Becoming Flawesome is a self-aware book that emphasizes the beauty of imperfection. We live in a society where the standards are really high and impossible to reach since nothing is perfect. Lakhiani shows the real way one becomes happy and satisfied without following the established norms.
Book Title: Becoming Flawesome, The Key To Living An Imperfectly Authentic Life
Author: Kristina Mand-Lakhiani
Date of Reading: Sept 2023
Rating: 8.5/10
What Is Being Said In Detail
This book is all about self-reflection and improvement in a healthy way.
In the beginning, what we are shown is the world we live in, full of hustling and perfectionism. We get all of this just to get ready to swallow the pill of truth that is waiting for us in the next chapters.
Once we comprehend the truth, we are given the formulas of actual success starting with the skills we should all master: honesty, kindness and courage.
The lesson we learn in the end is that nobody’s path is the same, each one of us takes a different road to the common goal.
CHAPTER ONE – The Path Back to You
In the first chapter, the writer comes to a realization that she is not having herself at 100%. Hence, the narrative continues with the inquiry of whether we experience a sense of shame towards ourselves at certain times.
There is a discussion about perfection and why we fail at it. Finally, we’re being introduced to two concepts: flow and resistance.
CHAPTER TWO – Finding Your Own Truth
Chapter 2 begins with a warning of taking a red pill of our life, also known as our own truth. Each generation comes with their own ideals and beliefs. It talks about whether authenticity is internal or external.
The term “vulnerability” is extensively examined throughout this chapter. We get to realize how desperate we are about our illusions and self-criticism.
CHAPTER THREE – Switching Off Autopilot
Chapter 3 draws a connection between our choices and those made by others, illustrating that everyone’s journey is unique despite sharing a common objective.
We get to know the concept of incremental changes and how they affect our lives. The formula of good transformation as well as the first step towards our change are given.
CHAPTER FOUR – The Art of Imperfection
The writer starts this chapter by asking us who we are once we take all of our roles aside. As we dive in further, we come to a conclusion about what emotions are and how to feel them the right way. We are, in-depth, introduced to a formula for dealing with painful emotions.
CHAPTER FIVE – Honesty
This chapter of the book shows what the process of shifting looks like, keeping us aware that there is no unique way of achieving it. Along with the writer, we go through a set of skills to gain: honesty, kindness, and courage.
There are instructions for communicating with honesty, digging deep into each of the instructions given. At the end of the chapter, we run into the concept of empathy.
CHAPTER SIX – Kindness
As the previous chapter went through honesty, chapter 6 is focused more on kindness. It’s an influential ability that we must initially master by applying it to ourselves. Once we learn how to be kind to ourselves, we will not have a problem being kind to others.
CHAPTER SEVEN – Courage
Chapter 7 is about the third skill I have mentioned before, and it is courage. We face with our enemy – indecision. In order to excel in this powerful skill, we must sacrifice our comfort zone. Ultimately, our individual journey belongs to us, and we have the authority to determine its direction and evolution.
CHAPTER EIGHT – Living Flawesomely
In the final chapter, we learn about the nature of happiness and whether we should pursue it. It demonstrates how our relationship with ourselves influences our connections with others. Finally, it emphasizes that nobody requires improvement unless they explicitly seek it.
CONCLUSION – There Are No Recipes in Life
The conclusion highlights the beauty of duality, suggesting that there is no one-size-fits-all recipe for a perfect, happy life. It likens this concept to dancing with a partner.
Most Important Keywords, Sentences, Quotes
Let’s Begin
„If you follow all the rules that your peers expect you to follow, you bet all there is on a slim chance of the grand prize, but you do it at the price of your own unique self-expression.”
“But I cannot give you the proper introduction to my book because every book is a journey. This book has been my journey, and now it is yours.”
“I will be your companion on this journey, but it is yours to take.”
CHAPTER ONE – The Path Back to You
“When did I slip away and move on without noticing the missing protagonist of my own movie?”
“Authenticity is binary. You are either 100 percent authentic or you are not.”
“Have you ever felt guilty for what you feel? Have you ever thought that you are not supposed to feel what you feel—that it is somehow wrong or inappropriate?”
“Humans want to be good. We might define the idea of being good differently, but we strive to be good. In fact, we strive to be better. Or to be factually more accurate, we strive to be more of what we think is the perfect version of ourselves: The Perfect Me.”
“When you realise the difference between the Real You and the Perfect You, you might feel a little disillusioned. Maybe even disappointed.”
“But you cannot become a better version of you, or any version of you for that matter, until you come to peace and accept the current version of you.”
“We don’t like to gamble because we want certainty. And while success sounds like a hard path, at least its destination is certain.”
“Because ultimately, we want to be happy, but we believe that the path to happiness lies through success, and success, naturally, requires perfection.”
“If you master a skill, which will be initially achieved through some resistance (applied effort), you can later perform that skill in a state of flow (no effort).”
CHAPTER TWO – Finding Your Own Truth
“Don’t continue reading a line more of this book if you are not ready for a big transformation—because you will never be able to unread it.”
“You will benefit greatly in life if you learn to detach yourself from the hefty baggage that words inevitably come with, especially popular words, and see beyond the buzz into the essence of the phenomena.”
“The moment you use authenticity to influence the world, it stops being authenticity and becomes something else entirely: a weapon, a crown, a costume—something to impress others.”
“Vulnerability is like chocolate—too much of a good thing can become bad. Too much vulnerability isn’t vulnerability—rather, it’s tyranny, an unhealthy unloading of emotion.”
“Our feelings and thoughts toward other people have more to do with us than with the people we are having feelings about. Our thoughts about other people are reflections of how we feel about ourselves.”
“You see, the world will treat you the way you will train it to treat you. It is a hard truth to swallow, it may be unpleasant to admit, but, in most cases, that is exactly what happens.”
CHAPTER THREE – Switching Off Autopilot
“My point is, even if we make similar big decisions in life, we don’t end up living similar lives. That’s why it was so hard for me to find common ground with people who happened to have made a few decisions in their lives in line with my own.”
“First, we form our habits. Then, our habits form us.”
“When you adjust your course by just a few degrees, the shift in your life’s trajectory, in the long run, will be enormous. And the longer you sustain that little change, the bigger its effect becomes.”
“It is when you break up your big shift into incremental changes that you are able to find intrinsic motivation in each of your smaller actions.”
“You might have realised when you read the first part of this book that I do not like “hard work,” or rather, I don’t believe in it. That is not to say that I have never worked hard.”
“Knowledge doesn’t change a thing! Yes, I just said it: Knowledge doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t change your life.”
“And that, my friends, is how transformation happens: it is when your knowledge is lived through your experience, or when your experience is supported by your knowledge. But ultimately you will always need both.”
“But life doesn’t have recipes, and there is no panacea or a universal remedy to fix all problems in personal growth. Not only do we need to find our own answers, but the right answers change as we do.”
CHAPTER FOUR – The Art of Imperfection
“When we play different roles, we put on different masks. Not that these masks are untrue, but they highlight certain qualities in our personalities and help us navigate the changing social landscape of our lives.”
“When you forget who you really are—not your social roles, not your accomplishments, not your shiny regalia, not your righteous masks, but the real you . . . you have fallen into the trap. And getting out of it can be one of the biggest challenges you will ever face.”
“The different social roles that we play are not always in sync. The actor is the same, but the scripts may be contradicting.”
“Something may be good for you in a particular situation, but it may turn out bad for you if you misuse it.”
“I have a somewhat complicated relationship with love. Don’t get me wrong —I appreciate the feeling. But in a way, despite its simplicity, it is one very loaded buzzword with a huge amount of baggage.”
“We feel emotions most of the time while we are awake, but not all of them are intense or even familiar enough to be named or recognised.”
“The best gift you can give to the world is your happiness.”
“I remember the morning after I proposed the separation. I was standing in my bathroom, looking at my reflection in the mirror, and I felt light and happy. I felt like I had wings behind my back.”
“But if you take yourself into pieces and tear yourself down piece by piece, there will be nothing left. Nothing to improve, nothing to grow, nothing to compare.”
CHAPTER FIVE – Honesty
“But change doesn’t happen because you want it to happen—it happens when you are ready for it.”
“Questioning truth or claiming that deception is a natural behaviour in humans will bring upon me some accusations of immorality or lack of ethical ideals, but I assure you that I am not a moral relativist.”
“Honesty starts with being honest about lying.”
“Because, whether you like it or not, we lie to ourselves the most, often unwittingly and unintentionally, but we do.”
“When you can see the world differently because your view has changed, and not because you would like to see it differently.
When you can actually feel the joy in the present moment, and not just put on rose-tinted glasses. When you can love yourself with your flaws and not just hope that you are lovable despite being imperfect.”
“Can you accept another person the way they are? Can you let go of all your expectations toward another person? Can you let go of your expectations of how another person needs to be, act, behave, think, and talk?”
“Your perception of other people and the world around you is a reflection of your own experiences and whatever you feel, do, or are. In a more practical way, you only have a problem with other people to the extent that you have a problem with yourself.”
CHAPTER SIX – Kindness
“Your perception of other people and the world around you is a reflection of your own experiences and whatever you feel, do, or are. In a more practical way, you only have a problem with other people to the extent that you have a problem with yourself.”
“What doesn’t kill you might make you stronger or tougher, but not necessarily better.
It may make you more resilient to adversity and more thick-skinned, more cynical, and less prone to expectations, more pessimistic, more indifferent, and it may even leave you with lifelong trauma. Furthermore, and somewhat gruesomely, what doesn’t kill you immediately may still kill you a little later.”
“Self-care is about surviving, while self-love is about thriving.”
“I would never imagine thinking that I love Hayden, but I would love him more if he didn’t have Asperger’s. Or that I would love Eve more if she had grey eyes like my mom. I love my children the way they are. I would not change anything about them. Nothing in the world would make me love them more than I already do.”
CHAPTER SEVEN – Courage
“We love the certainty of what we have, even if we would like something more or different. It is often not the fear of conquering new heights that scares us, but the fear of losing what we already have.”
“Being one step away from a decision is much easier than making the one step into the unknown.”
“All I felt was my body, my hands and my legs, the tree, the rope, and just the physical contact with a few things that were keeping me up in the air. I could feel the support, but I didn’t see the insanity of my situation.”
“I don’t enjoy fear, and like many, I would prefer to have less fear in my life. But I don’t like being on stage without it, without the excitement and the state of being alert and present.”
“But I’d rather regret something that I have done than wonder how life would have been had I taken a leap of faith.”
“My mom was going through her journey, and there was no point trying to get her to take another path. She had the right to her journey.”
CHAPTER EIGHT – Living Flawesomely
“And it just so happens that happiness is a natural consequence of rediscovering who you are. Happiness is a happy coincidence you’ll encounter when you heal your relationship with yourself.”
“If you want to have a loving and deep connection with your partner, you have to work on your relationship. If you want to be rich, you have to work on your money mindset.
If you want to build a business, you definitely have to work on it. So, why, tell me, do we think that if you want to be happy, you should not work on it?!”
“The sooner you admit your truth and face your fears, the more pathways you leave for yourself to choose from and the more temperate your reaction will be.”
“Your relationship with the world is a reflection of your relationship with yourself.”
“If you give a person something useful, but do it at the wrong time, it becomes useless for them.”
“Some people may need help, but they will come and ask for it when they are ready. They will find their teacher when they are ready. And it might not be you.”
CONCLUSION – There Are No Recipes in Life
“Night follows the day, day follows night. Darkness follows the light and light follows the darkness. Spring follows winter and autumn follows summer. Death follows birth and birth follows death. And so it goes on in constant motion, eternally changing and shifting.”
“As if, somehow, there can be only love without fear, only hope without desperation, only joy without sadness, only compassion without anger.”
“Life is not about following a script, sticking to instructions, prescribing every next step. It is not a military march but rather a ballroom dance where life itself is your partner.”
“Studying for personal growth is like learning the steps and drilling your dance technique, but your dance is, and forever will be, uniquely yours. Uniquely flawesome.”
Book Review (Personal Opinion):
This book is relatively new out there and it resembles the current world we are living in which makes it easy to understand and relate to.
What caught my attention the most are the reflection points at the end of each sub-chapter. The writer paid attention to every detail and it shows. While going through reflection points, you get to answer the questions you may have been afraid to ask yourself before.
Lastly, how realistic it is makes it more valuable since it does not beautify the reality.
Rating: 8.5/10
This Book Is For:
- Young people who want to obtain a holistic approach toward life
- Entrepreneurs who want to integrate spirituality into their daily lives
- Psychologists who want to understand the new generation of people
If You Want To Learn More
Check out the podcast with the writer Kristina Mand-Lakhiani about “Becoming Flawesome”:
1017 – Becoming Flawesome with Kristina Mänd-Lakhiani
How I’ve Implemented The Ideas From The Book
As the writer keeps pointing out, becoming flawesome does not happen overnight. However, the answer where we could start is surely given.
I love formulas, especially formulas of life and I look forward to trying out each one I run into, until eventually I find the suitable one for me.
Therefore, I was amazed with the one given in chapter 4. It’s a formula for working with painful emotions with seven steps, all very well described to give the idea behind it. The fact it’s doable anywhere and does not take a lot of time is why I decided to try it out.
One Small Actionable Step You Can Do
While reading this book, one may think it is about things we already know and that there is not much new information. This is true, in a way. But, that is the point of the book – we know but we are not aware.
Chapter 5 is useful when it comes to being aware and practicing the skills of life. There are quite a few formulas shared throughout the book but I would pay attention to instructions for communicating with honesty given exactly in chapter 5.
You will find yourself in many situations where you’re trying to figure out the core of the problem and once you find it, it will most likely be communication. This is why we should all tend to master this.
