Brave, Not Perfect

In 2010, I did the unthinkable. At the age of thirty-three, never having held an elected position, I ran for US Congress.

Up until then, even though it had been my dream from the time I was thirteen years old to run for public office and effect real change, I had stayed safely tucked behind the scenes of politics. By day, I worked long, grueling hours in a big-name investment firm—a high-paying, glamorous job that I hated but stayed in because it was what I thought I was supposed to be doing. At night and in every spare moment on weekends, I worked as a fund-raiser and organizer; these were all valuable contributions that had impact, but in my heart, I wanted to play big and do big things.

With every passing day, I became more and more miserable in my job, until I reached a moment of deep despair when I knew something needed to change. That was when I heard a whisper in the New York political community that the sitting congresswoman in my district was going to vacate her seat after eighteen years to run for Senate. I knew this was my opening. I met with a few key people to ask what they thought, and everyone said enthusiastically that I should go for it. I knew how to raise money, I had good policy ideas, I had a good background story; although I had no experience personally running for office, the rest was there. For the first time in as long as I could remember, I felt fired up. I was finally heading toward the life of public service I’d always dreamed about, and there was no stopping me.

Then it happened. The congresswoman decided not to vacate her seat, which meant I would need to run against her if I wanted it. Suddenly, all the people who’d supported me and said go for it were saying, “Oh, no, no . . . you can’t run against her.” She was a venerable insider, a force to be reckoned with, and they said I didn’t stand a chance. Not only did I lose the enthusiastic support of the female party elite—they outright told me it wasn’t my turn and demanded that I back down.

But by that point, I was in too deep to give up. Here was my dream, just inches within reach. I wanted this—way too much to turn and run away. Believe me, there were plenty of moments that I thought to myself, I must be nuts. But I went for it anyway. I knew this would be my one shot and that I’d regret it for the rest of my life if I didn’t take it.

To my surprise—and the surprise of a lot of other people—my race caught a lot of positive attention. Here I was, a young South Asian upstart who had never held public office, but people were listening, the campaign donations were flowing in; I was even endorsed by the New York Observer and the Daily News. I went from tentatively hopeful to confident I would win after being featured on the cover of two national newspapers, and having CNBC tout my race as one of the hottest in the country.

But when push came to shove, it turned out that voters cared a lot more about my lack of experience than anyone thought. I didn’t just lose; I got clobbered, winning just 19 percent of the vote to my opponent’s 81.

What’s remarkable about this story isn’t that I ran for Congress. Or how stunningly and spectacularly I ended up losing, or even how I picked myself back up after such a public and humiliating defeat. What makes this story worth telling is the fact that when I ran for public office at the age of thirty-three, it was the first time in my entire adult life that I had done something truly brave.

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. It was the drive to cultivate the perfect résumé that got me into Yale Law School after being rejected by them a whopping three times, not bravery. It wasn’t genuine passion for the law or big business that compelled me to go after a job at a top-five law firm and then a premier financial assets management firm; it was the desire to please my immigrant father and fulfill his dreams for me. From the time I was a little girl, I had always set my sights on being the best, and every move I made was an effort to make me appear smart and competent and in turn open doors to other positions that would make me appear smart and competent. I made all these choices to build the “perfect me,” because I believed that would lead to the perfect life.

Despite how things looked from the outside, none of my life choices up until that point were truly brave for one simple reason: there was nothing on the line. This was the first time I was going off-script, doing something that truly mattered to me, in a deeply personal way. It was the first time I had gone for something even though I wasn’t 100 percent confident I could succeed and stood to lose far more than just the election if I failed. I could lose my dignity, my reputation, and my self-confidence. It could hurt, big-time. Could I recover from that?

I’m not alone in having spent my adult life only pursuing positions or projects I knew I’d ace. So many women stick to doing only the things at which they excel, rarely going beyond what makes them feel confident and comfortable. I hear this over and over from the thousands of women I meet around the country, regardless of their race, age, or economic circumstances. I heard it from the twenty-four-year-old dog walker I chatted with at Starbucks who had a fantastic idea for revolutionizing her service but was convinced she could never do it because she’s “bad at business,” and from the fifty-eight-year-old magazine editor I sat next to at a political fundraiser who told me she is miles past burned out and unhappy but won’t leave her job, even though she can financially afford to. Why? Because, she says with a shrug, “It’s what I’m good at.” As CEO of the nonprofit Girls Who Code I see it in my young female employees who don’t volunteer for projects in areas where they don’t have prior experience, while the men jump hard and fast into unfamiliar territory without worrying one iota about failing or looking foolish.

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. To be careful not to climb too high on the jungle gym so we don’t fall and get hurt. To sit quietly and obediently, to look pretty, to be agreeable so we will be liked. 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. Research proves they are given freer rein to play on their own and are encouraged to attempt more daring physical activities with fewer directives and assistance from parents. By the time boys are teenagers asking someone on a date, or young adults negotiating their first raise, they are already well habituated to take risk after risk and are, for the most part, unfazed by failure. Unlike girls, they are rewarded with approval and praise for taking chances, even if things don’t work out.

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. Case in point: the now-famous corporate report that found that men apply for a job when they meet only 60 percent of the qualifications, but women apply only if they meet 100 percent of the qualifications.

We want to be perfect before we even try.

The need to be perfect holds us back in so many ways. We don’t speak up for ourselves, as we know deep down we should, because we don’t want to be seen as pushy, bitchy, or just straight-up unlikable. When we do speak up, we agonize and overthink how to express ourselves, trying to hit just the right note of assertiveness without seeming too “bossy” or aggressive. We obsessively analyze, consider, discuss, and weigh every angle before making a decision, no matter how small. And if we do, heaven forbid, make a mistake, we feel as though our world is falling apart.

And yet, when we hold ourselves back for fear of not being good enough, or fear of being rejected, we tamp down our dreams and narrow our world—along with our opportunities for happiness. How many offers or experiences have we passed up because we were afraid? How many brilliant ideas have we let go by, or personal goals have we backed away from, because we feared we wouldn’t get it right? How many times have we begged off a position of leadership saying, “I’m just not good at that”? 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.

This drive to be perfect takes a serious toll on our well-being, too, as we lose sleep ruminating over the slightest mistake or worrying that someone was offended by something we said or did. Trained to be helpful and accommodating at all costs, we run ourselves ragged trying to do it all and end up exhausted, depleted, even sick because we give away so much of our energy and time to others.

Our self-esteem takes a hit when we stay silent in moments we know we should have spoken up, or when we say yes when we really wanted to say no out of fear of not being liked. Our relationships and hearts suffer when we put up a glossy veneer of perfection; the protective layer may keep others from seeing our flaws and vulnerabilities, but it also isolates us from those we love and keeps us from forging truly meaningful and authentic connections.

Imagine if you lived without the fear of failure, without the fear of not measuring up. If you no longer felt the need to stifle your thoughts and swallow what you really want to say in order to please and appease others. If you could stop berating yourself mercilessly for human mistakes, let go of the guilt and the strangling pressure to be perfect, and just breathe. What if, in every decision you faced, you made the brave choice or took the bolder path. Would you be happier? Would you impact the world in the ways you dream you can? I believe the answer to both is yes.

I wrote Brave, Not Perfect because that pursuit of perfection caused me to hold myself back for too many years. At the age of thirty-three, I finally learned how to be brave in my professional life, which taught me how to be brave in my personal life, too. I’ve been exercising that bravery muscle every day since. It wasn’t easy to go for in vitro fertilization after three devastating miscarriages, or to launch a tech start-up without knowing anything about coding (or about start-ups). But because I did these things, I am a deliriously happy mom to a little boy and am making a difference in the world in the way I always knew deep down I could.

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. It’s time to stop giving up before we try. Because when we do give up on anything that is challenging or doesn’t come to us naturally, we become trapped in a state of discontent and inertia that’s soul crushing. We stay in the relationship that brings us pain, in the social circle that brings us down, in the career that makes us miserable. We let our good ideas wither and die on the vine; or, worse, we painfully watch others succeed at something we knew we should have pursued. Being afraid to try something new, to boldly ask for what we want, to make mistakes, and, yes, maybe even to look a little foolish leads to a lot of wasted brilliance, swallowed ambitions, and regret.

When we hold ourselves to the impossible standard of perfection, there’s no such thing, really, as “success,” because nothing is ever enough.

What if we just said, Fuck it? I’m going to say what’s on my mind even if they don’t like it . . . or volunteer for that assignment that feels too hard . . . or make the life change I secretly dream about without worrying about the outcome. What would our lives look like?

Letting go of the fear of being less than perfect is easier than you think. It all comes down to exercising your bravery muscles, one little bit at a time. That’s what this book is about. It’s a look at how we were wired way back when to pursue perfection and avoid failure at all costs, and how that girlhood wiring holds sway over us in our adult lives. Most importantly, it’s about how to reset that wiring. It’s never too late. By letting go of the need to be perfect and retraining ourselves to be brave, every one of us can dare her own version of the unthinkable.

Why Me?

How did I go from being a failed congressional candidate to a champion for women and bravery? Great question.

After I picked myself up off the floor—literally—in the weeks following my crushing defeat, I looked around and thought, What’s next? As I searched inside myself for an answer, I thought about how, back when I was crisscrossing the city during my political campaign, I had visited numerous schools where I saw coding and robotics classes filled with boys, and how I couldn’t stop thinking about the faces I hadn’t seen. Where were the girls? It started to become clear to me that someone needed to take steps toward closing the gender gap in technology by reaching girls at an early age. Pretty quickly I knew that this was my next calling and how I would be of service in the big way I’d dreamed. By 2012, I’d founded Girls Who Code, which has grown into a national movement with more than ninety thousand girls in fifty states participating.

The original mission of Girls Who Code was to reverse the trend of girls’ interest in STEM dropping off between the ages of thirteen and seventeen, so that by the year 2020, women will be on track to fill much more than just their current 3 percent of the 1.4 million jobs that will be available in computing-related fields. But once GWC got off the ground, I quickly realized we were doing far more than setting up these girls for future job success. By teaching them to code, we were also teaching them to be brave.

You see, coding is an endless process of trial and error with sometimes just a semicolon making all the difference between success and failure. Code breaks and falls apart, and it often takes many, many tries before you experience that magical moment when what you’re trying to create comes to life. To get there requires perseverance and comfort with imperfection.

In February of 2016, I gave a TED talk based on what I’d observed firsthand about girls, perfection, and bravery. The talk was a rallying cry to change how we were socializing our girls—and to encourage women to let go of our people-pleasing, perfectionist instincts and reclaim our voices, courage, and power.

The talk hit a deep nerve that took me by surprise. I knew the topic was profoundly meaningful to me, but it turns out that it resonated with thousands of girls and women around the country as well. Within days, emails started flooding in. Some women shared how they recognized themselves in the message. “I’ve been crying since I heard your talk,” one wrote. “I realized how much I do this to myself,” said another. I heard from countless women who shared how they had passed up opportunities because they were afraid of appearing foolish, of failing, of not living up to the impossible standards they set for themselves.

Some of the emails made me cry as I read how women and girls felt tyrannized by perfectionism: “When I make a mistake or let someone down, I beat myself up for days,” one woman said. “It’s all I can think about.” Another wrote, “Everyone thinks I’m this person who has everything under control . . . if they only knew how hard I work to look that way and how afraid I am that someone will see the mess that I really am.”

Others made me indescribably proud. One college sophomore wrote about how, after many years crying in frustration over homework, unable to ask for help, afraid of being seen as dumb, alienated in school because of her own fixation on perfection, she finally let go of her need to be perfect. “It was incredibly empowering,” she wrote. “I can ask questions. So what if an ignorant person thinks I’m dumb because I need something clarified? I’m here for myself and my education.”

I heard from parents of kindergartners worried about how hyperconcerned their five-year-old girls were with doing everything exactly “right,” and from educators who wanted me to know they had sent mass emails or newsletters to parents imploring them to watch my talk with their family.

The message of “brave, not perfect” continued to spread through bloggers and social media, and through interviews with major news outlets. As of the writing of this book, the TED talk has been viewed almost four million times. I’ve had the privilege of speaking at the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit and with former first lady Michelle Obama at the United States of Women Summit in Washington, D.C.

That’s all been exciting and gratifying, but for me, the most amazing part has been seeing firsthand how the “brave, not perfect” message is sparking personal and meaningful change. Each week, I travel to at least one or two cities to speak at conferences, schools, and corporations; and everywhere I go, I am overwhelmed and touched to learn how my talk inspired women and girls to try something new or intimidating, even if it scared the hell out of them. To ask the questions, or venture the answer, even if they worried they would look foolish or appear less than polished. To leave the “safe” career path for the one they’d always dreamed of, even if people told them they were crazy. To take that leap into the unknown, even if they knew they might stumble and fall—and trust that the world wouldn’t come to an end even if they did.