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The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are Paperback – August 27, 2010

by Brené Brown (Author)
4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 41,667 ratings
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Each day we face a barrage of images and messages from society and the media telling us who, what, and how we should be. We are led to believe that if we could only look perfect and lead perfect lives, we'd no longer feel inadequate. So most of us perform, please, and perfect, all the while thinking, What if I can't keep all of these balls in the air? Why isn't everyone else working harder and living up to my expectations? What will people think if I fail or give up? When can I stop proving myself?

In The Gifts of Imperfection, Brené Brown, PhD, a leading expert on shame, authenticity and belonging, shares what she's learned from a decade of research on the power of Wholehearted Living--a way of engaging with the world from a place of worthiness.

In her ten guideposts, Brown engages our minds, hearts, and spirits as she explores how we can cultivate the courage, compassion, and connection to wake up in the morning and think, No matter what gets done and how much is left undone, I am enough, and to go to bed at night thinking, Yes, I am sometimes afraid, but I am also brave. And, yes, I am imperfect and vulnerable, but that doesn't change the truth that I am worthy of love and belonging.
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  1. Print length
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  2. Language
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  3. Publisher
    Hazelden
  4. Publication date
    August 27, 2010
  5. Dimensions
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  6. ISBN-10
    9781592858491
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1592858491
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  1. Authenticity is the daily practice of letting go of who we think we’re supposed to be and embracing who we are.
    Highlighted by 42,147 Kindle readers
  2. If we want to fully experience love and belonging, we must believe that we are worthy of love and belonging.
    Highlighted by 38,089 Kindle readers
  3. Shame needs three things to grow out of control in our lives: secrecy, silence, and judgment.
    Highlighted by 31,703 Kindle readers
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From the Publisher

It is in the process of embracing our imperfections that we find our truest gifts

Courage is contagious.

Owning our story and loving ourselves through that process is the bravest thing we'll ever do.

Named one of the "five books that will actually change your outlook on life" by Forbes.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Dr. Brené Brown is a research professor at the University of Houston, where she holds the Huffington Foundation Endowed Chair at the Graduate College of Social Work. She also holds the position of visiting professor in management at the University of Texas at Austin McCombs School of Business.

Brené has spent the past two decades studying courage, vulnerability, shame, and empathy. She is the author of six #1 New York Times best sellers and is the host of two award-winning podcasts, Unlocking Us and Dare to Lead.

Brené’s books have been translated into more than 30 languages, and her titles include Atlas of the Heart, Dare to Lead, Braving the Wilderness, Rising Strong, Daring Greatly, and The Gifts of Imperfection. With Tarana Burke, she co-edited the best-selling anthology You Are Your Best Thing: Vulnerability, Shame Resilience, and the Black Experience.

Brené’s TED talk on the Power of Vulnerability is one of the top five most-viewed TED talks in the world, with over 60 million views. Brené is the first researcher to have a filmed lecture on Netflix, and in March 2022, she launched a new show on HBO Max that focuses on her latest book, Atlas of the Heart.

Brené spends most of her time working in organizations around the world, helping develop braver leaders and more-courageous cultures.

She lives in Houston, Texas, with her husband, Steve. They have two children, Ellen and Charlie, and a weird Bichon named Lucy.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Preface

Once you see a pattern, you can’t un-see it. Trust me, I’ve tried. But when the same truth keeps repeating itself, it’s hard to pretend that it’s just a coincidence. For example, no matter how hard I try to convince myself that I can function on six hours of sleep, anything less than eight hours leaves me impatient, anxious, and foraging for carbohydrates. It’s a pattern.I also have a terrible procrastination pattern: I always put off writing by reorganizing my entire house and spending way too much time and money buying office supplies and organizing systems. Every single time.

One reason it’s impossible to un-see trends is that our minds are engineered to seek out patterns and to assign meaning to them. Humans are a meaning-making species. And, for better or worse, my mind is actually fine-tuned to do this. I spent years training for it, and now it’s how I make my living.

As a researcher, I observe human behavior so I can identify and name the subtle connections, relationships, and patterns that help us make meaning of our thoughts, behaviors, and feelings. I love what I do. Pattern hunting is wonderful work and, in fact, throughout my career, my attempts at un-seeing were strictly reserved for my personal life and those humbling vulnerabilities that I loved to deny. That all changed in November 2006, when the research that fills these pages smacked me upside the head. For the first time in my career, I was desperate to un-see my own research.

Up until that point, I had dedicated my career to studying difficult emotions like shame, fear, and vulnerability. I had written academic pieces on shame, developed a shame-resilience curriculum for mental health and addictions professionals, and written a book about shame resilience called I Thought It Was Just Me.

In the process of collecting thousands of stories from diverse men and women who lived all over the country--ranging in age from eighteen to eighty-seven--I saw new patterns that I wanted to know more about. Yes, we all struggle with shame and the fear of not being enough. And, yes, many of us are afraid to let our true selves be seen and known. But in this huge mound of data there was also story after story of men and women who were living these amazing and inspiring lives.

I heard stories about the power of embracing imperfection and vulnerability. I learned about the inextricable connection between joy and gratitude, and how things that I take for granted, like rest and play, are as vital to our health as nutrition and exercise. These research participants trusted themselves, and they talked about authenticity and love and belonging in a way that was completely new to me.

I wanted to look at these stories as a whole, so I grabbed a file and a Sharpie and wrote the first word that came to my mind on the tab: Wholehearted. I wasn’t sure what it meant yet, but I knew that these stories were about people living and loving with their whole hearts. I had a lot of questions about Wholeheartedness. What did these folks value? How did they create all of this resilience in their lives? What were their main concerns and how did they resolve or address them? Can anyone create a Wholehearted life? What does it take to cultivate what we need? What gets in the way?

As I started analyzing the stories and looking for re-occurring themes, I realized that the patterns generally fell into one of two columns; for simplicity sake, I first labeled these Do and Don’t. The Do column was brimming with words like worthiness, rest, play, trust, faith, intuition, hope, authenticity, love, belonging, joy, gratitude, and creativity. The Don’t column was dripping with words like perfection, numbing, certainty, exhaustion, self-sufficiency, being cool, fitting in, judgment, and scarcity.

I gasped the first time I stepped back from the poster paper and took it all in. It was the worst kind of sticker shock. I remember mumbling, “No. No. No. How can this be?”

Even though I wrote the lists, I was shocked to read them. When I code data, I go into deep researcher mode. My only focus is on accurately capturing what I heard in the stories. I don’t think about how I would say something, only how the research participants said it. I don’t think about what an experience would mean to me, only what it meant to the person who told me about it.

I sat in the red chair at my breakfast room table and stared at these two lists for a very long time. My eyes wandered up and down and across. I remember at one point I was actually sitting there with tears in my eyes and with my hand across my mouth, like someone had just delivered bad news.

And, in fact, it was bad news. I thought I’d find that Wholehearted people were just like me and doing all of the same things I was doing: working hard, following the rules, doing it until I got it right, always trying to know myself better, raising my kids exactly by the books...After studying tough topics like shame for a decade, I truly believed that I deserved confirmation that I was “living right.” But here’s the tough lesson that I learned that day (and every day since):

How much we know and understand ourselves is critically important, but there is something that is even more essential to living a Wholehearted life: loving ourselves.

Knowledge is important, but only if we’re being kind and gentle with ourselves as we work to discover who we are. Wholeheartedness is as much about embracing our tenderness and vulnerability as it is about developing knowledge and claiming power.

And perhaps the most painful lesson of that day hit me so hard that it took my breath away: It was clear from the data that we cannot give our children what we don’t have. Where we are on our journey of living and loving with our whole hearts is a much stronger indicator of parenting success than anything we can learn from how-to books.

This journey is equal parts heart work and head work, and as I sat there on that dreary November day, it was clear to me that I was lacking in my own heart work.

I finally stood up, grabbed my marker off the table, drew a line under the Don’t list, and then wrote the word me under the line. My struggles seemed to be perfectly characterized by the sum total of the list. I folded my arms tightly across my chest, sunk deep down into my chair, and thought, This is just great. I’m living straight down the shit list.

I walked around the house for about twenty minutes trying to un-see and undo everything that had just unfolded, but I couldn’t make the words go away. I couldn’t go back, so I did the next best thing: I folded all of the poster sheets into neat squares and tucked them into a Rubbermaid tub that fit nicely under my bed, next to my Christmas wrap. I wouldn’t open that tub again until March of 2008.

Next, I got myself a really good therapist and began a year of serious soul work that would forever change my life. Diana, my therapist, and I still laugh about my first visit. Diana, who is a therapist to many therapists, started with the requisite, “So what’s going on?” I pulled out the Do list and matter-of-factly said, “I need more of the things on this list. Some specific tips and tools would be helpful. Nothing deep. No childhood crap or anything.”

It was a long year. I lovingly refer to it on my blog as the 2007 [Breakdown] Spiritual Awakening. It felt like a textbook breakdown to me, but Diana called it a spiritual awakening. I think we were both right. In fact, I’m starting to question if you can have one without the other. Of course, it’s not a coincidence that this unraveling happened in November 2006. The stars were perfectly aligned for a breakdown: I was raw from being newly sugar and flour free, I was days away from my birthday (always a contemplative time for me), I was burned out from work, and I was right on the cusp of my midlife unraveling.

People may call what happens at midlife “a crisis,” but it’s not. It’s an unraveling--a time when you feel a desperate pull to live the life you want to live, not the one you’re “supposed” to live. The unraveling is a time when you are challenged by the universe to let go of who you think you are supposed to be and to embrace who you are.

Midlife is certainly one of the great unraveling journeys, but there are others that happen to us over the course of our lives:
  • marriage
  • divorce
  • becoming a parent
  • recovery
  • moving
  • an empty nest
  • retiring
  • experiencing loss or trauma
  • working in a soul-sucking jobThe universe is not short on wake-up calls. We’re just quick to hit the snooze button.

    As it turned out, the work I had to do was messy and deep. I slogged through it until one day, exhausted and with mud still wet and dripping off of my traveling shoes, I realized, “Oh, my God. I feel different. I feel joyful and real. I’m still afraid, but I also feel really brave. Something has changed--I can feel it in my bones.”

    I was healthier, more joyful, and more grateful than I had ever felt. I felt calmer and grounded, and significantly less anxious. I had rekindled my creative life, reconnected with my family and friends in a new way, and most important, felt truly comfortable in my own skin for the first time in my life.

    I learned how to worry more about how I felt and less about “what people might think.” I was setting new boundaries and began to let go of my need to please, perform, and perfect. I started saying no rather than sure (and being resentful and pissed off later). I began to say “Oh, hell yes!” rather than “Sounds fun, but I have lots of work to do” or “I’ll do that when I’m _________ (thinner, less busy, better prepared).”

    As I worked through my own Wholehearted journey with Diana, I read close to forty books, including every spiritual awakening memoir I could get my hands on. They were incredibly helpful guides, but I still craved a guidebook that could offer inspiration, resources, and basically serve as a soul traveler’s companion of sorts.

    One day, as I stared at the tall pile of books precariously stacked on my nightstand, it hit me!     I want to tell this story in a memoir. I’ll tell the story of how a cynical, smart-ass academic became every bit of the stereotype that she spent her entire adult life ridiculing. I’ll fess up about how I became the middle-aged, recovering, health-conscious, creative, touchy-feely spirituality-seeker who spends days contemplating things like grace, love, gratitude, creativity, authenticity, and is happier than I imagined possible. I’ll call it Wholehearted.

    I also remember thinking,     Before I write the memoir, I need to use this research to write a guidebook on Wholehearted living! By mid-2008, I had filled three huge tubs with notebooks, journals, and mounds of data. I had also done countless hours of new research. I had everything I needed, including a passionate desire to write the book that you’re holding in your hands.

    On that fateful November day when the list appeared and I sunk into the realization that I wasn’t living and loving with my whole heart, I wasn’t totally convinced. Seeing the list wasn’t enough to fully believe in it. I had to dig very deep and make the     conscious choice to believe...to believe in myself and the possibility of living a different life. A lot of questioning, countless tears, and a huge collection of joyful moments later, believing has helped me see.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ 159285849X
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Hazelden; 1st edition (August 27, 2010)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 160 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9781592858491
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1592858491
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 7.2 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.5 x 9 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 41,667 ratings

About the author

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Brené Brown

Brené Brown

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Dr. Brené Brown is a research professor at the University of Houston, where she holds the Huffington Foundation Endowed Chair at the Graduate College of Social Work. She also holds the position of visiting professor in management at the University of Texas at Austin McCombs School of Business.

Brené has spent the past two decades studying courage, vulnerability, shame, and empathy. She is the author of six #1 New York Times best sellers and is the host of two award-winning Spotify podcasts, Unlocking Us and Dare to Lead.

Brené’s books have been translated into more than 30 languages, and her titles include Atlas of the Heart, Dare to Lead, Braving the Wilderness, Rising Strong, Daring Greatly, and The Gifts of Imperfection. With Tarana Burke, she co-edited the best-selling anthology You Are Your Best Thing: Vulnerability, Shame Resilience, and the Black Experience.

Brené’s TED talk on the Power of Vulnerability is one of the top five most-viewed TED talks in the world, with over 50 million views. Brené is the first researcher to have a filmed lecture on Netflix, and in March 2022, she launched a new show on HBO Max that focuses on her latest book, Atlas of the Heart.

Brené spends most of her time working in organizations around the world, helping develop braver leaders and more-courageous cultures. She lives in Houston, Texas, with her husband, Steve. They have two children, Ellen and Charlie, and a weird Bichon named Lucy.

Customer reviews

4.7 out of 5 stars
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I could not put the book down. There are a ton of references for other great reads and research resources. I was also able to take away several pointers for personal development.
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Top reviews from the United States

C. Dove
5.0 out of 5 stars Timeless Wisdom
Reviewed in the United States on April 21, 2024
Verified Purchase
I once had a conversation with a monk who differentiated between the knowledge that comes of reading a thousand books and the wisdom that can be gleaned from reading a single book a thousand times. I will not say that I've read this book a thousand times, but I may eventually. I have listened to it on audible, read it, and, for a few years, I decided to read and focus on one guidepost a month. I can't speak for others, but for me, this book was life changing. I love that Brené willing to share deeply personal stories, her sense of humor, and her relentless digging deeper to find the core of a term, idea, or insight. Of the ten guideposts my favorites, and by favorite I mean the one's I struggle the most with, are - self-compassion (letting go of perfectionism), rest and play (letting go of exhaustion as a status symbol), and finding meaningful work (letting go of self-doubt and "supposed to". I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!
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Lisa Bourbonnais
5.0 out of 5 stars The Best of Self-Improvement Literature!
Reviewed in the United States on July 12, 2015
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The Gifts of Imperfection is a well written, thoroughly researched, compassionate must read book from the perspective of a seasoned and trustworthy professional, which contains a plethora of concrete information about how to live more genuinely and capably in the face of fear and self-doubt.Brene’ Brown writes her guide to achieving self-acceptance, self-esteem and well-rounded living, by focusing on her years of research on shame, fear, and vulnerability, providing the reader with specific ways people think and act that either challenge or welcome the topics. She highlights both hindrances and aids to living fully in ten guideposts or chapters, in which she explains ways people can use the information she’s learned from her research to let go of negative thoughts and emotions and let in the things that provide joy and contentment. The author’s ability to communicate, her status as an empathetic peer, and knowledge as a practiced researcher and social worker, shine through her writing, expertly bringing together her writing style and the useful information she imparts.

Brown writes intelligently and from the heart about the findings of her decade long research, providing personal anecdotes to frame the information, which humanizes her ideas, making the research less scientific and more relatable and applicable for the reader. The author tells the story of her own journey of curiosity, exploration, and growth which develops alongside her shame research. Brown tells about using her data to assemble a “do” and “don’t” list for feeding shame, fear, and vulnerability, and realizing, “This is just great, I’m living straight down the s*** list.” (xii) When she admits that this led to her “2007 Breakdown Spiritual Awakening,” the reader feels comforted and less overwhelmed by learning he or she is living similarly. By telling her own story and those of family, friends, and contributors to her blog, Brown powerfully and positively influences the reader’s experience of reading, processing, and retaining essential concepts.

This book provides its reader with a wealth of helpful and applicable information to be used now and in the future, not only planting the seeds for thinking about changing perspectives on shame, but providing the building blocks for developing new ways of thinking, acting, and living. Brown doesn’t simply suggest that a reader combat shame, for example, she tells how the people in her research live successful, complete lives in the face of it: with courage, compassion, and connection. In this example, one of many in the book where she shows not tells the reader how to enact change, there are clear definitions of the three C’s. The reader learns about living courageously and compassionately by the research Brown cites and examples she gives from people’s personal experiences. Brown efficiently communicates using similar methods for teaching the reader her other topics, which range from cultivating a resilient spirit, cultivating creativity, to cultivating meaningful work. The reader finishes the book both satisfied with the results and ready to read it again, knowing new ideas will be available each time through.

The winning combination of Brown’s personality, expertise and wisdom is irresistible and not to be missed. Both her personal and work experiences stand alone as readable material, but together they are entertaining and therapeutic. Any person looking to make his or her life better should look no further than The Gifts of Imperfection, as Brown has discovered in her research an area of sociology from which we can all benefit in a myriad of ways.
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Angela Risner The Sassy Orange
5.0 out of 5 stars Simple to read and understand, but such a powerful, life-changing message
Reviewed in the United States on January 29, 2014
Verified Purchase
This is the first book by Brene Brown that I've read. I just happened across the title on a friend's Facebook page and thought it looked interesting. How did I live without Brene Brown in my life before?? This book falls right in line with others I've read recently (Stephen Cope's The Great Work of Your Life, Gretchen Rubin's The Happiness Project, etc.) in reaffirming that if you live your life according to "Supposed to Be," you will never be happy.

I can't possibly share all of my favorite parts (I have 31 pages of highlights), but here are a few:

•People may call what happens at midlife "a crisis," but it's not. It's an unraveling - a time when you feel a desperate pull to live the life you want to live, not the one you're "supposed' to live. The unraveling is a time when you are challenged by the universe to let go of you think you are supposed to be and to embrace who you are.
•It's like walking toward a star in the sky. We never really arrive, but we certainly know that we're heading in the right direction.
•Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it. Embracing our vulnerabilities is risky but not nearly as dangerous as giving up on love and belonging and joy - the experiences that make us the most vulnerable. Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light.
•Shame hates it when we reach out and tell our story. It hates having words wrapped around it - it can't survive being shared. Shame loves secrecy. The most dangerous thing to do after a shaming experience is hide or bury our story. When we bury our story, the shame metastasizes.
•The root of the word courage is cor - the Latin word for heart. In one of its earliest forms, the word courage had a very different definition than it does today. Courage originally meant, "To speak one's mind by telling all one's heart."
•Every time we choose courage, we make everyone around us a little better and the world is a little braver. And our world could stand to be a little kinder and braver.
•The word compassion is derived from the Latin words pati and cum, meaning "to suffer with." I don't believe that compassion is our default response. I think our first response to pain - ours or someone else's - is to self-protect. We protect ourselves by looking for someone or something to blame. Or sometimes we shield ourselves by turning to judgment or by immediately going into fix-it mode.
•Chodron: "Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It's a relationship between equals. Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others. Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity."
•The heart of compassion is really acceptance. The better we are at accepting ourselves and others, the more compassionate we become. Well, it's difficult to accept people when they are hurting us or taking advantage of us or walking all over us. This research has taught me that if we really want to practice compassion, we have to start by setting boundaries and holding people accountable for their behavior.
•We can confront someone their behavior, or fire someone, or fail a student, or discipline a child without berating them or putting them down. The key is to separate people from their behaviors - to address what they're doing, not who they are.

Wonderful, wonderful book. Amazing revelations.

Highly recommend.
5 people found this helpful
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JOSE SPINALI
5.0 out of 5 stars Excelente libro..!!
Reviewed in Mexico on March 13, 2022
Verified Purchase
El libro es excelente la autora es extraordinaria y te hace reflexionar a lo largo del libro sobre "Vivir a todo corazon" y porque lo más importante es ser nosotros mismos y ser felices en los diferentes ambitos de nuestra vida.
Además en este libro destaca como el ser vulnerable es un gra demostración de coraje y valor y no una muestra de debilidad.

Me fascinó este libro, lo recomiendo 100%
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Arpit Patidar
5.0 out of 5 stars Even looking at this book makes me feel good.
Reviewed in India on September 29, 2023
Verified Purchase
This is must go book for those who are searching mental peace for themselves and want to fight self rejection inside their minds.
It helped me to understand how Gratitude can help us to have positive and supporting perspective on our life.

Living in a society which has a lot of negativity for everything and we develop a self critical and self abusive behavior, This book is one of the most help full tool.
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WpgJets
5.0 out of 5 stars Life is short. How do you want to live in yours?
Reviewed in Canada on February 28, 2021
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A must read for anyone who overthinks, is self-conscious, lives with anxiety, and would like more self-confidence.

Brene’s book organizes information on how we look at ourselves in a negative way and provides practical suggestions on how to address it. She writes appropriately for the intended audience. Not clinically (not that there is anything wrong with that) and with humour. What I appreciate is her sharing her own experiences.

Take what you need from this book. It will take work and practice. It will definitely help you change aspects of your life if you commit to honouring yourself and stick with it. You can do this!!!!!
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Andrea_HP
5.0 out of 5 stars Me ha cambiado la vida
Reviewed in Spain on February 15, 2023
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Ojalá lo hubiera descubierto hace 10 años. Es un libro que todos deberíamos leer para tratarnos con más compasión y cariño. Dejar ir la necesidad de perfección. Le doy mil puntos. No es un libro de "auto ayuda" es un libro para entenderte, perdonarte, sanar, y aceptar que sentirnos vulnerables es bueno.
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Rachel Koons
5.0 out of 5 stars Great book to help gain perspective and love yourself wholeheartedly
Reviewed in Italy on January 6, 2023
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Still at the beginning chapters of this book, but I already feel myself accepting some of my imperfect traits more and more. It is so wonderful to be reminded that we need to love ourselves as much as we love others and that many of our "flaws" are actually gifts.
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