Book review: The Gifts of Imperfection
My copy of Brené Brown’s The Gifts of Imperfection is full of sticky notes. A sentence here that will spawn a post for the Silver & Grace newsletter. An exercise there that will be incoporated into my intuition workshops. Not to mention full paragraphs that I know I will want to ponder in more depth.
In other words, The Gifts of Imperfection truly was a gift for me in all the thoughts it inspired.
The sub-title is Let Go of Who You Think You’re Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are. Been there, done that, bought the t-shirt on being who I thought I was supposed to be. It is seriously highly over-rated. Yet I have embraced who I am only in the last five years.
Brené Brown wants us to lead a Wholehearted Life, which she defines as engaging in our lives from a place of worthiness. Not from striving to be perfect; rather, embracing being imperfect.
And what a relief being imperfect is!
It means we can ask for help. We can take risks. We can experience new adventures. We can learn new things.
All things I didn’t do in my Halfhearted Life for fear of looking foolish. Or, as Brené points out, to avoid feeling shame.
But how do we stop clinging to our fear of not being perfect and start living an imperfect, yet wholehearted life? The Gifts of Imperfection gives us ten guideposts to help us on this journey by cultivating:
- authenticity
- self-compassion
- a resilient spirit
- gratitude and joy
- intution and trusting faith
- creativity
- play and rest
- calm and stillness
- meaningful work
- laugher, song and dance
I have to admit, I am not so good at play and rest, and meaningful work is still, well, a work in progress. But that’s okay, because I am wonderfully imperfect.
As are we all.
If you are struggling to embrace who you truly are, The Gifts Of Imperfection is an excellent guide for compassionately helping you on the road to a wholehearted life. And for those of us who have walked that road, and have embraced our imperfections, this is an excellent book for when we inevitably veer off the lighted roadway into those dark paths of needless shame.
Needless to say, I highly recommend The Gifts of Imperfection. But, if you are still wondering if it the right read for you, I will leave you with this insightful and powerful quote from Brené:
Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it.
More information!
Make sure you return on October 29, 2010, to win a copy of The Gifts of Imperfection.
You can purchase The Gifts of Imperfection on Amazon.
Brené Brown can be found at:
The author’s blog, Ordinary Courage: http://www.ordinarycourage.com/
Brene Brown’s website: http://www.brenebrown.com/
Brene on Twitter: http://twitter.com/brenebrown
This book review was sponsored by TLC Book Tours. To read more reviews of this book, please check out this book tour schedule.
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Excellent review! I’m so glad the book resonated with you. Thank you for sharing it with your readers and for being on the tour!
@Lisa – totally resonated with me. It will definitely spark some future writings from me.
working on my review of this book right now…I wanted to Thank Lisa for referring me to it from my “I Have Failed” post….
Excellent book and great review….I did not want to read yours until I had mine drafted…
I need to rewrite mine….this is good
@Patricia – LOL don’t be silly, Patricia. Your reviews are excellent.
I think I write excellent review, but I used the same quote you did and other than the t shirt part…it just looked too much like I scraped yours….but there is lots and lots of material in this book and I have time to rewrite and maybe just maybe folks will be inspired….I was
@Patricia – seems we are inspired by the same quote
It certainly is a good one!
I just started my rewrite for Monday…I added 9 more quotes and rearranged…needed to do something different – such a good book
@Patricia – can’t wait to read it.