The Shift: Taking Your Life from Ambition to Meaning Book

There were parts of this book that I really liked, although much of that seemed recycled from other books I have read in the past. The first two chapters were painful. Full of flowerly, obtuse language, I found myself chuckling and not for the right reasons. He has some excellent points about letting go and not defining your life by possessions and ambition. But, I didn't necessarily agree with him on all of his ruminations on ambition. At times he seemed to be saying that we should be wholly without ambition and do nothing. That seems bizzare to me and not just because I was raised in a pro-ambition American society. Yes, comparisons to others and their material possessions are not helpful, but ambition and success also makes people feel good about themselves, contributing to self-esteem, something he mentions as a good thing. If I were to do nothing in my life I'd be a fairly miserable person. The last two chapters were better and he actually backtracks from his ambition is evil argument a bit. It also struck me as curious that early on he criticized organized religion and their God who is separate from his followers and all of that God's "rules." Yet, he continually refers to "God" in the book and quotes the Bible, the receptable of all of those "rules", frequently. I understand he is using passages from the Bible that relate to his overall argument, but he should be more careful about making sweeping generalizations about anything, including organized religion, and then trying to use the tenets of those religions to make his point. It comes across and disingenious and insincere.