Want to Change Your Life and Change the World? Everything You Need to Make a Difference Is Already Inside You

Growing up in Scotland, Jane Wurwand learned the power of conviction. “It never occurred to me that you didn't stand up for what you believed in,” says the author and entrepreneur. “And you always showed an opinion.”

This is attributed, in large part, to Wurwand’s father dying when she was barely three. She witnessed her mother raise her and her three sisters all on her own while juggling a nursing career. Wurwand learned from her mother the need to own your voice, work hard, and have a vocation. “It's about learning how to do something so that you have a skill set in your hands.”

Wurwand did just this. She turned her life-long passion for skin into a successful career as a skin therapist. This led to her founding Dermalogica, a wildly successful global personal care collection, in 1986. The brand mirrors Wurwand’s steadfastness: It touted simple-yet-effective ingredients before other brands were doing so. It favored a gender-inclusive approach. And it never caved to trends.  

Nearly 40 years later, Dermalogica continues to stand out in a sea of modern skincare brands. The secret? It goes back to Wurwand staying true to what she wants and believes, which she writes about in her book, Skin in the Game: Everything You Need Is Already Inside of You. As her title suggests, the tools we need to “live a self-determined life” are innate—it’s just up to us to tap into them.

Because that, as she says, is the true way to leave a mark in the world.

A Conversation with Jane Wurwand

In your book, you write, “I have lost homes, people, family, friends, pets, and possessions, but I have never quite lost my way.” How?

You have to dig in deep to examine what your purpose is. What is it you know how to do? What is it you love to do? What is it that the world needs and what lights your heart up?

In the book, I talk about examining, as simplistic as it seems, what you loved to do between the ages of 9 and 12. Because every single one of us, I believe, is built for a singular purpose, and to live that life as big as we can to find that purpose and deliver on it. That's our true path to happiness: To feel that you are fulfilling the reason why you are here in the first place. We have to dig in deep to find it and I think that takes retracing our steps back through what we love to do. Not just what we are good at, but also what we love to do.

In other words, get on the train and make sure you get off at the right station.

You embody that because you write about how you were always fascinated with skin, and you used to save up for tiny packets of face masks.

There was always something about skin, how it was tactile, for me. Skin therapy was never about being pretty or beautiful. I saw it as a way of nurturing and caring. As you said, I used to buy these little yeast-pac clay masks with my pocket money and put a third on so it would last. I love the ritualization of skincare. That led to my understanding that I was on the right train. But I did stop at the wrong station once when I became a makeup artist, which was one of my first jobs. I realized that I liked it, but I didn’t love it. So I had to dig in for that nugget of what it is I love to do.

You believe that the choices we make in our lives matter, but what really matters is whether we get to make those choices for ourselves. How can we have that conviction?

The first thing is to decide that you want a self-determined life. For me, that was important—which goes back to where I started, watching my mother raise four children on her own while working. We didn't have money. What really served to teach me was I want to be able to make the decisions in my life. I don't want to feel like flotsam and jetsam in the sea of humanity. Success, for me, is about having choices, opportunities, and options. If you have those, that is the framework of a self-determined life. If you don't have choices, opportunities, and options, then someone else is making those decisions for you.

So again, it starts with asking, Do I want a self-determined life? Am I prepared to risk the unpopularity of speaking up and saying what I think? You can always do it with kindness and respect. It doesn't have to be rude. But are you willing to risk popularity? Some people are people-pleasers, and they don’t want to make anyone upset with them, which is understandable. But you end up living someone else's life doing this and not your life.

What tools can help us get there?

I am a great believer in visualization and manifestation. Visualize what you want. It’s like looking at a photograph of someone you're meant to meet at the airport. If you have seen it in your mind, you've got a much better chance of recognizing it when it comes to you. If you've never visualized what you want to happen, when an opportunity comes to you, you won’t recognize it because you haven't had it in your mind.

Start with that:

Visualize what you want.

Ask for help from whatever power you think can support you.

Stay focused.

Don't give up.

Again, I think of it like a train journey. You're getting on a train in LA and you're going to San Francisco. You're going to go through lots of stations. Van Nuys. Santa Barbara. Santa Cruz. If you know you're going to San Francisco, you don't get off the train. You stay on it until you get to your destination. And when you see San Francisco out the window, you think, this is where I am to be. I'm getting off here.

That’s how I've lived my life. I visualize what I want. And then I wait to see the opportunities—and they always come.

The title of your book says that everything we need is inside of us. But it might be scary to explore this. How do we find the courage to explore within and be the leaders of our own lives?

It is going to require being scared. And it is going to require not having all the information you feel you may need to make a decision. You're going to have to take a bit of a leap of faith. But this is the true path. When we find what we want and our purpose, it unlocks happiness. So that deserves quite a bit of attention, at least as much time and energy and research and thinking as, say, choosing your bathroom tile or posting on social media. This is a single-focused idea: Why am I here? This will require risk. Some people may have to leave relationships. Some people may have to leave their countries. Some people may have to change careers. These are huge ideas—but there’s always the opportunity.

Think about what you want to do and start small. It can even be saying, I’m not going to conform this way or I am going to take that risk. When I was writing my book I had to reset and stop for 14 months and think about what the heat of my message was. So think about it, visualize it, and then start the process when you see it because that will engage you in motion. Have the courage to be scared and to move forward. When you are invested enough in your future, you will figure it out. It’s going to be bumpy. It's going to be tricky at times. There's going to be wide bits and narrow bits. Dark times and light times. Keep focused on where it is you're going and have faith in that.

It comes down to faith. I do believe that I'm here for a specific reason. And I know I have baked inside me all the tools I'm going to need to fulfill it.

Jane Wurwand is the founder of Dermalogica and the author of Skin in the Game: Everything You Need Is Already Inside You. Order your copy here.