Book SummaryEverybody Always, by Bob Goff

1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of Everybody Always

We all want to become the best versions of ourselves, but what does that mean and how do you measure your success? Do your accomplishments and accolades equate to the best version of yourself, or do you seek a deeper connection with the world and people around you? According to Everybody, Always, the best version of who you can be is the one who is most in line with God’s plan for you. And God’s plan for everyone is to become love and live as Jesus lived. To become love, you must rid your life of fear, doubt, and judgment and put your faith in God’s love. When you become love, you become the person God created you to be.

The following advice provides a roadmap for you to find the courage to love everyone, even those who are difficult to love. Only through this unconditional form of love will you find yourself.

Love Others Like Jesus Loves You

Let Love Define You

If you love Jesus, then you must love all of Jesus. God created people in Jesus’s image, which means Jesus lives inside all of us. If you only love the people who are easy to love, you are only loving part of Jesus. Jesus wants you to give love freely so that others can see the power of His love through you. That is your purpose as part of God’s world, and when you fulfill that purpose, you move farther down the path to your true identity.

You may find it hard to show love to everyone freely. You likely experience fear or anxiety when you meet people who scare you, make you uncomfortable, or simply annoy you. This fear is normal, but realize that when you love as Jesus does, you are on the right path with God. You have nothing to fear because God wants you to succeed. Define your life by your faith and ability to love, and you will always receive God’s love in return.

Approach Your Faith With Childlike Wonder

Children are curious by nature and open to adventure. They seek to discover new things about the world and themselves. God wants you to approach your faith in this same way because when you explore your faith like a child, you stop being afraid of what you’ll find. When you fear life or others, you hinder your ability to feel God’s love. You want assurances that your love will be accepted or that God is truly with you, but you can’t experience God’s love from behind barriers.

You have to wander down the path laid out before you with faith that God will guide you to your purpose. Learning to love everyone is a life-long commitment, not a momentary action when you feel strong in your faith. Get out of your comfort zone and be willing to explore the unknown parts of yourself to grow stronger in your faith. You will find it easier to feel love and share love with the world.

Love Your Neighbors First and Foremost

Jesus said you should love your neighbors first. He did this because when you learn to love people outside your personal world first, you will be able to love everyone more easily. Your neighbors are not literally the people living in your neighborhood. Your neighbors are everyone you see around you. They are the bus driver, the difficult co-worker, the man sleeping on the street, the person with a different lifestyle, and the person with different beliefs than yours. Everyone is your neighbor, and you are theirs. When you love yourself, you delight God. Love your neighbor like you love yourself to experience more of God’s joy.

Help People Grow, Not Fail

You don’t like to be told what to do, and neither does anyone else. But when you disagree with someone or believe you know what is best, you often try to force your opinions on others or control what they do. Think about how you react when someone tries to control your decisions. Even if you comply and do what others tell you, your actions are inauthentic because they didn’t come from a place of love in your heart. And if you aren’t able to live up to others’ expectations, you feel ashamed.

Rather than telling people what they should do, show people who they are. People often rise to the occasion of who others believe them to be. When you show someone who they are, you give them agency to become that person any way they see fit. Their actions become authentic, and you have given them faith in themselves, which equates to faith in God. Becoming love means granting that gift to everyone you see. Don’t set people up to fail by trying to control what they do. Shame leads to silence and distances people from one another. Give people the freedom to become who God has made them to be, and give them love to help support their journey.

Build Kingdoms for All to Enjoy

God built his kingdom for all of us to live in and wants us to build kingdoms for each other. But most of us build castles surrounded by moats and barricades to keep us safe from the outside world. Your castle is built with the aspects of your life, such as your job, relationships, and possessions. You might build a beautiful castle, but you can’t show everyone love from atop a turret. Instead, build a kingdom that’s open to everyone as God has done for you.

Within your kingdom, commit to loving everyone equally with respect and deference. This is how God loves the people in His kingdom. When you become love, you share your love without restrictions or agenda. And when there is no agenda to your love, you will feel the power of that love and all it can bring to your kingdom. Be with people, not just near people, in your love. If you can be with people, you will be with God.

Commit to Love 30 Seconds at a Time

It’s easy to agree to love people better or follow Jesus’s commandments, but it’s harder to actually do those things. In both instances, you can stay on track in your quest to become love by loving people for 30 seconds. When you meet difficult people, show them love for 30 seconds. When you’ve reached the end, commit to 30 more seconds. Thirty seconds may not seem like a lot, but it’s a reasonable amount...

Everybody Always Summary Part 1: Fulfill Your Purpose in Life by Loving Everyone Like Jesus Loves You

How do you know who you are as a person? What aspects of your life make up your identity? Maybe it’s your job, the people you surround yourself with, or a certificate or ID. But these things don’t encapsulate the true essence of you. According to Jesus, your identity is based on your ability to love and how you show that love to others. Love is not a thing you seek. It’s something you transform into. And if you only love the people who are easy to love, you’re not fully completing your transformation.

If you want to become love, you must learn to love difficult people, or those you don’t agree with or who make you uncomfortable. You must love everyone without judgment. That doesn’t mean you have to blindly trust and embrace everyone. God granted you the power to discern who brings goodness to your life and who brings toxicity. As part of your gifts from God, it’s okay to differentiate between the two types of people. But God also gave you the power to forgive, understand, and be benevolent. You can be discerning without being demeaning.

It’s not easy to love people you don’t like or are uncomfortable with. When you meet or interact with a difficult person, you likely put...

Shortform Exercise: Keep Your Opinions to Yourself

Many of us believe we know what’s best for the people in our lives, and some of us extend that belief to people we don’t know. What makes us feel this way, and how can we learn to keep our opinions to ourselves?

Think of the last time you gave someone advice on what they should do with their life. Who was it, and what was the advice?

Shortform Exercise: Get Over Your Shame

When we mess up or do something to hurt another, we often feel ashamed. This shame makes us vulnerable and afraid to face others, but to stay within a place of love, we must find a way to reach out to those we fear.

What was the last thing you did that made you feel ashamed? Did you hurt someone, act immorally, or screw up something important?

Everybody Always Summary Part 2: The Simplicity of God’s Plan for You

When you become love, you acknowledge one very simple truth—we are all with each other in God’s kingdom. That one word “with” is the key to everything. People often feel like fancy prayers or long monologues to God are required to reach him. They’re not. God doesn’t care how dressed-up your language is; what He cares about is how much love you have in your heart and how you show it.

God built a kingdom for all of us to live in, and his desire is for us to build kingdoms within His. Instead, many of us build castles out of the aspects of our lives. Your career, family, friends, and possessions make up the blueprints for your castle. Once you build it, others tell you what a great castle you have, but a castle is not a kingdom. Castles are isolated and protected to keep people out, whereas kingdoms are vast and open to everyone. Kingdoms are created when people come together.

Because kingdoms are open to all people, there will be some you don’t identify with or get. It’s how you treat those people that shows the strength of your faith and love. **God knows you won’t always know what to do or how to act, but He showers you with love anyway. You need to do the same for...

Shortform Exercise: Fail Better

God does not want us to be perfect. He wants us to try to live with love. But our fear of failing and our shame often impede our growth. We must learn to see failure as a foundation from which to grow.

Think of a recent time when you felt like a failure. What were the circumstances and how did you fail?

Shortform Exercise: Make Love a Habit, Not an Act

It’s easier said than done to promise to love everyone all the time, so the moments when you are able to feel significant. You may want to boast about the good things you’ve done for others, but you need to learn to love without external validation.

When you do extraordinary things for other people, do you tell your friends and family about them? Why or why not?

Everybody Always Summary Part 3: Personal and Spiritual Growth

You like to play it safe most of the time. It’s natural to feel more comfortable making moves when you have all the answers you think you need to move forward safely. You want assurances that things will work out before you take a leap. But recognize that the leap you finally take is not a leap of faith. There’s a difference between staying safe and being safe. When you lack faith and only do what is comfortable, you don’t grow. You stay where you are as the same person. God wants you to learn and grow under His love, and the only way to do that is to have faith in His love.

God doesn’t give you uncertainty and hardships because He enjoys watching you struggle. He does this because He knows overcoming obstacles is the only way for you to learn about yourself and move forward to a better place. Becoming love means understanding that discomfort and struggle are God’s way of helping you grow in your faith. He wants you to be brave. He wants you to realize that you are the embodiment of His love, and as such, you can take risks and manage fear because you know it brings you closer to Him.

Don’t Wait for Green Lights

Think of your faith like the green lights that let...

Shortform Exercise: Learn to Leap

It’s not always possible to know how to make your desires a reality, and things don’t always go the way you want them to. But remembering to have faith can help you feel less afraid of taking chances.

What is one recent moment where something you expected to happen didn’t?

Shortform Exercise: Give What You Have to Give

It’s not always easy to know how to help others, especially if we feel ill-equipped for the challenge. But we all have something to offer that can be useful to others.

What are some ways in which you’ve helped others experiencing hardships recently?

Everybody Always Summary Part 4: How You Love Is What Matters

When you get to heaven, rumor has it you’ll have a conversation with Jesus. Through this conversation, you’ll hear about the things you didn’t understand while you were alive. You’ll learn about the many ways Jesus came into your life, and your entire perspective of how you’ve lived will change. The most surprising thing you’ll learn are the many forms Jesus took and how many times you actually met Him.

In anticipation of this conversation, you likely have a list of accomplishments you want to tout. You’ll talk about all of the good things you did for certain people, and you’ll hope it was enough. But what you’ll find out is that all people are Jesus. Everyone you meet is Jesus, so if you truly want to love Jesus, you must love everyone like you would Him.

But there is more to it than that. Loving easy people is easy. Jesus intentionally puts people in the world that challenge your beliefs or safety or time. How you treat those people is the real measure of how well you love God. **The people who are needy, poor, in jail, living less than moral lives, holding differing opinions, and living different lives are the ones through which you are meant to prove your faith in...

Shortform Exercise: Learn to Fill Your Bucket

It’s so easy to get caught up in our own lives, we forget that our lives affect the lives of others. But if we commit to becoming love, we will learn how to fill our buckets to become positive people for those around us.

What would you say your two biggest character flaws are? What evidence supports this belief?

Shortform Exercise: Overcome Your Fears

There are things we want in life but are too afraid to ask for, and there are things we want to do but are too afraid to try. If we want to grow and reach our potential, we need to stop being afraid.

What is one thing you want to do but believe you can’t? What fears keep you from trying?

Everybody Always Summary Part 5: Living Like God

As you’ve learned, if you want to live a life that fulfills your purpose to God, you must love your enemies. Of all the ways God wants us to become love, you may find this one to be the most difficult. Your enemies are likely cruel and selfish. They may be arrogant or do terrible things to others. But Jesus doesn’t turn his back on anyone. There is nothing you can do that will make Jesus stop loving you, and the same is true for your enemies. God is the epitome of perfection, and part of that perfection is His continued love for hard-to-love people. Therefore, if you want to become love, you must strive for this same type of perfection.

You probably think the idea of being perfect is as far-fetched as pigs flying. No one is perfect, right? You might do your best to be nice to people and only say bad things behind their backs. You may have the ability to forgive people who’ve harmed you, at least superficially. You perform these actions because you think they make you a better person, but when your heart is not fully open and benevolent, you aren’t truly changing. If you can’t learn to love your enemies, you will always fall shy of becoming the best version of yourself....

Shortform Exercise: Are You Ready to Become Love?

The guidance provided in Everybody, Always is meant to help you find your spiritual path with God and learn to love yourself and others without fear. This journey will not be easy, but if you want to become love, it will likely be worth it.

What is the most significant aspect of this book that has changed how you view yourself and others?

Shortform Exercise: Find Love for Difficult People

We all have people in our lives who make us angry or who we simply don’t like for one reason or another. It’s too easy to turn away from what we don’t like, so how can we start to turn toward people instead?

Think of someone who you’ve recently disagreed with or found frustrating or annoying. What are your thoughts concerning this person, and why do you feel this way?