Today’s Book of the Day is The Gifts of Imperfection by Brené Brown, published in 2010 by Hazelden.
Brené Brown is a Research Professor at the University of Houston and a public speaker.
She has spent her career studying courage, vulnerability, shame, and empathy and is the author of some #1 New York Times bestsellers like as: The Gifts of Imperfection, Daring Greatly, Rising Strong, Braving the Wilderness, and Dare to Lead.
I have chosen this book for this post as Brené Brown is definitely one of my favorite authors when it comes to embracing our vulnerability, understanding it, and growing through empathy.
In her The Gifts of Imperfection, Brown introduces a guide, in ten steps, for what she calls a wholehearted living. She explains what this approach to life means, how it is different for every one of us, and how we can follow her example in choosing this approach as a life journey. All of this, with scientific evidence she discovered during her more than 20 years of empirical research.
So, we find 10 chapters that have a title that guides us into that specific step of this fantastic, meaningful life.
The chapters’ titles, or guideposts, as the author calls them, are:
- Cultivating Authenticity and Letting Go of What Other People Think
- Cultivating Self-Compassion and Letting Go of Perfectionism
- Cultivating Your Resilient Spirit, Letting Go of Numbing and Powerlessness
- Cultivating Gratitude and Joy, Letting Go of Scarcity and Fear of the Dark
- Cultivating Intuition and Trusting Faith, Letting Go of the Need for Certainty
- Cultivating Creativity and Letting Go of Comparison
- Cultivating Play and Rest, Letting Go of Exhaustion as a Status Symbol
- Cultivating Calm and Stillness and Letting Go of Anxiety as a Lifestyle
- Cultivating Meaningful Work, Letting Go of Self-Doubt and Supposed-To
- Cultivating Laughter, Song and Dance, and Letting Go of Cool and Always in Control
Yes, I am imperfect and vulnerable and sometimes afraid, but that doesn’t change the truth that I am also brave and worthy of love and belonging
Brené Brown
It’s that kind of book that you read and read again so as to get enriched by its words, by the guidance it provides, by the insights the author gives you about how we limit ourselves, sabotage our lives, and become afraid of change.
There are many different aspects of this book that can be considered essential for everyone who is living a tough moment in his/her life and wants to start recovering. And this process, in this book, is meant to be done through accepting who we are, understanding why some things happen, and then committing to changing them, one step at a time.
The key idea of the book is that we have to embrace our imperfections, as they are part of who we are. By embracing our imperfections, we also understand that we are brave and that we can achieve what we want and deserve just because of how we are.
And all this, because you are worthy.
Brown shows that we are a holistic system, thus meaning that everything we pass through and experience is interconnected. So to heal and grow, we have to embrace empathy, hope, engagement, and sharing.
This is a book I absolutely invite you to read, as all the others from Brené Brown.
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