Lead from the Outside: How to Build Your Future and Make Real Change

Drawing on questions proposed by her tax law professor Anne Alstott, Abrams offers the following questions for readers:

1. What do I want?
2. Why do I want it?
3. How do I get there? (43).

Abrams suggests that one barrier preventing people from taking charge of their futures, or from dreaming up a future at all, is the belief they aren’t worthy to aim high. To this end, Abrams relates two formative experiences: attending a summer camp and adapting to life at Spelman College. The former experience taught Abrams to adopt the assured confidence of her more privileged peers and the latter helped her to cultivate new ideas about Black excellence and achievement. The moral is that once the fear of failure or inadequacy is banished or quieted, the work of personal growth can begin. Abrams encourages readers to move assuredly from ideation to action and provides a worksheet called an “Ambition Exercise” to aid readers in naming and describing their ambitions.

Abrams admits that the “potency” of fear can hinder the realization of one’s ambitions, especially when one’s lack of privilege forms yet another hindrance to one’s success. She notes that the conditions that create this fear are real and are not to be underestimated.