Powerful ideas from top nonfiction
Try Blinkist to get the key ideas from 5,500+ bestselling nonfiction titles and podcasts. Listen or read in just 15 minutes.
Start your free trial
Blink 3 of 8 - The 5 AM Club
by Robin Sharma
Listen to the Intro
Brave, Not Perfect summary
Reshma Saujani
Fear Less, Fail More, and Live Bolder
15 mins
What is Brave, Not Perfect about?
Brave, Not Perfect (2019) opens up a new world to those women socialized from a young age to strive for perfection and please everyone around them. Perfection doesn’t always help you get ahead in the modern world – but bravery does. By embracing the power of bravery, women can emancipate themselves from the servitude of perfectionism, embrace the power of failure and achieve their dreams.
Table of Contents
Brave, Not Perfect
summarized in 5 key ideas
Audio & text in the Blinkist app
Key idea 1 of 5
Instead of being taught to be brave and take risks, girls are groomed to please others and strive for perfection.
Meet Erica. She’s a middle-aged, successful woman who is always extremely friendly, helpful and greets everyone with a dazzling smile. Working from dawn until dusk to impress clients and colleagues doesn’t stop her from constantly looking fresh and ready to go.
Indeed, no matter the situation, Erica is always projecting perfectionism onto the world around her and trying to please everyone she comes across.
But deep down, Erica wishes she could act differently. In fact, sometimes, she wishes she was brave enough to tell her biggest client that she thinks his business strategies are terrible. Sadly, the inherent drive that so many women feel to please everyone around them and strive towards perfection keeps her locked in a life that she doesn’t want to live.
Erica is a good friend of the author. And, like the author, she’s a victim of a society where women are taught to be afraid of risk, of being bold and choosing the lives they want to lead – independently of what others think. Instead of being brave, young girls are taught how to be perfect for the sake of pleasing those around them. The opposite is true of young boys, who are encouraged to explore, fail and take risks.
The categorization of girls as agreeable people-pleasers starts as soon as they’re born. One study that placed babies without recognizable genders in neutral clothes showed that when they were upset, adults were more likely to think they were boys. But when they were happy, most adults assumed the infants were girls.
And this expectation of girls quickly develops into reality.
Consider a University of California study involving a simple lemonade stand. The catch? Instead of adding sugar, the researchers added salt, making the beverage less than satisfying. After handing them out to groups of boys and girls, the results of the social conditioning girls go through became clear: boys immediately conveyed how disgusting it tasted, whereas girls politely sipped it.
Only after the researchers pressed the girls on why they kept drinking did the truth come out – the girls said they didn’t want the researchers to feel bad.
This is the society we live in – where boys are bred to be brave, and girls to please via an endless drive toward perfection.
Want to see all full key ideas from Brave, Not Perfect?
Key ideas in Brave, Not Perfect
More knowledge in less time
Read or listen
Get the key ideas from nonfiction bestsellers in minutes, not hours.
Find your next read
Get book lists curated by experts and personalized recommendations.
Shortcasts New
We’ve teamed up with podcast creators to bring you key insights from podcasts.
Who should read Brave, Not Perfect?
- Women suffering under the weight of socially enforced perfectionism
- Female entrepreneurs trying to get their business on the right track
- Men who want to better learn how society conditions women
Categories with Brave, Not Perfect
Books like Brave, Not Perfect
People ❤️ Blinkist
Sven O.
It's highly addictive to get core insights on personally relevant topics without repetition or triviality. Added to that the apps ability to suggest kindred interests opens up a foundation of knowledge.
Thi Viet Quynh N.
Great app. Good selection of book summaries you can read or listen to while commuting. Instead of scrolling through your social media news feed, this is a much better way to spend your spare time in my opinion.
Jonathan A.
Life changing. The concept of being able to grasp a book's main point in such a short time truly opens multiple opportunities to grow every area of your life at a faster rate.
Renee D.
Great app. Addicting. Perfect for wait times, morning coffee, evening before bed. Extremely well written, thorough, easy to use.
People also liked
Start growing with Blinkist now
26 Million
Downloads on all platforms
4.7 Stars
Average ratings on iOS and Google Play
91%
Of Blinkist members create a better reading habit*
*Based on survey data from Blinkist customers