Last night I had the pleasure of listening to Reshma Saujani, Founder and CEO of Girls Who Code, talk about her latest book "Brave, Not Perfect". She wrote the book after having massive success speaking on the topic in her TED talk. Saujani crafted this talk after observing the behaviors of the girls in her program. Not one would raise their hand at the end of her lessons to ask questions. She knew that if these girls were boys, however, their hands would be shooting up into the air.

Saujani concluded that girls are raised to be perfect and make no mistakes whereas boys are raised to take risks and be brave. A lot of the things she said last night really resonated with me. Here are some key ideas:

🔑 The reason we can't say no, as women, is because we want to be liked.

🔑 You can't be brave if you're tired- so don't be scared to tell people no!

🔑 At the core we are all girls stuck in the 8th grade who still just want boys to like us. Why else would we be baking the banana bread and planning the company Christmas party?

Do you resonate with any of these points she made? I know I do. Even though I am confident in myself and push outside of my comfort zone I still get scared to ask a question in fear of sounding dumb. I still get scared to input my opinion in a group of older males. This irrational fear is something I work on fighting against everyday at work.

I have yet to read the book but will be sure to report back on what I think of it. Overall I love the message and believe it has a lot of great ideas for women to think about.

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