Every now and then something captures your attention so vividly that it grabs you by the shoulders and shakes you, dislodging you from your comfort zone and leaving you forever changed.
Particularly now, as the days get shorter and the darkness beats me home from work every day, I find myself looking for something to hold onto, some small symbol of hope signifying we are not stuck in a perpetual rut of pre-winter gloom. Indeed, as the leaves begin to fall and the temperature begins to drop, I hunger for something that plucks me from my routine, and I eagerly hunt for inspiration amidst everyday surroundings. It is easy to slip into a cycle of mundane stagnancy, but we must escape this fast track to nowhere by challenging ourselves to consider new ways of thinking.
A few months ago Peloton guru Ally Love[1] used her self-started platform, LoveSquad, to introduce a book club meant to empower women to embrace new ways of thinking and living. Reshma Saujani’s Brave, Not Perfect was Love’s first selection, and it catalyzed vibrant discussion amongst her followers.
Saujani is the Founder and CEO of Girls Who Code, a national nonprofit that focuses on closing the gender gap in technology by teaching girls confidence and bravery through coding. As a byproduct of her relentless work to empower women and catalyze change in spaces where society has been hesitant to lean in, Saujani has been named a Fortune 40 under 40, a WSJ Magazine Innovator of the Year, and one of the Most Powerful Women Changing the World by Forbes. She has written three best-selling books thus far—Brave, Not Perfect being the most recent—and constantly employs critical thought to challenge broken social norms and shake up the status quo[2].
While I read Brave, Not Perfect several months ago, Saujani’s courage to question common conventions and proposal to forge a new future continues to resonate with me. Her book begins with a simple idea: How does fear deter us from bravely pursuing greatness and blossoming into the people we were meant to be? And, how does this fear particularly work against women?
The nonfiction text centers on the idea that we, as a society, raise boys to be brave—to take risks, innovate, get messy, fail, and then get up and try again—while we teach girls to be perfect—to always appear cute and put-together, to earn perfect grades, to be well-liked at the expense of personal success. Clearly this dynamic is problematic, as it fosters boys to develop into risk-agile men while it encourages girls to develop into risk-averse women.
But this phenomenon isn’t constrained to girlhood; rather it has lasting ripple effects that negatively shape and influence women as they move from school—a system that traditionally values “good” behavior over experimental failure and innovation—to the real world. What happens when maintaining a perfect grade point average no longer holds the cultural currency it once had? What happens when “perfect” girls are forced to enter a decidedly imperfect world only to discover the “rules” they mastered in childhood have now changed?
Stagnancy.
Confusion.
Self-doubt.
In other words, we are unintentionally priming women to hold themselves back and shoot themselves in the foot long before the real race even begins.
What if we rewire traditional constructs and flipped this paradigm? What if we emboldened parents, teachers, and caregivers to consciously encourage all children to experiment and innovate, knowing failure is an expected, if not required, outcome necessary for achieving transformative growth? What if we championed bravery as a means to affect lasting change?
How do we promote change and inspire fearlessness? We must encourage individuals to flex their bravery muscles by pursuing innovative solutions, asking tough questions, and boldly chasing uncertainties even if it initially results in failure. For it is only through our failures that we build the muscle memory and grit necessary to get up, try again, and succeed.
Life is a collection of thousands of mini failures that lead to profound learning moments and catalyze tangible, lasting change.
Notably, Saujani’s own “setbacks” ultimately played an integral role in her eventual success and led her to a platform she arguably never would have reached if she had not experienced a few hard, crucial failures along the way. Indeed, Saujani grew up in a highly competitive environment where she was told she needed to be “the best” in whatever she pursued in order to be happy. Cut forward from a perfectionist life as a high school student to a highly “successful” career at a prestigious investment firm where she pursued the life she was told she ought to.
Instead of continuing blindly down this path, Saujani made the brave choice to mix things up and pursue something she had always been passionate about: Political activism. As a result, she ran for Congress and suffered a staggering loss against another seasoned, well-established political opponent. Of course, this rocked Saujani to her core, but after several days she determined to pick herself up from the melted pity-party on her bathroom floor and (once again) start making some changes in her life. As part of this process Saujani began to reflect on the opportunities she had experienced along the campaign trail and realized girls were noticeably missing from the STEM classrooms she had visited in various school settings. This ultimately inspired her to found Girls Who Code, a national organization that has already impacted over ninety thousand young women, and she continues to empower individuals to boldly experiment and fail in pursuit of larger growth.
What are some of the ways you have challenged yourself to be brave, even if it meant forgoing perfection and falling flat on your face a few times? Reflecting on my life thus far, some of my most defining experiences have been born amidst the flames of risk and uncertainty. From mustering the grit and perseverance to run multiple half marathons[3] to pursuing a Master’s degree as a first-year teacher living in a completely new state, my most formative experiences have terrified me and forced me to invest in myself despite certainty of outcome. Even if I didn’t get it “right” the first time around, with resilience and grit I have consistently grown stronger and become more embolden to overcome even the most seemingly insuperable obstacles.
If we let fear get in the way, then we will never know what we are truly capable of.
Courage is a muscle that gets stronger with use. The more we pursue opportunities to flex this muscle, the stronger we become. When we learn to embrace failure as a necessary part of growth, then the world opens up and suddenly nothing is impossible.
It all starts with a choice.
We must choose to be brave, not perfect.
[1] AKA my idol and the coolest person ever. I’m not biased, I swear. See “Winter ‘Blues’ Got You Down? Love Is the Antidote”.
[2] A quick related note: The book’s cover is “scarlet”, a color symbolically tied to power and courage. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this shade reminds me of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. In the novel, Hester Prynne—who is often considered one of the first and most important female protagonists in American literature—is infamously condemned and forced to wear a scarlet “A” on her chest to publicly profess her sins. Despite the ridicule and condemnation she faces as a social pariah Prynne continues to hold her head high and live boldly and unapologetically: Bravery at its finest.
[3] If you recall “Spring Break ‘Laser Lemon’ Adventures” I may or may not have peed myself in pursuit of 13.1 miles, and this may or may not have been an isolated incident. However, time and time again I have picked myself up from my pee-soaked failures, dusted dried myself off, and kept running the race that is life. #Brave(SO)notperfect
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