Perfectly Yourself

Perfectly Yourself 

by Matthew Kelly
210 pages
NonFiction - Self Help

God wants you to be the best possible version of yourself. Do you need to lose weight? Do you need to get organized at home? Do you need to advance your career or educational studies? This book provides inspiration to discern the areas of your life that God might be calling you to perfect. It also supplies amble encouragement and motivation to effect change in your personal life.

This was another fast read from prolific and lightweight Catholic author Matthew Kelly. Since many of his books are written as introductory books without meat for mature Catholics, this is the first Matthew Kelly book that was personally useful to me. It is written as a secular self-help book - albeit with a generic faith-based perspective. Kelly is highly effective in the self-help arena. It is encouraging and motivational in a polished way with surprising occasional depth and Truth.

Note to Catholics: In the quest to be generically religious, Kelly uses examples from his Catholic faith, but also normalizes a lot of Buddhist/eastern religion/New Age concepts as well as making references to the Jewish and Muslim faiths. He talks repeatedly about "accepting yourself" and "being true to yourself" with only minimal guidance or limitations. Though not his intention, the effect is that his words could be misused to justify violating Catholic teaching. He also directly endorses a secular gratitude meditation and celebrating the "goodness" inside yourself. He states that "God and the Universe" are your friends and will work out the details of anything you worry about.

The problematic PC and New Age moments aside, Kelly does a decent job at recognizing the pitfalls on both sides of most issues he discusses. Go to far to one side and you are in danger of ABC, but go too far the other way and you are in danger of XYZ. I appreciated that. Too often people lopsidedly endorse a particular virtue or position to the extent that it becomes distorted and leads to error.

Kelly does hit on a lot of Truth in this book. Often he will start chapters with a generic feel-good position, ugh. But then in the next section, he'll dig deeper on one side. Then, he'll dig deeper on the other side. Eventually, he carves out a Truth. I loved how he stated toward the start of the book that it is a lie to tell children they can be anything they want to be. There are physical limitations and realities that have to be considered. No one says that nowadays, but it is true! He also makes a strong case for personal discipline. The book felt counter-cultural in a good way due to the tough love shared.

I could re-read this book every few years to gain additional inspiration and motivation.

RECOMMENDED FOR: People seeking motivation to perfect themselves in some way.