Brené Brown - The Gift of Imperfection
I was initially introduced to this book and author by a blog from Seth Godin (I know that I live my life through blogs from Seth Godin!)
Every so often Godin will blog a set of books that he has really enjoyed reading recently and you can look through them with links to Amazon and just buy them straight away. It is a really cool trick and he rarely ever recommends a book that I haven't thought was fantastic.
As is my way with these things and as I have too little time in my life I took this one on audio book and put it on my phone. I started to listen to it and stopped because I wasn't in the mood and it lay there for a while.
My interest was re-ignited when I did a bit of a book exchange with Patrick Allen of Henry Schein where I gave him a copy of David and Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell and in return at another meeting he gave me a copy of Brené Brown's most recent book Daring Greatly (I will blog about this a bit later)
Brown is quite a fascinating author, something a little bit different than that which you might have had before and a little bit uncomfortable at times to read because of the way she makes you examine yourself (not physically)
This is non-fiction. It is one of those "happy people books" that Alison would tell me are a load of s%^t but one that I have thoroughly enjoyed listening to on my re-introduction and which has given me many pointers to cope with the demons and the buzzy bees when they come.
Brené Brown's background is a researcher, she is open and honest about her story and how she lives her life. Her fundamental area of research is shame which may sound a bit bizarre but is something which touches everybody almost everyday . She uses her research and her life experience to pull this together in an amazing advice book which helps to provide a little respite on the pathway through this ridiculous landscape that we try to live our lives in at the moment.
She addresses issues like perfectionism and also our obsession with other peoples perception of us and how this makes us eternally unhappy. How we deal with conflict on a day to day basis and how we react to difficult shaming situations.
I think if you have any difficulty about the way you feel about yourself (that clearly applies to everybody) this book is worth a real thorough examination and probably most of the other things she has written are worth an examination too.
Read it with your eyes wide open because it will get messy when you think about yourself but you'll come out the other side perhaps just a little bit better.
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