After reading Brene Brown’s Daring Greatly a few weeks back, I decided to read her book The Gifts of Imperfection as well. This was the foundation of her initial TED talk that went viral and brought Brown into the public idea and her research on shame and vulnerability.
I wanted to read this book because she referenced a few sections of it in Daring Greatly that intrigued me and because Brown’s books are fantastic Manila traffic audiobook experiences. They are interesting and carry depth, but they aren’t so complicated or theory-oriented that I have to rewind and backtrack on things. Both of these books are great and provide much more context and perspective to supplement the TED talks.
The Gifts of Imperfection was actually more personally significant for me than Daring Greatly. Perhaps this is because of my past and current manifestations of perfectionism and overly serious temperament most of the time. There were several sections that I found to provide such great insight into dynamics, fears, and pressures that have been part of my life and journey at various points.
Perhaps most helpful, this book came at a timely point in time when I have been experiencing increased pressure and expectations – some from others and some from within. I cannot do all the things I need to do. Correction. I cannot do all the things I need to do as well as I want. That distinction is revealing about my struggles and this book reminded me of the futility and danger of trying to control my environment or please others or deliver high-quality results in every area of life. It’s a life-giving book and there’s much that echoes what the Scriptures say about living by faith in the vulnerability of life.
There is an excellent section on parenting that is different from some of the parenting content in Daring Greatly but that was really helpful for us as we now have our oldest child in middle school. There’s also great content on the role of faith (though some of the spirituality content was ambiguous in framing). But the content from a research perspective of the correlation between authentic faith and living wholeheartedly was interesting to me.
I haven’t read Brown’s more recent books, but the treatment of vulnerability and shame is really good and is highly relevant to every walk of life because it’s part of the stuff of life.
Anyway – I highly recommend The Gifts of Imperfection. I see myself coming back to it from time to time because I resonated so much with different sections.
