Читать книгу Brave, Not Perfect - Reshma Saujani - Страница 9

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.

I wrote this book because I believe that every single one of us can learn to be brave enough to achieve our greatest dreams. Whether that dream is to be a multimillionaire, to climb Mt. Everest, or just to live without the fear of judgment hanging over our heads all the time, it all starts to become possible when we override our perfect-girl programming and retrain ourselves to be brave.

No more silencing or holding ourselves back, or teaching our daughters to do the same. It’s time to stop this paradigm in its tracks. And just in case you’re thinking that bravery is a luxury reserved for the 1 percent, let me assure you: I’ve spoken to women across a wide range of backgrounds and economic circumstances, and this is a problem that affects us all. My goal is to create a far-reaching movement of women that will inspire all women to embrace imperfection, so they can build a better life and a better world. No more letting opportunities go by, no more dimming our brilliance, no more deferring our dreams. It’s time to stop pursuing perfection and start chasing bravery instead.

Anaïs Nin wrote, “Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.” If this is true—and I believe that it is—then courage is the key to living the biggest life we can create for ourselves. I am writing this book because I believe every woman deserves a shot at breaking free from the perfectionor-bust chokehold and living the joyful, audacious life she was meant to lead.