The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You’re Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are

“One thing that’s become very clear to me is that the experience of sharing our vulnerability is not the same for all of us. Let me explain. The greatest casualty of trauma—the thing that trauma often takes away from us—is the emotional, and sometimes even physical, safety that is necessary for us to be vulnerable.”

One of Brown’s key realizations in the interval between editions is that we are not all on a level playing field when it comes to expressing vulnerability. While those, like Brown, who enjoy a position of systemic privilege have the safety to reveal their weaknesses, those disadvantaged by trauma or discrimination do not. When we do not all have the same baseline of safety, we cannot hope to enjoy the same results from expressing vulnerability.

“Owning our story and loving ourselves through that process is the bravest thing that we will ever do.”

This opening quote to the Preface of Brown’s book establishes The Challenge of Being Oneself in a Conformist World. Brown defines self-acceptance as loving oneself through the process of recognizing the many layers of one’s life and identifies it as one of the key components of wholehearted living. With this emphatic statement, Brown sets up the reader for a challenge.

“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 embrace who you are.”

Brown’s insistence that the midlife predicament commonly known as a crisis—with all the accompanying pejorative associations—is actually an “unraveling” typifies her emphasis on relinquishing layers of falsehood until only the core of truth remains. While the person we are supposed to be respects societal expectations, who we are is what is left behind when we let go of those. Her reference to the universe indicates not only her personal belief in a power greater than individuals but her belief that such spirituality is vital to well-being.

“I now see that cultivating a wholehearted life is not like trying to reach a destination. 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.”

Through the metaphor of walking to reach a star in the sky, Brown communicates that living a fully wholehearted life is an impossible goal. Her emphasis is instead on the effort we make toward this ideal: As long as we are moving in a wholehearted direction, we are on the right path. This demonstrates the importance of continuous action in wholehearted living.

“I realize that definitions spark controversy and disagreement, but I’m okay with that. I’d rather we debate the meaning of words that are important to us than not discuss them at all. We need common language to help us create awareness and understanding, which is essential to wholehearted living.”

Reflecting her researcher’s need for accuracy, Brown suggests that we ought to spend time defining what the words (like love) that we use casually actually mean. She emphasizes that there can be no progress in our connection with one another if we do not understand what these important words mean to each of us.

“We can talk about courage and love and compassion until we sound like a greeting card store, but unless we’re willing to have an honest conversation about what gets in the way of putting these into practice in our daily lives, we will never change. Never, ever.”

Brown’s retort to those who want her to focus only on the positive and talk about wholehearted living without discussing its barriers demonstrates her prioritization of honesty and the friction of real change, as opposed to the more superficial values that come from chanting affirmations. The repetition of “never” reflects her confidence that positive change will fail to materialize if people refuse to address negativity.

“Practicing courage, compassion, and connection in our daily lives is how we cultivate worthiness. The key word is practice.”

Referring to the key tenets of wholehearted living—courage, compassion, and connection—as a practice is important to Brown’s thesis, as it conveys that action rather than theory is necessary for their implementation. Additionally, the word echoes Brown’s contention that in wholehearted living, there is no such thing as arrival or perfection.

“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.”

Brown anthropomorphizes shame, making it into an allegorical figure that throws a tantrum before being defeated when we share our shameful experiences. This is a humorous touch that encourages the reader to separate their identity from shame—as Brown contends that people often confuse themselves with shame while in a state of self-loathing. Brown also warns that the impulse to keep shame to ourselves leads to its growth, establishing The Paradox of Shame. The term “metastasizes” comes from cancer terminology and refers to the spreading of sickness throughout the body.

“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.’ Over time, this definition has changed, and, today, courage is more synonymous with being heroic.”

Brown juxtaposes the Latin and modern definitions of courage to show how human values have changed over time. Whereas the original word meant being open and vulnerable, the modern definition has more to do with Hollywood-style, life-risking acts. While we might be impressed with death-defying heroes, Brown asks us to embrace the first meaning when it comes to living wholeheartedly.

“One of the biggest surprises in this research was learning that fitting in and belonging are not the same thing, and, in fact, fitting in gets in the way of belonging. Fitting in is about assessing a situation and becoming who you need to be to be accepted. Belonging, on the other hand, doesn’t require us to change who we are; it requires us to be who we are.”

The popular conflation of fitting in and belonging reflects the fact that most of us feel that we must conform to others’ standards as a precondition for belonging. Brown’s research, which is premised on going beyond what is superficially true, reveals the surprising, opposite conclusion: We must be who we are to belong.

“Shame is something we all experience. And while it feels as if shame hides in our darkest corners, it actually tends to lurk in all of the familiar places, including appearance and body image, family, parenting, money and work, health, addiction, sex, aging, and religion. To feel shame is to be human.”

Here, Brown demonstrates the ubiquity of shame, which is a mere symptom of being a human. Her long list of the “familiar places” where shame hides reflects the everydayness of the emotion and the fact that we stand to experience it simply by living. This quote also punctures the idea that people are alone when they experience shame. It bolsters her argument about the importance of connection between people.

“I think we should be born with a warning label similar to the ones that come on cigarette packages: Caution: if you trade in your authenticity for being liked, you may experience the following: anxiety, depression, eating disorders, addiction, rage, blame, resentment, and inexplicable grief.”

The surreal notion that a newborn baby would be accompanied by a warning juxtaposes humor with the grave message about the potentially toxic results of denying one’s true self. The analogy to cigarettes, followed by the long list of mental-health issues, conveys just how much harm can be caused by swapping “belonging” for “fitting in.”

“Perfectionism is not about healthy achievement and growth. Perfectionism is the belief that if we live perfect, look perfect, and act perfect, we can minimize or avoid the pain of blame, judgment, and shame. It’s a shield. Perfectionism is a twenty-ton shield that we lug around thinking it will protect us when, in fact, it’s the thing that’s really preventing us from taking flight. It’s stopping us from being seen.”

Brown’s metaphorical comparison of perfectionism to a 20-ton shield attempts to reframe this culturally sanctioned vice as a barrier that keeps us stuck. Far from being an agent of progress, the fears associated with perfectionism keep us locked in the false belief that ticking boxes and fulfilling metrics will guarantee a pain-free existence. As this is at odds with reality, it does us no favors to be perfectionists. Brown’s repetition of the word “perfectionism” keeps it in the reader’s mind and encourages the reader to reframe any previous understanding of perfectionism.

“Powerlessness is dangerous. For most of us, the inability to effect change is a desperate feeling. We need resilience and hope and a spirit that can carry us through the doubt and fear. We need to believe that we can effect change if we want to live and love with our whole hearts.”

Here, Brown addresses the fundamental human need to feel capable of transformation and able to cultivate a better future. This is a key metric of wholehearted living and the resilience that can carry us through hard times. The use of the word “spirit” again suggests her belief in a power greater than the individual.

“Trying to avoid media messages is like holding your breath to avoid air pollution—it’s not going to happen. It’s in our biology to trust what we see with our eyes. This makes living in a carefully edited, overproduced, and Photoshopped world very dangerous.”

Brown acknowledges the ubiquity of media messages and the futility of trying to escape them through the metaphor of holding one’s breath to avoid air pollution—an act readers will recognize is unsustainable. As we are biologically wired to trust visual information, images of photoshopped unreality put us in the dangerous predicament of measuring ourselves against them and feeling that we are constantly falling short.

“Understanding my behaviors and feelings through a vulnerability lens rather than strictly through an addiction lens changed my entire life. It also strengthened my commitment to sobriety, abstinence, health, and spirituality. I can definitely say, ‘Hi. My name is Brené, and today I’d like to deal with vulnerability and uncertainty with an apple fritter, a beer, and a cigarette, and spending seven hours on Instagram.’”

When Brown stopped trying to make herself fit the addiction model and began to assess her behavior through vulnerability and the myriad numbing actions she took to counter this difficult emotion, her predicament made sense and she was able to change her life for the better. The statement of her numbing behaviors may not be as concise as the Alcoholics Anonymous classic, “Hi, I’m X and I’m an alcoholic,” but it is just as exposing. Brown suggests that just as those with alcohol addictions need to publicly acknowledge their addiction to promote healing, so do people who numb.

“We’re afraid to lose what we love the most, and we hate that there are no guarantees. We think that not being grateful and not feeling joy will make it hurt less. We think if we can beat vulnerability to the punch by imaging loss, we’ll suffer less. We’re wrong. There is one guarantee: If we’re not practicing gratitude and allowing ourselves to know joy, we are missing out on the two things that will actually sustain us during the inevitable hard times.”

Brown argues that the fear of uncertainty creates a barrier to the connected emotions of gratitude and joy. While loss aversion makes us think that not feeling these positive emotions will lessen the blow if the loss occurs, the opposite is true. Brown therefore urges readers to do the counterintuitive, embracing joy even when we know that it is fleeting and that we will again experience its opposite.

“Intuition is not a single way of knowing—it’s our ability to hold space for uncertainty and our willingness to trust the many ways we’ve developed knowledge and insight, including instinct, experience, faith, and reason.”

Brown maintains that the popular psychology definition of intuition as “gut knowing” is overly simplistic. Instead of expecting instant knowledge, we must be comfortable with uncertainty to fully embrace the gifts of intuition and its often quiet way of showing us that we need more tools and information to make a decision.

“It’s easy to see how difficult it is to make time for the important things such as creativity, gratitude, joy, and authenticity when we’re spending enormous amounts of energy conforming and competing.”

Brown argues that it is difficult to make the time for the creativity that connects us to our authentic selves when we spend all of our energy comparing ourselves with our neighbors and striving to keep up with them. She maintains that it is nearly impossible to serve both masters—comparison and creativity—and that we must often choose between the two.

“If we want to live a wholehearted life, we have to become intentional about cultivating sleep and play, and about letting go of exhaustion as a status symbol and productivity as self-worth.”

Brown defines wholehearted living as embracing the whole of life, including sleep and play, and not just reducing existence to the status symbol of productivity. As with perfectionism, she argues that we must let go of exhaustion as a culturally sanctioned vice and become rebels who prioritize allegedly nonproductive activities like rest and exploration.

“No one can define what’s meaningful for us. Culture doesn’t get to dictate if it’s working outside the home, raising children, lawyering, teaching, or painting. Like our gifts and talents, meaning is unique to each one of us.”

Brown notes that we each have an internal and instinctive sense of what is meaningful to us outside of cultural dictates. This is as unique as our individual collection of gifts and talents, and we should not look for answers outside of ourselves.

“When we value being cool and in control over granting ourselves the freedom to unleash the passionate, goofy, heartfelt, and soulful expressions of who we are, we betray ourselves. When we consistently betray ourselves, we can expect to do the same to the people we love.”

Brown frames the image-control that gets in the way of expressing unabashed enthusiasm as a form of self-betrayal. Then she heightens the stakes by arguing that we cannot keep our internal censor to ourselves; if we restrict our own freedom, we will inevitably do the same for the people we love.

“I think of it as an invitation to join a wholehearted revolution. A small, quiet, grassroots movement that starts with each of us saying, ‘My story matters because I matter.’ A movement where we can take to the streets with our messy, imperfect, wild, stretch-marked, wonderful, heartbreaking, grace-filled, and joyful lives.”

Brown sees her book as an invitation to a grassroots movement led by people’s changing consciousness as they love themselves unconditionally, accept their so-called flaws, and embrace joy and realness rather than perfection. It is a guide to a paradoxical kind of confidence, the kind that comes from the fullest expression of ourselves rather than self-improvement.