How do you become flawsome? What does flawsome even mean anyway? Kristina Mand recently released her book on the topic. The word flawsome is a combination of the words “awesome” and “flaw” meaning that you can still be awesome and have flaws. I really like the concept and was honored to be asked to review her book “Becoming Flawsome.”
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Who is Kristina Mand, Author of “Becoming Flawsome”?
Kristina is the co-founder of MindValley, which is a huge website dedicated to personal development with many big-name creators and authors. She’s an international speaker, entrepreneur, artist, philanthropist, and mother of 2 kids. I was given a digital copy of the book, but this book review of Becoming Flawsome is all my own opinions and honest reactions. She also has her own website.
What is “Becoming Flawsome” About?
Becoming Flawsome’s main goal is to help people embrace their flaws and to help them realize that sometimes their flaws are actually incredible assets and strengths. It’s about making peace with yourself and not being afraid to be authentically and honestly you.
Who is “Becoming Flawsome” Written for?
Becoming Flawsome is written for men and women who are perfectionists. If you consider yourself an ambitious go-getter, and goal chaser which has left you feeling overworked and like you’ve lost that connection to yourself, Becoming Flawsome was written with you in mind.
I love a good personal development book, and this one is pretty good. However, I’m not a super high achieving professional and have never been in the corporate world. I also rely on God a lot to give me strength and peace. My faith anchors me, which was one thing not addressed in the book.
Though my experience was different from the author’s I still got some good takeaways from it. I have been actively working on transforming my perfectionism and I do love being honestly and authentically myself.
What Things Does Becoming Flawsome Address?
Now we’re getting to the good stuff! Let’s dive in and look at some of the things and issues that Kristina Mand’s book, Becoming Flawsome addresses. The sections and chapters are really laid out in a rational sequence for growth.
Part I – The Path Back to You
To begin your journey of becoming flawsome, Kristina addresses the subject of authenticity. I really liked how she said that it’s one of those things that can’t be a halfway-done deal. You’re either completely authentic or your not. She also tackles perfectionism head-on, which I happen to be prone to as well as how we have linked working harder to more success, and success to happiness. The two actually follow the order opposite to what most think they should. My favorite exercise from the whole book is found in this section – it emphasizes that you find what you look for.
Part II – Finding Your Own Truth
Next up is finding your own truth. To do that, you have to be willing to change, and the change only goes one way. Once you change yourself and start being who you really are and want to be, then your life changes along with it. Much of our authenticity is internal – are we really telling ourselves reality or are we making up a pretty picture? Many of the words that we find, especially in the personal development field come with baggage and are called buzzwords.
When you think of words like honesty, meditation, being fully present, hustling, and perfectionism, they all have some sort of emotion attached to them. Kristina encourages us to let go of that emotional baggage and asks what those words mean to us, on a personal level.
My favorite part of this section was actually when she described an experiment done by Dove in which women were asked to keep a diary and record their thoughts about themselves. Much of their thoughts and self-talk was largely negative. But here came the really interesting part – the women from the experiment were invited to a cafe where two actresses were talking and casually saying the things that the participants had said to themselves in casual conversation. The participants were outraged to the point that one even interrupted the actress and told her not to talk to her friend like that!
To me, this highlights the huge importance of self-talk and the importance of learning how to silence your inner critic. It also incorporates a lot of self-awareness so you can identify your triggers. You can’t change anything you don’t know about!
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Part III – Switching Off Autopilot
Much of our lives are lived on autopilot. We form habits and those habits control our actions. Those habits are so powerful that it’s hard to change them. (Think – New Year’s Resolutions!) So how do we go about switching off our autopilot switch and changing our habits? Change happens slowly and Kristina guides us through exactly how to turn off that autopilot and change our habits for the better while still being patient with ourselves.
Part IV – The Art of Imperfection
A book about flawsomeness would hardly be complete without addressing the obvious issue of how to address our own imperfections. We all have masks that we wear and different roles that we play. This hit home for me somewhat, but I think it would be more relevant to the woman that’s trying to juggle a high-stress corporate career. Sometimes our roles in life conflict. You know what I’m talking about if you have ever tried to balance work obligations with your obligations as a parent. Sometimes those come into inevitable conflict. (Ex: You have to work to finish a project, but you really want to be there for your kid’s school awards ceremony too.)
My best takeaway from this section was the different defense mechanisms that people use. Sometimes it’s good to have a name for your behaviors. It helps to identify them so that you can change the ones you want to.
She addresses the subject of love here as well. I found this part somewhat difficult because I have a different definition of love. If love is being used as a weapon, it’s not really love. To me, love is more than just an emotion; it’s a whole concept anchored by my faith in God.
What do you Mean No One Wants my Perfection??
This statement in the book smacked me in the face – that no one wants my perfection. Since I am prone to trying to make everything perfect, this one hit home. I started noticing it.
We were camping at the time I was reading the book and I usually try to make sure that everyone is happy during vacation. I want to be the perfect cook, make sure the laundry is done mid-week if needed, we have the perfect plan, we have all the perfect tools that we need, etc. In short, I try to solve all the problems all by myself.
But I tried something different this time. I took a chill pill. (Those are notoriously hard for me to take, by the way.) When a problem came up, I asked my husband “How do you want to take care of it?” Sometimes he had a solution. Sometimes I had one, but whatever we did it was done with a minimal amount of fuss.
No one wanted me to sacrifice myself or my happiness for the happiness of the camping trip. Do you know what happens when I do that? It makes the rest of the family miserable too.
What if I could apply that simple concept to my whole life? That, in essence, is what this book addresses beautifully.
Part V: Honesty
Honesty without kindness as a filter can be downright mean. It talks about how we lie to ourselves and why as well as how to change that and shift our thinking and thought patterns to one that is more friendly to embracing our flaws as part of us instead of trying to fix them all.
Part VI: Kindness
To me, kindness is a part of love, but the author separates the two concepts and says they pair well together. She talks about being kind to yourself, which to me is a large part of your self-talk. The part I found most interesting was how she separates self-care from self-love. That part made a lot of sense to me.
Part VII: Courage
It takes courage to make any sort of life-changing decision. People tend to not like any sort of uncertainty. We want to be in control. But sometimes you have to take that leap of faith even if you don’t know what’s on the other side. Sometimes you may miss and end up disappointed, but other times, you nail it and feel like you’re flying. Sometimes we tend to overthink the decision and the thinking is actually worse than making the decision. That’s what this section covers.
Part VIII: Living Flawsomely
We are always learning and growing as people. We all have flaws and those flaws could be one of your greatest sources of strength. But it could also mean taking a path different from the one that most of the people around you expect. To take a quote from this section of the book:
“The hardest part of living life by your own rules is making a choice between what is important to you and what your loved ones expect from you. Will you choose you? Or will you choose to please the people that you love?” -Kristina Mand, “Becoming Flawsome”
Though I did not love the author’s personal example, I could relate another one from my life. When I was pregnant with my first child, I had a career as a high school science teacher. I had made the decision to quit my job (that I loved and was good at) to be a stay-at-home mom. It was what I felt like was the right decision for our family. A friend and colleague took this decision rather hard. She did not want me to go. Many women successfully balance family and careers, as my friend did, but it was not the right decision for me. Though it hurt my friend, I’ve always been glad that I made that decision, even though it was a hard one.
This last section deals on finding your personal happiness. One of the last thing that I appreciated her addressing is that you can’t change other people. They have to find their own happiness.
Personal Reactions and Thoughts about Becoming Flawsome
I would be very surprised if this book does not make the best-seller list. Kristina has been in the personal development field for over 15 years and she knows her stuff. There is a lot of good well-researched information and the reflection prompts are designed to make you think. I learned things from reading this book, and some things I knew about but didn’t know the name for. (I’m looking at you, reticulated activating system!)
I wish I had been able to take my time and move through it a little more slowly to do the journal/reflection prompts along with the book. The only disconnect I had was that the author likely has different core values and life priorities than I do. That made some of the examples a bit harder for me to relate to, but the book is about finding yourself, not about us all having the same opinions and views on everything.
I didn’t find it super uplifting or written in a feel-good style, but I did appreciate the logical way that she laid out useful information. Though I did not agree with all of the author’s choices in her personal examples, the fact that she used examples from her own life did add depth to the book and make her more relatable. I read the example about asking herself if she was too old to wear shorts since she was over the age of 40 very relatable – especially on a day that I happened to be wearing shorts and had mentally asked myself the exact same question that morning.
Where Can I Get a Copy of Becoming Flawsome?
The book comes with a huge pile of bonuses, at least for now if you get it directly from Kristina.
The Last Thing You Need to Know About Becoming Flawsome
I love the concept of Becoming Flawsome because we all have flaws and many of us wrestle with them. It’s one thing to know your flaws but it’s another thing to come to peace with them and even embrace them as part of who you are. If you feel like you’ve lost yourself or you are looking to combat perfectionism and really start liking not only who you see in the mirror, but who you know you are in your heart, this is the book that you’re looking for. #BecomingFlawsome