Present Over Perfect MP3 CD – Unabridged, August 9, 2016

I was drawn to Shauna Niequist's newest book, Present Over Perfect because its title seemed to indicate our current season. I quickly realized that Niequist's life and my life are vastly different. While I'm learning to live with a messy playroom, Niequist is finding balance by saying no to Big Opportunities and Flashy Job Offers. She's learning to settle in at home with a cup of tea and her family. Perhaps it's harder for someone with a lot of opportunities to say no and to find that balance. I'd imagine that the sparkle of recognition is tempting. In that sense, Niequist is open about her change in mindset and what that cost her family and her career.However, as an average mom who doesn't have a Big Career to say no to, I had trouble relating. The big ideas were powerful but the details were privileged and narrow. Niequist leads an idyllic life: Vacations at a lake house, travel, tons of family support, the ability to reimagine her work-from-home job to more perfectly fit her family's needs. And I say this as a middle-class, educated woman of privilege. I wonder how people living paycheck-to-paycheck, without the ease of reinvention would relate to this message?**I received this book free from the publisher in exchange for my honest opinion.**

Stopped reading after about 30 pages. I was hoping to read some inspiring material and learn some helpful techniques. I am just a regular wife, mom, and employee, and the pressure to be all of those things perfectly all of the time is intense. The author contrasts her busy life of traveling, speaking, and writing, with her vacations at the lake. I have neither of those - I'm just trying to keep the house clean while my toddler wrecks it and remind myself (in between dirty diapers and my dirty hair) that perfection has nothing on being present with my baby. I just couldn't relate to her. So disappointing!

This book was a big disappointment. I read it with my accountability group thinking it would have insight of how to balance life in a God honoring way. Being marketed as a Christian resource, as well as the author being the daughter of a well known evangelical pastor, we thought this would be a valuable tool for us to use in our lives. We were wrong. Niequist uses most of her rationales based on emotions and feelings instead of Scripture. She had some good insights, but did a poor job backing it up besides the reasoning that it made her feel better. It felt like a very self-centered, fluffy, universalist memoir of her vacations. Would not recommend.

Ugh.... two words for this book: HUMBLE BRAGGING.The first few chapters are her listing off all the many accomplishments she achieved and how she works harder than everyone else in her life “when I was 11 years old I decorated the store windows while my mangers had hangovers... when my family is relaxing on the weekend I’m cleaning and organizing and packing... I’m the responsible one... I even have a “yes” tattoo.... blah blah” like OMG... I’m sorry but, this book sounds like she is trying to explain to herself why she deserves to relax, listing off all the things she does. And then she goes on to say during some Hawaii vacation she turned to her husband and said “we can’t live like this anymore” meaning what? Meaning.... I don’t know what she is trying to say, but it just sounds like more humble bragging about their extravagant vacations and they second home at the lake??Her thoughts just go on aimlessly and I wish so much that there was a clear direction for this book, but it’s just random thoughts of hers, bragging about her accomplishments or about her spiritual “ah-ha” moments.Disappointed by this book because the reviews were high.

Even as a guy, I find this easy to relate to, if a bit feminine with examples. That's fine - I don't think for one moment I'm the target audience. I keep this on my desk at work and read it more like a devotional than a true Christian living book. I may go weeks without looking at it, or read 5 chapters in an afternoon. The average chapter is 5 pages, so not a hard task.Yes, she gives examples that I'm sure some can't exactly relate to, but the big picture principles stick. If anything this adds credibility to the principles she presents - in that they apply to both a nearly 40 year old author mom and, in many ways, to a male professional ten years her junior. I just finished a chapter on white dishes. What?? She admits that having too many dishes was a struggle and a distraction. Though I can't personally say that dishes are a struggle of mine, I have other forms of clutter, both physical and psychological, so what she says really makes sense. If you take the title at its word, "Present over Perfect," it really does help you to focus more on big picture concepts of your life, what you're here to do, who matters most, and gets you thinking about your top life goals.And this comes from a guy reading a ladies' book.

I read this book because a group of ladies from my church wanted to read and discuss it. I ordered it and thought the overall idea would be something that spoke to my heart. Nope. It read more like the author's personal journal, lamenting chapter after chapter (written in slightly different ways) about the PROBLEMS of her lifestyle and its demands. I kept waiting for suggestions and solutions, but they never came. The author repeated the words "hustle," "frantic," and "chaos" so often throughout the book that I became sick of them and vowed never to use them in my own writing. I feel like writing this book was probably much more therapeutic and life-affirming for the author herself than offering anything practical or solution-oriented for her readers (most of whom cannot relate to her, as many others have observed). I quickly left the Facebook discussion group for this book - I didn't want to waste any more precious time on Present over Perfect. Thumbs down!

I wanted to like it, but it was boring. Nothing in it related to me. I left it in a hotel room. Maybe it will help someone else.

This author is pretty entitled. I relate to her priority shift but I don't know many in my world who relate to her lifestyle.

This book which I read recently is starting to have a profound effect on my life. It is based on a collection of stories around living a life of meaning and connection instead of pushing for perfection and it massively resonated with me. You see I’m a type-A personality, I pride myself in delivering way above and beyond what a lot of other entrepreneurs do. I even won a national award for productivity.Pushing for perfection is what so many entrepreneurs, especially women do, but you can end up with stale relationships, kids trying to connect with you but being honest you aren’t fully present, even your weekends end up with little quality time and you gain rapid weight gain due to stress and not making time for exercise. You feel you are trapped on this hamster wheel eventually feeling unfulfilled at work and unfulfilled at home.Shauna describes it perfectly ‘it’s like I was pulling a little red wagon, and as I pulled it along, I filled it so full that I could barely keep pulling. That red wagon was my life, and the weight of pulling it was destroying me. I was aware that I was missing the very things I so badly longed for: connection, meaning, peace. But there was something that kept driving me forward – a set of beliefs and instincts that kept me pushing, pushing, pushing event as I was longing to rest’….. My health was suffering……. My ability to taste and connect and feel deeply had been badly compromised…. This book is an account of my winding, messy journey from exhaustion to peace, from isolation to connection, from hustling and multitasking to sacred presence…A key phrase from her book …’You don’t have to damage your body and your soul and the people you love most in order to get done what you think you have to get done. You don’t have to live like this’…..‘Loving one’s work is a gift. And loving one’s work makes it really easy to neglect other parts of life’.When you’ve tried all the tactics of time management, developing a team, to-do lists and scheduling and this doesn’t work, you’ve got to change tactics. This is where this book comes in.The book focused on how Shauna left a life of busyness and frantic living, a constant pressure to perform faster, push harder and produce more, all while maintaining an exhausting image of perfection. Her life was transformed through stopping, resting, creating, connecting and cultivating silence and in that silence, she discovered the voice of love that she had been aching to hear, this led her to a new life based on grace, rest, silence, simplicity, prayer and connection with the people that mattered most to her and rediscovered who she was meant to be.She adopted new ways of embracing silence – walking away from past beliefs and what someone told me you should be, in favour of walking toward what you truly love. It has certainly given me food for thought and from November, I personally am reducing my work down to four days per week taking Fridays off and treating these as ‘Fulfilment Fridays’ – using Fridays as a special time for me to get grounded, have fun, meditate, journal and as a day of self-care.

There are times in our lives when a book, a word, a video, a card comes at just the right time. That was how it was for me and this book. A friend who lives too far from me, interrupted my 'catch up' to say: you need to read this. Do you have a kindle? Get it as soon as I hang up. I did and swallowed it whole. A paper copy would have been even better so that I could go back and look at the dog earred pages. But, it was the right time and I was too far away from a book shop that day. It propelled me to make changes and encouraged me to hear that where I was at that time, was not a place untrodden.

Superb book. Great source of inspiration and wisdom on how to reclaim a proper work life balance and enjoy your life more fully. I’m sure I’ll return to this time after time. Lots of highlighted bits in my Kindle version to assist me with this and help me remember bits I particularly found useful.

Reads like a series of self reflective blogs, some insights but very repetitive and leaves the reader to read/scan to distil what relevance they can relate to their lives.

ok