Reshma Saujani: ...that I had to be brave, not perfect

Nobody Told Me!

Business, Entrepreneurship

4.2 • 671 Ratings

🗓️ 31 October 2020

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this episode, we talk to Reshma Saujani, the Founder and CEO of Girls Who Code, a national non-profit organization working to close the gender gap in computer science and technology. We learn what inspired her new book, 'Brave, Not Perfect: Fear Less, Fail More, and Live Bolder' and why it's so important to take chances, embrace the unknown, and unlearn perfectionism. As Reshma says, "we need to start doing things we suck at", like going to a dance class for fun even when we know we're going to be the worst one in there, in order to learn to embrace imperfection and failure. She believes that by gaining resilience and making bravery a lifelong habit, we will lead much happier and more fulfilled lives.

****

Thanks to our sponsor of this episode!

--> Magic Spoon: try a variety pack and get free shipping by visiting magicspoon.com/ntm.

--> BetterHelp: get 10% off your first month of online counseling if there are issues that are interfering with your happiness or preventing you from achieving your goals by visiting betterhelp.com/nobody.

--> AirMedCare: If you're ever in need of emergency medical transport, AirMedCare Network provides members with world class air transport services to the nearest appropriate hospital with no out of pocket expenses. Go to airmedcarenetwork.com/nobody and use offer code 'NOBODY' to sign up and choose up to a $50 Amazon or Visa gift card with a new membership!

***

Note: this episode is part of our 'Best Of' series. It originally aired in February 2019.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome to Nobody Told Me. I'm Jan Black. And I'm Laura Owens. Our guest on this episode is Rushma
0:18.5	Sawjani, the founder and CEO of the nonprofit Girls Who Code,
0:23.7	which aims to close the gender gap in STEM fields and encourage girls to explore computer programming.
0:30.2	Reshma feels girls need to learn to take risks and not fear failure rather than pursue perfection in all things.
0:36.8	Her new book is called Brave, Not Perfect,
0:39.7	Fearless, Fail More, and Live Boulder. Reshma, thanks so much for joining us.
0:44.8	Thanks so much for having me. So tell us what inspired that book, Brave Not Perfect.
0:49.9	Yeah, well, you know, I feel like I've been working on women and girls issues for the past 30 years of my life.
0:56.3	And when I looked at kind of the state of women when I was 13 and I looked at it when I was 43, it felt like nothing had really changed.
1:03.4	And I spent my life with teenage girls and I started looking at, you know, how they were learning code as like an indication of like how they were struggling
1:11.6	so much with perfectionism. And, you know, I feel like in the time that girls are little,
1:16.8	they're taught to be perfect and we raise our boys to be brave. And in many ways, like, they get
1:21.3	addicted to this perfectionism, right? And they feel like if there's a, they make a mistake
1:26.1	or something comes hard to them, that it immediately
1:28.6	means that they shouldn't do it. And what's happening is we're creating, you know, a generation of young
1:33.6	women who quite think they're not happy. And we're also creating a leadership gap.
1:38.2	So why is this new generation of women not happy?
1:41.9	Well, I don't even, you know, arguably, I don't even know if it's, it's,
1:45.7	it's this generation or if it's just all of us. Because I think that we've been sold a bill of
1:50.9	goods that if we're perfect, we'll be happy, that if we're polished, we'll be happy. And we get
1:57.1	opportunities that come to us. And if we think that they're hard or that they don't come to us easily, we pass on them.
2:03.5	And we let our great ideas die on the vine.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Nobody Told Me!, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Nobody Told Me! and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.