Hey guys,
Today’s blog post is going to be a review of the book “Becoming Flawesome: The Key to Living an Imperfectly Authentic Life” by co-founder of Mind Valley Kristina Mand-Lakhiani.
About Becoming Flawesome
Becoming Flawesome is an excellent guide to becoming our most authentic selves. Included in this book is an exploration of concepts such as success, happiness, self-love and authenticity.
Messages that are also included in this book are of accepting our imperfections, feeling the full spectrum of our emotions and becoming braver.
Only from a place of self-acceptance and self-love can we truly become flawesome (be both flawed and awesome).
In Becoming Flawesome, Mand-Lakhiani explores the ideas of authenticity, vulnerability, unlearning perfectionism and how to stop valuing the opinions of strangers.
Kristina Mand-Lakhiani exposes the flaws of our societal conditioning that range from hiding our true selves away to wearing social masks in order to achieve arbitrary goals just for the sake of fitting in.
Are we, as readers, living in our truths? Why should we unlearn our perfectionism? How do we stop shaming ourselves for how we feel?
Finally, why should we not blindly chase society’s idea of material success and find a more fullfilling and personal definition instead?
Kristina Mand-Lakhiani encourages us to self-reflect, introspect and gain self-awareness by offering her readers 48 unique and powerful journaling exercises.
Kristina Mand-Lakhiani’s Becoming Flawesome argues that we should live more authentically. She argues in favor of embracing our imperfections as opposed to hiding them.
She encourages speaking our truth and valuing honesty. I also found it quite interesting how she mentions Brenee Brown’s work on vulnerability and how being vulnerable is essentially courage in the face of uncertainty.
While I do think that Becoming Flawesome’s strength is the choice of ideas and content, I worry that people who value external validation, status and material success may not be willing to do the type of work required for this type of inner growth.
Whether that is the case because of blind conformity or the fear of judgment and rejection, this may still be an obstacle for some people.
Becoming critical to our internal processes is a lifetime’s work, Kristina realized after 40 years that she had been living inauthentically and bravely sought to unlearn the conditioning that got her to that point.
Despite all of the external success that she had achieved, her growth required courage and commitment that not all possess.
If you have a passion for personal development and self-improvement, this is a great read. Every concept in the book is communicated in an articulate, entertaining and easy to follow way.
Kristina Mand-Lakhiani makes the ideas relatable and human as opposed to being out of reach or irrelevant to our time.
“I was 40 when I started suspecting that I was living a lie. Not a bad lie. Not a complete and utter lie. Just a little pretending—a mask here and there, a little playing along to fit in.”
“Authenticity is not a vector; it is a force that has no outward direction. Authenticity is your relationship with yourself. There is only you and no external object, no one but you to exert the force toward. The moment you try to use authenticity as a means of influence, you are giving it a direction outward.”
“We put on the masks to be liked and accepted, yet to be truly liked and truly accepted we need to learn to take off our masks. This is when your journey back to you really begins.”
“When you cannot love yourself, be kind to yourself. It will do the job for now, and with time, it will teach you true, pure, unconditional self-love, the kind that doesn’t need distortions to feel good.”
I rated this book 5 stars because of the ideas that it covers as well as the easy to follow style in which they are presented.
From learning to become more vulnerable to speaking our truth, the ideas in this book are truly worth examining as part of our personal development.
Valuing internal happiness, unlearning perfectionism and removing our masks in order to find ourselves are timeless lessons and definitely made this book worth recommending to you.
About the author:
Kristina Mand-Lakhiani is a co-founder of the personal growth empire Mind Valley, an international speaker, entrepreneur, artist, philanthropist and mother of two.
You can find more information about Kristina here: Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, and website.
Title:
Becoming Flawesome: The Key to Living an Imperfectly Authentic Life
Author:
Kristina Mand-Lakhiani
Genre:
Inspiration & Motivation, Personal Growth
Publisher:
Hay House Inc.
Release Date:
July 10, 2023
Format:
Ebook, paperback, audiobook
Pages:
305
Rating:
★★★★★
“Becoming Flawesome is like 10 years’ worth of therapy in one book. I would encourage every single woman who has ever doubted herself to read this book.”
— Amy White, editor
#BecomingFlawesome
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