Brave, Not Perfect: Fear Less, Fail More, and Live Bolder

by Reshma Saujani

If you looked at my pedigree up until that point—Yale Law School, followed by a string of prestigious jobs in the corporate world—you probably would think I was a gutsy go-getter. But being a go-getter and being gutsy aren’t necessarily the same.

I made all these choices to build the “perfect me,” because I believed that would lead to the perfect life.

So many women stick to doing only the things at which they excel, rarely going beyond what makes them feel confident and comfortable.

There’s a reason why we women feel and act this way. It has nothing to do with biology and everything to do with how we’ve been trained. As girls, we’re taught from a very young age to play it safe. To strive to get all A’s to please our parents and teachers.

Well-meaning parents and teachers guide us toward activities we excel at so we can shine, and they steer us away from the ones we aren’t naturally good at to spare our feelings and grade point averages. Of course the intentions are good; no parent wants to see their daughter injured, disappointed, or discouraged. The bubble wrap in which we are cocooned comes with love and caring, so no one realizes how much it insulates us from taking risks and going after our dreams later in life.

Boys, on the other hand, absorb a very different message. They are taught to explore, play rough, swing high, climb to the top of the monkey bars—and fall down trying. They are encouraged to try new things, tinker with gadgets and tools, and get right back in the game if they take a hit. From a young age, boys are groomed to be adventurous.

In other words, boys are taught to be brave, while girls are taught to be perfect. Rewarded for perfection from the time we’re young, we grow up to be women who are terrified to fail. We don’t take risks in our personal and professional lives because we fear that we’ll be judged, embarrassed, discredited, ostracized, or fired if we get it wrong. We hold ourselves back, consciously or unconsciously, from trying anything that we’re not certain we’ll ace to avoid the potential pain and humiliation. We won’t take on any role or endeavor unless we are certain we can meet or exceed expectations.

Men, on the other hand, will jump into uncharted waters without hesitation or apprehension about what might happen if they don’t succeed.

I believe this “perfect or bust” mentality is a big part of why women are underrepresented in C-suites, in boardrooms, in Congress, and pretty much everywhere you look.

When we relinquish the punishing need for perfection—or, rather, let go of the fear of not being perfect—we find freedom, joy, and all the other good stuff we want in life.

Thus began my lifelong mission to be the perfect daughter, the perfect girlfriend, the perfect employee, the perfect mom. In this I know I’m not alone. We go from yes-girls to yes-women, caught in a never-ending cycle of constantly having to prove our worth to others—and to ourselves—by being selfless, accommodating, and agreeable.

Ask a girl her opinion on a topic and she’ll do a quick calculation. Should she say what the teacher/parent/friend/boy is looking for her to say, or should she reveal what she genuinely thinks and believes? It usually comes down to whichever she thinks will be more likely to secure approval or affection.

The problem is, when you work so hard to get everyone to like you, you very often end up not liking yourself so much.

Studies show that parents provide much more hands-on assistance and words of caution to their daughters, while their sons are given encouragement and directives from afar and then left to tackle physical challenges on their own. We start with protecting girls physically, and the coddling continues on from there.

One problem is what girls focus on when they’re given difficult feedback. When girls are told they got a wrong answer or made a mistake, all they hear is condemnation, which sears like a flaming arrow straight through the heart.

She sees many parents caught between wanting to teach their daughters resilience and wanting to shield them from the sting of failure.

parents and teachers tend to give boys more “process praise,” meaning they reward them for putting in effort, trying different strategies, sticking with it, and improving, rather than for the outcome.

The very same behaviors that used to pay off—like being nice, polite, and agreeable—suddenly end up costing us big-time, both literally and figuratively. Playing nice doesn’t get us the promotions or positions of power—and it certainly doesn’t get us raises.

In the long run, I ended up making his American dream come true by going after my own.

It’s when we start obsessing and clutching on to flawlessness as a security blanket that we know we’ve tipped over into unhealthy territory.

After a lifetime of chasing other people’s dreams (whether we’re actually aware that’s what we’re doing or not), worrying about what others think, or following a prescribed formula for what we think our lives “should” look like, our own desires and goals get blurred.

I came across a recent study done by a professor at Auburn University which found that fewer women than men believe they meet their own standards in terms of family and work commitments.

I don’t think the pressure to do everything perfectly shows up anywhere more profoundly than for working moms.

We’ve done a great job of internalizing the message that anything less than a perfect mom equals a bad mom.

Women are the ones who give away all of our “me” time to our partners and our children.

A national survey designed by the Families and Work Institute revealed that much of the time pressure women deal with is self-imposed because they have trouble delegating or letting go of control.

It isn’t the standards at all that we need to change, but our thinking about what it means if we do or don’t reach them.

The difference between excellence and perfection is like the difference between love and obsession. One is liberating, the other unhealthy.

Excellence is a way of being, not a target you hit or miss. It allows you to take pride in the effort you put in regardless of the outcome.

It’s become a bit of a cliché to call yourself a perfectionist in a job interview, thinking it implies a strong work ethic and high attention to detail. The irony is that perfectionism actually impedes excellence. It causes us to overthink, overrevise, overanalyze: too much perfecting, not enough doing.

Research confirms that the most successful people in any given field are less likely to be perfectionistic, because the anxiety about making mistakes gets in your way, explained psychologist Thomas Greenspan in a New York magazine article.

women don’t step up to positions of senior leadership not because of family obligations, but because they don’t want the stress and pressure that comes along with that level of responsibility. As the Wall Street Journal reported in a summary of this study, “The path to senior positions is disproportionately stressful for women.” I believe this is true, but I think this disproportionate stress arises in part because women think they need to do the job perfectly.

The real key to breaking free is by retraining yourself to embrace bravery,

Bravery, on the other hand, is a pursuit that adds to your life everything perfection once threatened to take away: authentic joy; a sense of genuine accomplishment; ownership of your fears and the grit to face them down; an openness to new adventures and possibilities; acceptance of all the mistakes, gaffes, flubs, and flaws that make you interesting, and that make your life uniquely yours.

Bravery is not boring

Bravery takes so many different forms, and they’re all important and valuable. All bravery matters because bravery feeds on itself. We build our bravery muscles one act at a time, big or small.

Being brave like women is about making choices based on what we want and what makes us happy, not what others expect or want for us.

I’m not telling you to just try harder to achieve your goals. What I am telling you is not to let fear stop you from going after them. I’m telling you not to give up before you try. If you succeed, the success will be even sweeter because it was fueled by courage and by genuine passion.

Bravery makes us better parents. When we let go of the unrealistic expectations for ourselves, we then naturally ease up on our kids.

Bravery doesn’t guarantee that everything will work out, just that we’ll be okay if it doesn’t. No matter what demons we face, bravery allows us to stand strong and keep going. Bravery—not perfection—is the only true armor there is.

our gloriously messy, flawed, real selves are in fact the true definition of perfection.

Exhaustion and being overwhelmed are pretty much instantaneous bravery killers.

the secret to making a fitness routine stick is to schedule it in advance, just like you would anything important.

When you pass on a challenge or an opportunity, ask yourself, Does this really not make sense to do, or am I not doing it because I’m scared and out of my comfort zone?

When you’re faced with a “scary” challenge or opportunity and debating what to do, ask yourself what advice you would give someone else in that situation. “On average, we make better decisions for others than we do for ourselves,”

bravery is a muscle, the more you work it, the stronger it becomes. By practicing bravery on a daily basis when you’re on stable ground, you set yourself up to survive the bigger, unexpected challenges that life will undoubtedly throw your way.

When you’re pushing yourself beyond where you’re comfortable and striving for improvement, you’re firing on all cylinders. That’s when you enter that magical psychological state known as “flow.”

One way we build back our resilience and take the sting out of rejection and failure is by normalizing it.

If you failed, it means you tried. If you tried, it means you took a risk.

Research has shown that physical activity after an emotional blow is key for promoting resilience, so get moving. Go for a run or a long walk, hit the gym, do yoga; even better, do it with friends (strong social connections are another proven resilience booster). If exercise isn’t your jam, go do anything that gets you out of your head and back into self-care. Make or bake something. Read an inspiring book. Meditate. Spend an afternoon in the park with your kid. Go to a museum, a movie, a concert.

Second, reassess. This requires what psychologists call “cognitive flexibility,” which is a fancy way of saying having the ability to see the situation through a different lens. Psychotherapist Esther Perel refers to it as “reframing your narrative.” It’s easy to fixate on a single narrative, replaying it over and over in our mind.