The Gifts of Imperfection summary

Are you a perfectionist? If you are, do you consider it to be a positive quality?

Perfectionism, despite maybe sounding positive, isn’t worth pursuing. It’s different than striving to be your best, and is unrelated to self-improvement. Rather, it revolves around the fundamental fear of shame.

How many of us have tried to lose weight, but instead give up at the first sign of trouble? So many of us lack the resilience necessary to achieve our goals. Luckily, we can change that tendency. Let’s start by looking at where resilience originates:

Resilience comes from practicing hope. While hope is often considered an emotion based on circumstances outside of our control, researcher C.R. Snyder argues instead that hope is actually a cognitive process that can be both learned and practiced.

It’s common sense that you’re happier when you’re grateful for the things you have, rather than when you’re lamenting that you don’t have enough. This gratitude, much like hope, is not an accidental emotion, but is a mindset that can be consciously trained.

While most people think of gratitude as the feeling that follows positive experiences, in reality it is a practice that fosters happiness. This has major implications for how we live our lives: it means that joy isn’t merely the accidental result of external conditions over which we have no control. Rather, we actively choose joy by practicing gratitude.

Your intuition is one of your greatest resources in decision-making. Unfortunately, however, many people find it difficult to trust their intuition.

In part, it’s because most people don’t understand what intuition is. They think of it as a “gut” feeling that has nothing to do with rationality or reason. In reality, intuition and reason are not mutually exclusive.

Comparing ourselves to others is totally natural, and something that we all do. However, in our attempts to measure ourselves against our peers, we often end up actually ridding ourselves of the very qualities that make us interesting individuals.

Indeed, comparison is the very root of conformity. While competition and conformity might at first sound like polar opposites, they’re actually inextricably related.

If someone told you to drop everything and go play – right now! – could you do it? Or would your other obligations keep you from leaving your desk? Making time to play isn’t as easy as it might seem.

Our society has the bad habit of tying self-worth to productivity. As a result, we end up sacrificing things like rest, play and our general well-being if those things appear to get in the way of our work.

Life in our fast-paced, stress-filled society makes for a lot of anxiety. For many people, perhaps even you, the nervousness and restlessness that come with anxiety can be practically paralyzing.

We are most affected by anxiety when we inadvertently allow it to become an integral part of our lifestyle. This often occurs when we try to balance too many things at once without allowing ourselves to take a step back and put everything into perspective.

How many times did your parents or teachers tell you to quit spending all your time drawing, singing or playing and to instead do some real work? It’s high time you ignored their advice!

We all have unique gifts and talents that belong to us alone, and we should embrace them, rather than ignore them for the sake of getting “real work” done. Some of us, for example, might be artistically gifted, while others might be particularly good at conversation. Others might have a unique talent for remembering sports statistics.

In this age of social media, the pressure to present ourselves as cool, blasé types with adventurous lives and without a care in the world has never been stronger. But it’s precisely this desire to be “cool” that keeps us isolated from others.

We need to be connected to others, and the best way to do so is through laughter, song and dance. These three activities create emotional and spiritual connection with those around us, and allow us to feel we’re not alone.