I Hope I Screw This Up is a part-diary, part-spiritual evolution manual and 100 percent the Hippie Librarian's type of read. Kyle Cease shares his thoughts and personal path towards becoming his best self. I didn't find it to be as funny as promised in the blurb, but I do think it has worth as, "another finger pointing towards the moon," as Eckhart Tolle would say.

One of my themes for this year is "it's complicated".
I tend to read/think about the same things repeatedly and have come to the conclusion that cut and dry one size fits all answers are incorrect at least in their scope. I've also gotten fairly Tao in that I see everything is both right and wrong.

So how does what I just said have anything to do with this book?

Well, I want to paint this book in a good light as I found parts of it to be quite good.
However, I think one thing the book does wrong is it oversimplifies things and I don't want to do the same.

To get it out of the way I highly recommend the book to people who are new to self improvement and tend to like inspirational works. The four stars are for these people who I think are the target audience for the book. The following rant is probably just for me and applies to most self help books, feel free to skip it.

I've come to this book as a fan of Kyle's comedy and of self improvement in general.
I tend to read tons of books on self improvement and usually end up weighing my latest read against my favorites (e.g. How to Win Friends and Influence People).

As such, I tend to find problems with most books as they don't hold up to the best books on the topic. Pretty much everything you do is taking the place of other things you could've done so if you read a self improvement book that isn't covering new ground or in a particularly novel way your pretty much wasting time.

This book starts off pretty weakly. There is too much effort on being funny and it doesn't quite work for me. Perhaps its just the book format or that I came to the book to mostly learn and only want laughs as a side. It also seems very stream of consciousness to me. I feel like the first half of the book dealt with one topic (authenticity) which I think is both overblown and already pretty well covered.

Kyle's unique perspective can help make this book help some readers where other drier books have failed. I think this is more evident in the second half where the humor seems more subdued and the book reads more like a traditional new age read.

There isn't much new here and the book isn't particularly concise which is a problem with most non fiction books. I flipped around a great deal, trying to get to the meat. I normally would have given up on a book that was this informationally sparse. However, I did not because I think Kyle has some good points and good ways of putting things. His take on Plato's cave involving Super Mario is worth the price of admission alone. It also could be due to my love of his stand up and that I felt I owed him a good audience (it's complicated).

I was also frustrated by Kyle's confidence. For example, he gives one of the most gracious vegan concept drops I've seen. However, in doing so he seems quite confident that being raw vegan is the ideal diet. Raw versus cooked is quite complicated and while one has to make a decision one should probably be pretty open to change when the decision is this open to debate. No one is perfect and I realize I am holding Kyle up to a model of a guru that is impossible. However, openness is pretty key in terms of development (which I battled in reading this book and quite possibly failed).

Along these lines Kyle states a fear of death as being a great evil that we need to be freed of.
I think this an oversimplification that ignores the fact that death spurs us to live. I could've missed his point but I think the lack of focus and lengthy tangents make it painful to wait around for the point.

The book also has a somewhat positive thinking vibe, wherein if you are authentic and follow your bliss good things are destined for you. He made it sound like if you just do this you will be an amazing creative vessel who will do amazing things. I think he is almost there. I think he is too much heart without enough head to balance it out (I am way too much head). To make a counter point, most things that are created aren't created out of nothing. There are resources used in creation both physical and time based.

I have had many ideas for software programs I'd want to create.
Kyle seems to be saying that I should follow my muse and create them. However, it is good to know your market and I'm pretty sure most of those ideas would have no market. I would rather pay attention to my daughter than put something out there that isn't used. I realize that this may stop me from doing the thing that would've been big, but it could also free up my resources to focus on that thing. I

f I wanted to create something more physical even something like comedy there would be a physical aspect of waste to a failed endeavor. Following my dreams if they aren't grounded in reality would waste the fuel necessary to tour, degrade my relationships and probably bore many audiences. Like I said, it is complicated.

Hilarious and uplifting all rolled into one! For those looking for something different from the normal self help book route will find pleasure in reading this.

Sometimes what we observe in our world could be a projection of our own fears and not necessarily what we consider negative, people can be fearful of failure as much of success. Furthermore, Carl Jung named the shadow to the suppression of our fears “the hidden side of the human psyche…Although many people use the word “shadow” to refer only to the darker parts of our nature, it contains also the golden selves that we find it too risky to see or to allow ourselves to manifest.”

Not everything we see is a projection of ourselves, but to be clear we have to work on ourselves first. As Clifford Mayes reflects “Jung’s point was simply that until we face our own shadow we will never know if the evil we are “observing” is truly there or is just a projected problem in ourselves.”

A projection moves us emotionally, disturbs us somehow; we can’t be indifferent. However, Florence Scovel pointed out you have to become nonresistant and undisturbed by appearances. Moreover, a change in consciousness is necessary from a state of doing to a state of being, and this process is what Kyle Cease’s book I Hope I Screw This Up is all about.

Nowadays, Kyle Cease is one of the exponents of shadow work. He went from a stand-up comedian to a transformational speaker, so the mix of comedy and spirituality shows in his work and specifically in his book I Hope I Screw This Up, that means it is not a typical self-help book; it could be called irreverent.

The format of I Hope I Screw This Up is like a stand-up comedy script, between jokes, experiences, rambling, and shadow work. Through each chapter Kyle Cease expresses his own fears that show up because of writing this book and the process to overcome them by finishing writing the book. Moreover, the main idea supports how to go from a fear-based, addictive mind-set at first and move into a creative, free mind-set in the end.

Something I would love to accompany I Hope I Screw This Up is a workbook or its equivalent to enrich the readers experience because it will help to get the most out of this book and a clear action plan.

Shadow work helps us to take responsibility to feel whole and complete and to overcome whatever is obstructing its accomplishment. An inner journey, going from a state of doing to a state of being, going from a fear-based to a creative mind-set, going from the mind to the heart.

Suppressing parts of ourselves is not at option unless you want to have it as a projection in your life and befriend, marry or work with whoever you are avoiding in yourself, so there is not way out, it’s better to have the courage and deal with the situation for once. On the other hand, not everything that disturbs our lives is a projection, but we need to work on ourselves first to clear that out, and protect ourselves if it’s necessary.

An entertaining didactic way of experiencing shadow work.