting your own needs first can feel like stepping out on a ledge and uh-oh! Here comes the vertigo! What if I fall… and fall on my face? Sure, that’s a legit fear. But, also, what if you just went ahead and took that leap and landed on your feet?

I host my own show, Women of Impact; have spoken on the TEDx stage; and am a frequent guest on podcasts and shows. I count inspirational, world-rocking women like Nicole LePera and Mel Robbins as my homies. My goals and dreams are bigger, more audacious, and more badass than they’ve ever been before. I wake up every morning and ask myself how I want to spend every second. Then I go out and do just that. I’m out here, sweating my ass off to see how many lives I can change, how many people I can inspire, and how much fun I can have in the process.

And you know what? If I did it, you can do it, too! Because there’s nothing extraordinary about me. I’m totally average, and I’m not saying that to diminish myself in any way. I’m saying it because I’ve accomplished all of this without being born with an extraordinary spark. I don’t have some wild intellect or unparalleled talent. I don’t have insane confidence. I wish I did—it would’ve saved me yeeeears of beating myself up and feeling shitty about myself. But alas, no. Just ask any of my former teachers.

I never had a rock-bottom, lightning-strike moment that lit a fire under my ass and jolted me into action. Nope, instead I got myself out of the Purgatory of the Mundane the same way I got myself into it. Little by little, bit by bit. Then, before I knew it, this mildly dyslexic gosling in a blah T-shirt and unmatching sweats, doing calf lifts to burn extra calories in the checkout line at Costco, had morphed into a braided, bad-bitch, boots-wearing swan who frikin’ loves her life. Even on the hard days. Maybe even more so on the hard days, because those are the days that make me realize how strong I am and how much I can accomplish. It’s always the hard days that shine a light on how truly far we’ve come, and how much farther we can go.

You don’t need to wait for things to get better or for them to get worse to spark radical confidence. Radical confidence is a decision that you make every single day, to be totally frikin’ honest and real with yourself about where you are and where you want to go. You start your journey, right here, right now, wherever, however, whoever you are.

Radical confidence isn’t the goal. It’s the tool you need to get to that goal. It’s like a muscle. It takes work to build, and it takes more work to keep it. You wouldn’t expect to get glutes of steel after doing one round of squats at the gym, would you? No! So why do we always expect that looking in the mirror and saying a few affirmations is all it takes to be confident? With confidence—as with butts—it takes reps to get results.

That’s why all the lessons in this book are the tried-and-tested ones, ones that I’ve constantly used, refined, and reused on my own radical confidence ride. I don’t want this book to just spark change; I want it to keep the fire burning. In fact, scratch that, I want it to fan the frikin’ flames into a roaring bonfire! I’m all about tactics and techniques (no woo-woo shit here, homie). Because when those tough times come and emotions and negative thoughts start flooding in faster than Usain Bolt (oh, and they will come), I can’t just will myself to do something—I need a damn game plan. And that’s what this book is.

It’s a blueprint—an action plan with personal stories as examples of how I’m not just talking the talk. I’ve been there, done that. I’ve walked the walk, tripped, stumbled, and fallen on my face time and time again, and I’m still out here, putting one foot in front of the other. Some of these stories I’ve truly never told anybody before—about times when I failed epically, felt completely ashamed, and thought I’d never recover. I’m going to tell you about times when I literally picked myself up off the cold floor, unpacked my emotions, and went on to kick some ass. I’ll share tips and lessons I’ve learned from some of the brilliant women I’ve interviewed on Women of Impact, because I want you to see that you’re not alone in this. As women, we’ve been buried in bullshit our whole lives, but that stops right here, right now, with this book!

No more hiding behind excuses, no more diminishing your dreams, and no more waiting for someone else to rescue you. Fuck fairy tales! It’s time to storm the castle, because in this story, you are the hero of your own life.

I was always the dreamer in my family. There were rumors of a great-grandfather who was an artist, but I had to go pretty far back in the bloodline to find anyone who was like me. Everyone else was practical and grounded. And so whenever I started to daydream about the big things I wanted in my life, I’d get as far as “And I would like to thank the Academy” before my acceptance speech was interrupted by a voice, yelling in Greek, “Lizou mou! Get your head out of the clouds!” That voice sounded a lot like my dad.

I know I’m not alone here, because so many of us are taught that dreams are just like the tooth fairy and Father Christmas—things we outgrow because they aren’t real. Dreamers are seen as people who aren’t anchored in reality, who spend a lot of time wishing and hoping, and very little time doing. The message that we get is that it’s okay to have dreams, at least when you’re young, but going after them as an adult is silly. So when I put my dreams aside in favor of a looooong ride on the Housewife Scalextric—a road that loops, going nowhere—I didn’t protest initially; a big part of me felt like this was where I was always going to end up anyway. Who was I to think I actually deserved to go after my dreams?

In sharing my story of how this happened, I’m begging you, I’m actually pleeeeeading with you, homies, do not—I repeat, do not—do what I did! I was wrong, I was wrong! I was so wrong that I want to run up and down my street, waving my hands in the air and screaming my head off about how wrong I was. I was wrong not to reevaluate my goals. I was wrong to try to distract myself from my deep unhappiness. I was wrong for not questioning my initial choices, and I was wrong for choosing to let my dreams die.

And yes, I said choose. Because buying a Housewife Scalextric ticket and climbing aboard? That was a CHOICE I made. Riding that goddamn thing for eight frikin’ years? Another CHOICE. Every time I thought about getting off but used a word like “can’t” or “should,” I was actually just making an excuse and prolonging my ride. I was choosing to make an excuse rather than find a way around the obstacles that stood between me and the sense of purpose that I so desperately craved. So, yep, this is a little tale about what not to do.

I Can Dream Big.

Once upon a time in London, there lived a teenage girl with frizzy hair, a flat chest, and a long last name that rhymed with “shag-a-lamppost.” Her name was Lisa, and the world of adolescence wasn’t all that kind to Lisa, due to the fact that, in addition to all the unfortunate things previously mentioned, Lisa also had a big nose, a unibrow, and an orthodontic head-brace, and was just an average—okay, maybe even less than average—student. But before you go feeling too sorry for Lisa, know that Lisa didn’t feel sorry for herself. Because Lisa had movies.

Okay, I’m just going to go ahead and drop this third-person shit right now, because it will get annoying, and as you’ve probably guessed… I’m Lisa! While my female classmates were out drinking and snogging boys in the back seats of cars, I was chasing after a different kind of crush: Hollywood. Movies were my jam. Eighties flicks were my favorite, and I was drawn to anything that was an underdog story. I watched The Goonies, The Karate Kid, and Adventures in Babysitting until the tapes wore out (yes, that actually used to happen before everything was streaming). On the weekends, my best friend Nicole (a freckled ginger who was teased just as much as I was and had about the same amount of luck with the boys) would run around London, trying to find celebrities and sneaking into movie premiere after-parties. On Monday mornings, while all the popular girls were gossiping, Nicole and I were off in the corner, recounting our own adventure of sneaking into the Eraser premiere after-party. “Can you believe how big Arnold Schwarzenegger’s hand was when we shook it?” I’d ask Nicole, and she’d shake her bright red locks in agreeing disbelief. “It was the size of a plate!” she’d whisper back.

Celebrity hunting was an escape for me, because school had always been a struggle. At one point, I was moved into “special” classes because my teachers thought I held my pencil wrong. I barely passed English—not because I couldn’t speak it but because trying to interpret a poem left me totally confused. “What do you mean, she’s about to commit suicide?” I’d think as my teacher went on and on about Sylvia Plath. “She was just talking about flowers.”

Art was the only subject in which I excelled. I had always loved drawing, and while I might have been holding my pencil “wrong,” I got it to bend to my will and do some pretty awesome things. However, all I wanted to do was draw—I was insecure, and drawing was one of the few things for which I was praised, so I white-knuckled it and held tight with all my might. I wasn’t about to let go of the one thing that made me like myself. My teacher wasn’t having it, though, and he insisted that, if I wanted to pass his class, I had to explore other mediums. I went home furious, and as I started to vent to my mum, she just matter-of-factly said, “Well, darling, do you want to be right, or… do you want to pass?” I hated the choices, but there they were, plain as day, coming out of my mother’s mouth. This was a groundbreaking moment for me in my younger years, because I realized that, either way, it was my choice (a lesson I later forgot for eight years)—and I wanted to frikin’ PASS.

Even so, I figured I might as well do what I could to make it interesting, so I became a bit of a renegade when it came to completing my assignments. My teacher said I needed to sculpt. Okkkkaaayyyy, so what could I sculpt with that would actually be fun and not the same old, same old clay that everyone else was using? I know. Wax! Where do I get wax? Candles! How do I melt them? In my mum’s microwave! I practically burned off my fingertips because I touched it long before it had cooled down enough to mold, but, despite the blisters, I passed, and with good enough grades to get into university.

When I told my dad that what I wanted to do with my life was make movies, let’s just say he was… not thrilled. He valued traditional skills and a stable career, as both had served him well in his life. My dad could teach Drake a thing or two, because he had truly started from the bottom. Growing up in a tiny village in the mountains of Cyprus, he had a hole in the floor for a toilet, left home at the age of twelve just to go to school, and as a teenager worked digging ditches in the mountains. When he moved to London and got a job in the mailroom of a shipping company, he saw it as a great opportunity. He worked hard, learned on the job, studied and took classes at night, and ended up running the entire company. He tried to instill this practical mindset in his children by giving us spontaneous math quizzes at the dining table and repeating “Time is money!” like it was his own personal theme song. I’ll never forget the sound of him yelling this in his thick Greek accent as seven-year-old me took my time getting out of the car, having no bloody clue what this was supposed to mean, considering I wasn’t getting paid to get out of the car.

When it was time for me to go to university, my mum encouraged me to study art, but I had decided on a film and media degree. But my dad was more horrified than Joey being asked to share food. He might as well have shouted, “A Charalambous doesn’t major in media!” In Greek culture, parents face a lot of judgment over what their children are doing, so it was like the Greek version of keeping up with the Joneses. Keeping up with Jonesanopouloses! My dad wanted me to study something useful, like math, or English, but I didn’t back down. We fought for two weeks until, finally, he relented. In an utterly nonjudgmental tone, he turned to me and matter-of-factly said, “Well, you’ll end up at home with kids anyway, so it doesn’t really matter.”

Now, before you gasp at the horror, the truth is that he really didn’t mean or see this as an insult, or as a way of diminishing my dream, because his mother and sister didn’t even go to high school—so in his mind, my staying home and not necessarily needing an education were just unemotional facts.

But nothing was going to pop my bubble, and I went to university and killed it. With the opportunity to study something I was interested in, I learned that I actually liked school (and parties), and I started to come into my own academically and socially. On those first days of university, no one knows who is who. Who are the mean girls and if there is a Regina George lurking around the corner, ready to jump out at you at the first sign of weakness. Because let me tell you… oh, she smells the fear! And this was actually beyond frikin’ exciting to me. The “Plastics” of the world didn’t know I was insecure, and no one knew I had been bullied and teased. I got to start over, and that was exactly what I needed. I mean, who knew how easy it was to excel in an environment where people aren’t making fun of you behind your back? Not me! It was a whole new feeling. It took me a few years to get there, but by my senior year, I had buckled down and become a serious student. I sat in the front of the class and raised my hand so much I practically tore my rotator cuff.

University did wonders for my personal confidence, too. Up until then, almost everyone I knew was Greek, Turkish, or Jewish and had a very similar upbringing to my own. Now I was surrounded by people of all races and cultural backgrounds. They thought it was cool that I was Greek. A total first! And boys paid attention to me. Yes, me! Little old Lisa Shagalamppost—who once relied on truth or dare to get a kiss—was now hot shit. I was being asked on dates! That’s right. Plural. With an s. And that gave me the confidence to finally embrace all the things that made me different, like my obsession with hip-hop and the fact that I had dreams other than becoming a mum right after graduation. The more people accepted me for who I was, the more confident I became. Turns out, confidence wasn’t the Loch Ness monster. It actually did exist. But the best part of this was that all the new people I was meeting had dreams as big as mine.

When I was growing up, my yiayia was fond of telling me that my story had already been written by the almighty bestselling author himself—God—and, as she saw it at least, that story ended with my being a wife and mother just like all the other women in my family. Yiayia meant this as a comfort, but I absolutely hated the idea that I didn’t get to write my own story. I mean, what if I wanted something else for myself? This had never seemed like an option before, but now I had to look no further than my fellow classmates for dream-chasing inspiration. They were building all kinds of careers and creating their own futures, and if they could do it, why couldn’t I? Making movies was my dream, and I was determined to see it come true.

So when my flatmate (roommate, for you Americans) gave me a pamphlet in my final semester of university for an eight-week course at the New York Film Academy in Los Angeles, I practically lost my mind with excitement. This was hands-on moviemaking in Hollywood, on the Universal Studios backlot. Uni-frikin’-versal! We would get access to their wardrobe and props department and get to shoot on their sets, like The Wild West. It was like someone climbed into my brain, transcribed my dreams, and now here I was reading it in Times New Roman on a piece of trifold paper. There was no way I wasn’t going.

The only problem was… it cost money. And though I now had a college degree, what was the one thing I didn’t have? You guessed it. Money! So off I headed to convince my dad to not only let me go but also foot the bill. Cue “Eye of the Tiger,” because I was ready for a fight. Ding… Pups (as I call him) and I circled each other in the ring and went toe-to-toe. After ten rounds, I was left wounded, hurt, bleeding, and exhausted, but my determination was left standing. Like Rocky Balboa, I stood victorious, and I was headed to Los Angeles, baby! Almost.

Pups gave me one condition: As soon as I got back, I had to get serious about my future. And when my dad said future, what he meant was: Get a stable job. Stay at said job until I find a “good” Greek man. Marry said good Greek man so I could leave my job and stay at home to take care of my husband and the four kids we were surely going to have.

Now, this kind of future was about as far away as you could get from the one I actually envisioned for myself—which involved cameras, film sets, and emotional storytelling—but I wasn’t going to tell my dad this now. Hollywood was on the line here, people! So we made an agreement, kissed on both cheeks (as the Greeks do), and the next thing I knew, I was boarding the plane, taking my seat in 48F, and London was disappearing into the fog below.

My best mate and partner in crime Nicole came with me, of course, and before heading to Los Angeles, we stopped in Las Vegas so that I could put my other major—partying, obvi—to use. At the end of the week, Nicole was burnt to a crisp, I’d acquired a great tan, and we both had hangovers that were grander than MGM. Now we were truly ready for LA.

I had rented a fully furnished studio at the Oakwood Apartments in Burbank, which was known for being the first stop in town for dreamers like me. When I walked into the convenience store and saw all the signed headshots of celebrities who had stayed in these very same apartments, I felt like I was staying in a five-star resort. Then, as if things couldn’t possibly get any better, the very first person I see when I get to the NYFA, on my very first day, is a hot guy working in the office. Like, we’re talking about chiseled-jaw, head-spinning, double-and-triple-take hotness here. Are you kidding me, Los Angeles? I was truly living the American dream.

The first four weeks of my course were spent in the classroom, before we were going to be released out into the world to make our own movies for the last four. From day one, my newfound swagger and I strutted into that classroom like we owned the joint—something that was made a bit easier by the fact that there was only one other girl in the class, a German girl named Vera who quickly became my new bestie. I was a sponge, soaking up everything I could, and having an absolute blast in the process. Then one day, a few weeks in, I walked into class and Hot Office Guy was standing at the front of the room. As soon as class starts, he introduces himself as… our new teacher! I almost laughed out loud. Teacher? Thiiiings just got more interesting.

But for some reason, Hot Office Guy seemed less than impressed with me. In fact, he flat-out ignored me. Bloody cheek. But also… I must say… intriguing. On the outside, I was cool as school, but on the inside, I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what his deal was. I could break the ice with anyone, but Hot Office Guy was stone cold.

Then, on the last day of our last class, before we would begin our four-week practical making of our final film, we shot short films on the Universal Studios backlot on Wisteria Lane. Specifically, on the set of Desperate Housewives (trust me, the foreshadowing isn’t lost on me here). As students, we were required to be escorted on and off the lot by a teacher, to keep celebrity-crazy kids from trying to sneak into Eva Longoria’s trailer, which didn’t really make sense to me. I mean, can you believe that there are people out there who look for celebrities by sneaking into places? Who does that? (But also, did I tell you how big the Terminator’s hands are IRL?)

Vera and I had finished early, and I strolled over to ask Hot Office Guy if he could give us a ride off the lot. I expected what I always got from him, which was a straightforward answer, but to my surprise, he turned to me and smiled. “Sit your ass down,” he joked. “You’re not going anywhere.” Before my confident self could even think of a cocky comeback, I blurted out “Okay.” And, I sat. Okay? Okay? Lisa, you aren’t a puppy at obedience school. You don’t sit on command. Hot Office Guy and I ended up talking for some time outside on the grass of Gabrielle Solis’s house while another group of students filmed. Finally, as they were finishing up, he told us he could leave and give us a ride, so we headed out to the truck. Vera—knowing how much I was crushing on him and being one of those homies where you don’t have to say a word, she just has your back—let me take shotgun and then pretended to be distracted with what she saw out the window. Now that it was just the three of us, and we weren’t in a classroom, Hot Office Guy seemed to warm up even more, and he even asked us what we were up to for the weekend. Girl, this was my in.

“A bunch of us are going to see a movie tonight,” I said, totally casual. I was soooo casual, right? Very casual. Absolutely casual. “You should come!” Thank God the words came out casually, because inside I was freaking out. Should I have said, “You can come.” Oh, no, that sounds sexual! Maybe I should have asked him, “Do you want to come?” How about, “Come with us.” Or was that too casual? I’m secretly Home Alone screaming in my head. Hands on my cheeks and all.

Fortunately, he didn’t seem to notice. “Sounds great,” he said. “If I get off work in time, I’ll come join you.” I wrote down my number on a scrap of paper, and he drove off. Then I sprinted into my apartment to wait for him to call.

He didn’t call.

I tried to shake it off, but I had to admit that this really bummed me out. Even if he didn’t fancy me back, I thought this was at least a chance for us to be friends (ah, who am I kidding? He was hot as hell, and I definitely wanted him to fancy me back), but there was no way I was going to let this show. I walked into class on Monday determined to act like I’d completely forgotten that there was even a chance that he was going to call. So I devised a very intricate game plan. Step one, don’t react. Step two, repeat step one.

At the end of class, as I’m getting ready to leave, he pulls me aside. “Hey, Lisa,” he said, “I’m sorry I didn’t call on Friday. I was going to, but then I fell asleep.”

A beat. And another beat. Inside Lisa is screaming. You fell asleeeeeeep? I was more appalled than Rachel was when Ross fell asleep in the middle of her eighteen-page letter (front and back). It sounded like the lamest excuse that I’ve ever heard, but I reminded myself of my genius game plan, so I just laugh it off. I turn and walk right out the door, all the while thinking, “Be cool, Lisa, be cool.” There was no way I would let him see I was bothered. No. Way. I was still playing it cool when my phone rang that night.

“Hey, Lisa,” he says when I answer, “I’m sorry we didn’t get to hang out this weekend, but one of my friends is having a movie premiere, and I wanted to see if you would want to go with me.”

This is the part where I wish I could say I played it cool. That I made him work for it. But, alas, all the coolness I had earned went right in the trash, along with my Tetley tea bag. I answer before he’s even finished asking. “Sure, Tom,” I said, “that sounds great.”

What I know now, which I didn’t know then, was that Tom Bilyeu always has a plan, and seeming to ignore me was part of it. First, he had to wait until the end of our classes, because what if we went out, had a really awkward time, and then had to stare at each other for the next four weeks? Second, we had to hang out one-on-one. If he’d come along to the movie with me and all of my friends, there would have been zero chance for us to connect and have a real conversation. Third, he had to have an excuse. Even though we were both adults and there was only a four-year age difference between us, a teacher taking a student on a date was a little bit of a gray area (and when I say gray, I mean totally forbidden). So a film premiere was perfect. If anyone asked, he could always say that he thought it would be a great opportunity for me to learn about the movie industry.

And last but definitely not least, Tom wasn’t looking for a relationship, and I had to leave the country in a few weeks. Where was the downside?

The movie premiere was being held at the Directors Guild of America on Sunset Boulevard, and I went HAM getting ready. Not only is this a date but it’s also a big deal. I spend two hours shaving, blow-drying my hair while rapping along to Eminem, and primping and prepping and trying on like seven different outfits before going back to the very first one I tried on. And then the doorbell rings. I can barely contain my excitement as I rush to answer it. I fling the door open, and Tom’s standing there in… his work clothes. Yeah, he definitely didn’t go home and change, because he’s still wearing a shirt with the NYFA logo on it. The same one he wears Every. Single. Day!

We walked outside, and I was equally impressed with his car. His ride was a big, beefy “old man” Buick with a back seat that was so chock-full of stuff he could put Public Storage out of business. I wouldn’t say that I was superficial, but in my conservative Greek culture, men’s and women’s roles were as defined as they were back in the caveman days. Man provide for woman, woman take care of man, that sort of thing. A nice car and nice clothes were a guy’s way of signaling that he could provide. But then he did something that no one had ever done for me before—he opened the car door for me. The caaaaar doooor!

“CHIVALRY IS ALLLLIVE,” I screamed to myself as I climbed into the Buick. Maybe I could get used to American boys. Or, at least, this one. So when he asked if I wanted to get a bite to eat, I nodded harder than a bobblehead. Then he pulled into a strip mall and took me to a Chinese restaurant with a B rating. “What the hell is this hole?” I’m thinking as I pick up the laminated menu. But ten minutes in, I couldn’t have cared less about the rating, or the fact that my ass was going numb from the rip in the chair that was digging into my butt cheeks. Tom was unlike anyone I’d ever gone out with before.

The shocking, nonchalant bombs that came out of that man’s mouth before we’d even ordered our entrées… He didn’t know if he wanted to get married and had never really thought about kids (what? That’s even a question in your mind?). He told me with such endearment that he talked to his mum every day. He didn’t believe in God (huh?), and he just outright said, with no shame or hesitation, that he liked porn. Did I mention he just said it to me? Out loud? Like, in public?

This couldn’t be any more different than the people I’d grown up with in North London. Everyone there got married and had kids. Everyone believed in God, because that was what our parents, grandparents, great-grandparents (you see where I’m going) did, and so it was a given, like the sky being blue. And no one—I repeat, no one—talked openly about anything to do with sex. I occasionally heard my dad and his friends tell rude jokes, but that was it, and I would have eaten soap before I let Yiayia know that I knew that the stork did not, in fact, deliver babies.

Tom was Marvin the Martian to me—totally bloody alien. He wasn’t putting on airs, or graces, or cologne. And, maaaaan, I felt like I could breathe. Everything Tom said got me thinking and made me start examining my own beliefs about who I was, what I thought, and why I thought it. Then he stun gunned me with the paralyzing question, why do I believe in God? And the embarrassing truth was the only answer I could actually think of was “Because my dad told me to.” Yep, I was twenty-one years old, and THAT was my reasoning. I’d never even considered that God was something I could choose to believe in. And I had seen porn before. Maybe, with Tom, I could admit that and not be judged. Tom wasn’t trying to be perfect, and it started to dawn on me that might mean he didn’t expect me to be perfect either (though I still left dinner starving because I thought a first date was too soon to stuff my face with egg rolls).

Tom was kind; he was attentive and a total gentleman. Plus, he wasn’t the least bit pretentious or materialistic. I soon realized that his messy car, his work clothes, and the strip-mall restaurant weren’t just signs that Tom didn’t care about impressing me but signs that he didn’t care about impressing anybody. He knew what he liked. For example, the food at this particular Chinese restaurant and the dozen free NYFA T-shirts he got so he didn’t have to do laundry that often. He was totally confident in who he was, and that was very frikin’ attractive.

His confidence in being himself put me in the same headspace, and it gave me total permission to be myself. So I didn’t try to impress him (aside from not eating all the egg rolls). I hadn’t had many expectations for this date—other than someday telling my grandchildren that their grandma once had a hot fling with a hot American dude—and since Tom wasn’t looking for a relationship either, we were both just being our weird selves and talking about things that people rarely talk about on first dates—like God and porn.

And then, after that, we hung out almost every day. We never talked about having a relationship or if we were seeing anyone else, or where we thought this was going. It was always just, “What are you doing tomorrow? Cool, let’s hang out.” On my last week in the country, we went on a double date to have a s’more-out at Dockweiler Beach with some of his friends, and toward the end of the evening, his best friend asked us, “So, Lisa’s leaving soon. What are you guys gonna do?”

Up to this point, we hadn’t really discussed it. Mostly out of fear of admitting we had both really fallen for each other and it was finally coming to an end (cue “Summer Lovin’ ”). Then Tom said matter-of-factly, “I’m going to use all the money and vacation time I was saving to go to New York and visit her in London instead.” He looked at me and smiled. That was the first I’d heard of this plan, but it got a big hell yeah from me! Even though he worked for the New York Film Academy, Tom had never been to New York, and I knew how badly he wanted to go, especially since he was thinking of moving there. The fact that he was willing to postpone this to come see me almost made me drop my marshmallow into the sand.

Within three weeks of my leaving Los Angeles, Tom got his first-ever passport. Within a week of that, he’d booked a flight, and just a couple of weeks later, I was watching him come down the jetway at Heathrow towing a bright pink suitcase that he’d borrowed from his mum.

We were staying with my mum, who made us sleep in separate rooms until my older brother Beeve (aka Steve) called her out on it. “Mum,” he said, “Tom came all this way to see Lisa, and you’re making him sleep in another room?” Tom had gone out of his way to make a good impression on my family and had brought everyone personalized gifts, so my brother wasn’t just sticking up for me. He really liked this guy. Tom was also the first guy I’d dated whom I introduced to my dad. I was absolutely petrified. But since Tom was a “xeno” (a person who isn’t Greek; an outsider), my dad didn’t take the relationship all that seriously.

Two whole weeks seemed like a lot when he booked the trip, but they went by in a blink; before we knew it, it was almost time for Tom and his mum’s suitcase to go home. Then when he got back, he wrote me an email and said the words I had been feeling: “I’ve fallen in love with you.” Suddenly, the stakes were higher.

We were no longer hoping to see each other again. Now we were planning our lives around it, and doing whatever it took to make it work. We learned the fine print of visa laws, frequent-flyer miles, and all the other ins and outs of having roughly 5,437 miles between you and the person you love. Seven months later, on a warm summer night at Alexandra Palace, overlooking all of London, Tom got down on one knee and asked me to marry him. And, homie, I said yes!

We had a big, fat Greek wedding. And I don’t mean that as a joke. I mean the movie is like watching our wedding video. It was exactly like it. Tom stood in a paddling pool and got christened. We had two hundred guests at the wedding—190 of them were from my side, and 10 were from his. The Americans got lit on a shot of ouzo, not knowing they weren’t supposed to chug but rather sip it.

After our wedding, we honeymooned in Italy, but we definitely did not “when in Rome” it. Every night, I’d ask Tom where he wanted to eat, and God bless his cotton socks, he would answer, “The Hard Rock Cafe, of course.” Finally, on the last night, I was salivating for some good ol’ authentic Italian food, and I knew that if I asked Tom where he wanted to eat again, he was going to say the bloody Hard Rock Cafe! So I finally, for the first time, spoke up: “Please, I can’t eat at the Hard Rock again,” I said. “Can we pllleeeeeease go somewhere Italian?” Tom, without missing a beat, replied, “Babe, if you wanted to go somewhere else, why didn’t you just say so? You kept asking me where I wanted to go, so I kept telling you. But if you want to go to a different restaurant, then of course. Anything for my baby!” By speaking up, I actually got what I wanted. And in this case it was to devour a bowl of pasta. Tom, not surprisingly, got a pizza.

Though I didn’t realize it at the time, this was such a huge, important lesson: In life, as in dinner, you’ve got to ask for what you want, instead of hoping that someone else will give it to you. Even with all the Hard Rock burgers, it was literally a perfect honeymoon, and we were madly in love when we headed, for the first time ever, to our new shared home: America.

Our first stop in the US was Tacoma, Washington, where Tom had put all of his stuff in storage at his mum’s house. There, we celebrated with his family who hadn’t been able to come to England for the wedding, then packed up a U-Haul, hitched it to the beefy Buick, and started our drive south to Los Angeles. I felt like I was in a rom-com. Married to the man of my dreams and road-tripping to California? The romance! Tom swerving across the freeway when I got attacked by a giant vampire bat and screamed and flailed like I’d just seen Ted Bundy in the back seat? The comedy! Tom insisting that said “giant vampire bat” was actually just a grasshopper? More comedy!

Since we were trying to save as much money as possible, we didn’t want to stop at motels, so we’d pull into parking lots to try to catch a few hours of sleep here or there before driving on. I’d get as comfortable as I could in the passenger seat and fall asleep with a gear shift digging into my thigh, and then wake up an hour later in a panic, thinking the car was about to roll out into the highway because the engine was running (which actually turned out to be just Tom switching the heater on to keep us from turning into frozen corpses).

We’d worked so hard to finally be living in the same place, to be able to be together without a gray cloud shadowing us with a return ticket. We felt like we’d already accomplished so much. We had big dreams for what our future would look like—making movies, living in a beautiful home, taking the world by storm. After all, we were heading to LA, baby. Our first stop when we arrived was Tom’s friend’s apartment in the Valley, where we stayed until we could find a place of our own.

I set about learning the American way, and walked half a mile with a garbage bag full of dirty laundry slung over my shoulder and officially visited my first laundromat, trying to convince myself that it was a cool and “American” thing to do. Just like in the movies! Except it was nothing like the movies: There was no spontaneous singing. There was no wise old lady who read my future. There was no shirtless, six-pack-ab dude washing his only tank. It was just… laundry. For like, five hours.

I couldn’t wait for us to have our very own place, and after a long four weeks, we found a seven-hundred-square-foot apartment in West Hollywood. Ahhh—a place that I could finally call home. We had come to the end of the rom-com, the credits rolled, and our life as husband and wife had officially begun.

From the time Tom and I met to the time we moved into that apartment, everything we had done had been in service of something bigger. Most of our goals and milestones were built around figuring out how we were going to be together, and we were always jumping through hoops and figuring out logistics to reach them. But that was finished. We were no longer scheming about how we could work around immigration restrictions, lessen family resistance, and save pennies for plane tickets to be with each other. We were together—and for good, at that. It was go-time—except I had nowhere to go.

Tom headed back to work at the New York Film Academy, and on his first day, I gave him a kiss and sent him off. I closed the door behind him and realized I had no idea what to do with myself. I had spent so much time and effort to get to this moment that I hadn’t really thought about the logistics of what would happen next. I slowly walked over and took a seat on my mother-in-law’s generously donated sofa. I looked around.

Now what?