Becoming Flawsome is an Amazon bestseller already and was written by Kristina Mänd-Lakhiani. I first became aware of it through Marci Shimoff and I loved the concept. It reminded me of something I wrote in Choosing Me Now about being perfectly imperfect or imperfectly perfect and thought it may be about embracing who you are, warts and all, and realizing that it’s the sum total of you—the good, the bad and the ugly—that makes you awesome. I wasn’t wrong but it was also so much more.

Kristina does a great job of allowing herself to be vulnerable and showing some of her own flaws, which endears her to readers, especially as readers can relate to many of the things she says. I especially loved the way she broke down authenticity and honesty, and helped readers recognize the ways we can be dishonest with ourselves. Her subtitle is, The key to living an imperfectly authentic life. She’s so real.

She confronts the reader about some of their habits that may be getting in the way of living an authentic life, with perfectionism at the top of the list. She helps the reader see that a loving relationship with Self is necessary to be able to have good relationships with others.

The way to change bad habits is to replace them with new ones but Kristina doesn’t talk about going out and changing everything all at once, the way most of us do on New Year’s Eve. We tend to come out of the gate with unrivaled enthusiasm but that tends to burn out and run its course before new habits get the chance to become habits. Instead, she recommends the Kaizen approach, taking meaningful, incremental steps on the way toward building long-term habits.

What I love about this book is that it’s truly meant as self-help. The reader can understand complex concepts that are written in understandable ways, and then, is encouraged to reflect on the ideas and write in a journal. At the end of each chapter, there are “Reflection Points” in a box to consider and things to write in one’s journal.

For my readers who know Choice Theory, I have no reason to think Kristina has had Choice Theory training but the way she talks about self-discovery is with a strong internal locus of control. Perhaps she has had some training or is just naturally this way. It felt very compatible to how I think about things.

Reading Kristina’s book and doing the exercises in it is almost as good as therapy. I love her focus on the importance of awareness and I am 100% in agreement on the way she differentiates between self-love and self-care. They are not the same and I would choose self-love every day if forced to make a choice.

My favorite quote of the entire book is: “Your only moral duty is to be happy and at peace with yourself.” Make this your life’s work and everything else will fall into place. I highly recommend it.
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