The Gifts of Imperfection

The Gifts of Imperfection

Brene Brown

 

Very occasionally, books come by which take one’s breath away.  The Gifts of Imperfection is one such book.  It is most possibly my book of the decade.  It is unusual, as it is part memoir, part handbook.  As such, it is potentially an odd choice for a book club to discuss due to the lack of characterisation – but there is so much in this short book that deserves attention and conversation with friends, that it would be remiss not to recommend it here.

 

The aim of Brown’s book is to offer readers insights and tools towards ‘wholeheartedness.’  For Brown wholeheartedness is that state of being which is marked by compassion, courage and joyfulness.  It is a sharp, insightful, and occasionally a little crude, reflection on what it might be to choose a defiant and passionate, liberated, life.

 

Brown has spent the majority of her life listening to, and collating, people’s stories of vulnerability and shame.  From these encounters and experiences, Brown has spent a great deal of time in her own therapeutic setting, recalibrating her own identity and personal responses to her own experiences of vulnerability and shame.  In ‘The Gifts of Imperfection’ Brown outlines her own “spiritual awakening” (Brown prefers the description ‘breakdown’) and offers readers the opportunity to engage with mechanisms for living a more wholehearted life.

 

This book should be more widely read than it currently has been.  Brown explores how to move from perfectionism to compassion; from fear to gratitude; certainty to faithfulness; exhaustion to rest; anxiety to calm; self doubt to meaning; and control to laughter.  The negative list here reads like many of the descriptors of twenty-first century living.  The positive list, for me at least, often feels quite a distance away. 

 

What Brown offers through her memoir is an amusing, sometimes painful, reflection on her own life whilst at the same time pointing her readers to lessons learnt and activities to foster in one’s own life.  This is definitely a book that will serve an individual well, and would make a great book for a Lent course or short housegroup series, taking a chapter at a time.

 

This book will change your life – especially if you begin to put into practice some of the principles and exercises Brown suggests.  This is not a self help book perpetuating naval gazing and self importance.  This is a handbook to wholehearted living: life long, whole life and world transforming life to the full. 

 

There are lots of questions in this column, but this is because there is a question for each chapter.  Feel free not to ask each question, or to use the DIG DEEPER parts of each chapter rather than the questions here.  ‘The Gifts of Imperfection’ is a book that reward multiple reading and engaged discussion.  I hope you enjoy it as much as I have.

 

Questions for discussion

 

What were your initial expectations when reading a memoir? 

In what ways was reading this different to reading a novel?

 

What did you find most compelling about the book as a whole? What is the one gem that has remained with you from the book?

 

Which chapter did you find the most helpful?  Why?

Which chapter did you find the most difficult?  Why?

 

To what extent is Brown’s voice a necessary one in the text?  Do you find her personal exploration helpful or jarring?  Why?

 

Brown defines wholeheartedness through three key characteristics: courage, compassion and connection.  What else, if anything, would you add to the list?

 

For Brown, wholehearted living is a ‘path of consciousness and a choice. And, to be honest, a little countercultural.’ Do you agree?  Why/Why not?

 

There is a difference between shame and guilt.  In what ways do you agree/disagree?

What does shame look like?

‘Authenticity isn’t always the safe option.’ What examples of this can you think of from your own life experience where this has been the case? (guidepost #1)

 

Why do you think compassion might spread quickly? (guidepost #2)

 

‘When we numb the dark, we numb the light.’ In what ways do you agree/disagree?  Why?  What from your own experience supports/contradicts this? (guidepost #3)

 

How might joy and happiness be different things? (guidepost #4)

 

Do we need certainty in our faith?  Why/why not?  What answer would Brown give to this question? (guidepost #5)

 

‘If we want to make meaning, we need to make art.  Cook, write, draw, doodle, paint, scrapbook, take pictures, collage, knit, rebuild an engine, sculpt, dance, decorate, act, sing…’ What are you going to create in light of this conclusion?  (guidepost #6)

 

‘We have to let go of exhaustion as a status symbol and productivity as self worth.’ What makes this hard to do? (guidepost #7)

 

Brown suggests that stillness and calm have the consequence of making humanity face up to the realities of its existence, and that this can be a painful and difficult encounter.  In what ways do you agree/disagree with Brown’s conclusion? (guidepost #8)

Where do you go to be still? 

What effect does stillness and/or silence have on you?