Brave, Not Perfect. Reshma Saujani

in Congress, and pretty much everywhere you look.

      This drive to be perfect takes a serious toll on our well-being, too, as we lose sleep ruminating over the slightest mistake or worrying that someone was offended by something we said or did. Trained to be helpful and accommodating at all costs, we run ourselves ragged trying to do it all and end up exhausted, depleted, even sick because we give away so much of our energy and time to others.

      Our self-esteem takes a hit when we stay silent in moments we know we should have spoken up, or when we say yes when we really wanted to say no out of fear of not being liked. Our relationships and hearts suffer when we put up a glossy veneer of perfection; the protective layer may keep others from seeing our flaws and vulnerabilities, but it also isolates us from those we love and keeps us from forging truly meaningful and authentic connections.

      Imagine if you lived without the fear of failure, without the fear of not measuring up. If you no longer felt the need to stifle your thoughts and swallow what you really want to say in order to please and appease others. If you could stop berating yourself mercilessly for human mistakes, let go of the guilt and the strangling pressure to be perfect, and just breathe. What if, in every decision you faced, you made the brave choice or took the bolder path. Would you be happier? Would you impact the world in the ways you dream you can? I believe the answer to both is yes.

      I wrote Brave, Not Perfect because that pursuit of perfection caused me to hold myself back for too many years. At the age of thirty-three, I finally learned how to be brave in my professional life, which taught me how to be brave in my personal life, too. I’ve been exercising that bravery muscle every day since. It wasn’t easy to go for in vitro fertilization after three devastating miscarriages, or to launch a tech start-up without knowing anything about coding (or about start-ups). But because I did these things, I am a deliriously happy mom to a little boy and am making a difference in the world in the way I always knew deep down I could.

      When we relinquish the punishing need for perfection—or, rather, let go of the fear of not being perfect—we find freedom, joy, and all the other good stuff we want in life. It’s time to stop giving up before we try. Because when we do give up on anything that is challenging or doesn’t come to us naturally, we become trapped in a state of discontent and inertia that’s soul crushing. We stay in the relationship that brings us pain, in the social circle that brings us down, in the career that makes us miserable. We let our good ideas wither and die on the vine; or, worse, we painfully watch others succeed at something we knew we should have pursued. Being afraid to try something new, to boldly ask for what we want, to make mistakes, and, yes, maybe even to look a little foolish leads to a lot of wasted brilliance, swallowed ambitions, and regret.

      When we hold ourselves to the impossible standard of perfection, there’s no such thing, really, as “success,” because nothing is ever enough.

      What if we just said, Fuck it? I’m going to say what’s on my mind even if they don’t like it . . . or volunteer for that assignment that feels too hard . . . or make the life change I secretly dream about without worrying about the outcome. What would our lives look like?

      Letting go of the fear of being less than perfect is easier than you think. It all comes down to exercising your bravery muscles, one little bit at a time. That’s what this book is about. It’s a look at how we were wired way back when to pursue perfection and avoid failure at all costs, and how that girlhood wiring holds sway over us in our adult lives. Most importantly, it’s about how to reset that wiring. It’s never too late. By letting go of the need to be perfect and retraining ourselves to be brave, every one of us can dare her own version of the unthinkable.

       Why Me?

      How did I go from being a failed congressional candidate to a champion for women and bravery? Great question.

      After I picked myself up off the floor—literally—in the weeks following my crushing defeat, I looked around and thought, What’s next? As I searched inside myself for an answer, I thought about how, back when I was crisscrossing the city during my political campaign, I had visited numerous schools where I saw coding and robotics classes filled with boys, and how I couldn’t stop thinking about the faces I hadn’t seen. Where were the girls? It started to become clear to me that someone needed to take steps toward closing the gender gap in technology by reaching girls at an early age. Pretty quickly I knew that this was my next calling and how I would be of service in the big way I’d dreamed. By 2012, I’d founded Girls Who Code, which has grown into a national movement with more than ninety thousand girls in fifty states participating.

      The original mission of Girls Who Code was to reverse the trend of girls’ interest in STEM dropping off between the ages of thirteen and seventeen, so that by the year 2020, women will be on track to fill much more than just their current 3 percent of the 1.4 million jobs that will be available in computing-related fields. But once GWC got off the ground, I quickly realized we were doing far more than setting up these girls for future job success. By teaching them to code, we were also teaching them to be brave.

      You see, coding is an endless process of trial and error with sometimes just a semicolon making all the difference between success and failure. Code breaks and falls apart, and it often takes many, many tries before you experience that magical moment when what you’re trying to create comes to life. To get there requires perseverance and comfort with imperfection.

      In February of 2016, I gave a TED talk based on what I’d observed firsthand about girls, perfection, and bravery. The talk was a rallying cry to change how we were socializing our girls—and to encourage women to let go of our people-pleasing, perfectionist instincts and reclaim our voices, courage, and power.

      The talk hit a deep nerve that took me by surprise. I knew the topic was profoundly meaningful to me, but it turns out that it resonated with thousands of girls and women around the country as well. Within days, emails started flooding in. Some women shared how they recognized themselves in the message. “I’ve been crying since I heard your talk,” one wrote. “I realized how much I do this to myself,” said another. I heard from countless women who shared how they had passed up opportunities because they were afraid of appearing foolish, of failing, of not living up to the impossible standards they set for themselves.

      Some of the emails made me cry as I read how women and girls felt tyrannized by perfectionism: “When I make a mistake or let someone down, I beat myself up for days,” one woman said. “It’s all I can think about.” Another wrote, “Everyone thinks I’m this person who has everything under control . . . if they only knew how hard I work to look that way and how afraid I am that someone will see the mess that I really am.”

      Others made me indescribably proud. One college sophomore wrote about how, after many years crying in frustration over homework, unable to ask for help, afraid of being seen as dumb, alienated in school because of her own fixation on perfection, she finally let go of her need to be perfect. “It was incredibly empowering,” she wrote. “I can ask questions. So what if an ignorant person thinks I’m dumb because I need something clarified? I’m here for myself and my education.”

      I heard from parents of kindergartners worried about how hyperconcerned their five-year-old girls were with doing everything exactly “right,” and from educators who wanted me to know they had sent mass emails or newsletters to parents imploring them to watch my talk with their family.

      The message of “brave, not perfect” continued to spread through bloggers and social media, and through interviews with major news outlets. As of the writing of this book, the TED talk has been viewed almost four million times. I’ve had the privilege of speaking at the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit and with former first lady Michelle Obama at the United States of Women Summit in Washington, D.C.

      That’s all been exciting and gratifying, but for me, the most amazing part has been seeing firsthand how the “brave, not perfect” message is sparking personal and meaningful change. Each week, I travel to at least one or two cities to speak at conferences, schools, and corporations; and everywhere I go, I am overwhelmed and touched