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1b86a47
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Empathy is a strange and powerful thing. There is no script. There is no right way or wrong way to do it. It's simply listening, holding space, withholding judgment, emotionally connecting, and communicating that incredibly healing message of "You're not alone."
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Brené Brown |
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87b4a0a
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Perfection is crucial in building an aircraft, a bridge, or a high-speed train. The code and mathematics residing just below the surface of the Internet is also this way. Things are either perfectly right or they will not work. So much of the world we work and live in is based upon being correct, being perfect.
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Brené Brown |
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f1ec2cf
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Waking up every day and loving someone who may or may not love us back, whose safety we can't ensure, who may stay in our lives or may leave without a moment's notice, who may be loyal to the day they die or betray us tomorrow - that's vulnerability. Love is uncertain.
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Brené Brown |
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5f1fe5d
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There is a quiet transformation happening that is moving us from 'turning on each other' to 'turning toward each other.' Without question, that transformation will require shame resilience. If we're willing to dare greatly and risk vulnerability with each other, worthiness has the power to set us free.
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vulnerability
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Brené Brown |
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ec1d800
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There is no intimacy without vulnerability.
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Brené Brown |
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b94e217
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Comparative suffering is a function of fear and scarcity. Falling down, screwing up, and facing hurt often lead to bouts of second-guessing our judgment, our self-trust, and even our worthiness. I am enough can slowly turn into Am I really enough? If there's one thing I've learned over the past decade, it's that fear and scarcity immediately trigger comparison, and even pain and hurt are not immune to being assessed and ranked. My husband d..
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Brené Brown |
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98eb087
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Because we are compelled to make stories, we are often compelled to take incomplete stories and run with them.
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Brené Brown |
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aafdfde
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According to Bishop, the author of The Big Sort, in 1976 less than 25% of Americans lived in places where the presidential election was a landslide. In other words, we lived next door to and attended school and worshiped with people who held different beliefs than ours. We were ideologically diverse. In contrast, in 2016, 80% of U.S. counties gave either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton a landslide victory. Most of us no longer even live nea..
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Brené Brown |
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1000676
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Spirituality is recognizing and celebrating that we are all inextricably connected to each other by a power greater than all of us, and that our connection to that power and to one another is grounded in love and compassion.
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Brené Brown |
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3096e85
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It is not joy that makes us grateful; it is gratitude that makes us joyful. --Brother David Steindl-Rast
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Brené Brown |
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cfd067a
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It's not an accidental entanglement; it's an intentional knot. Love belongs with belonging.
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Brené Brown |
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d90427a
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A wild heart is not something you can always see -- and yet it is our greatest spiritual possession.
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Brené Brown |
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7d8a51e
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Quoting Viola Davis (who is sharing rules she lives by): '4. I will not be a mystery to my daughter. She will know me and I will share my stories with her--the stories of failure, shame, and accomplishment. She will know she's not alone in that wilderness.
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motherhood
love
belonging
wilderness
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Brené Brown |
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cd347da
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Shame hates it when we reach out and tell our story. It hates having words wrapped around it--it can't survive being shared. Shame loves secrecy. The most dangerous thing to do after a shaming experience is hide or bury our story.
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Brené Brown |
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d8ee8bc
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Just because we're plugged in, doesn't mean we feel seen and heard. In fact, hyper-communication can mean we spend more time on Facebook than we do face-to-face with the people we care about. I can't tell you how many times I've walked into a restaurant and seen two parents on their cell phones while their kids are busy texting or playing video games. What's the point of even sitting together?
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Brené Brown |
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969d575
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I've come to the conclusion that the way we engage with social media is like fire--you can use them to keep yourself warm and nourished, or you can burn down the barn. It all depends on your intentions, expectations, and reality-checking skills.
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Brené Brown |
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4d6729f
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Choosing to be curious is choosing to be vulnerable because it requires us to surrender to uncertainty. It wasn't always a choice; we were born curious. But over time, we learn that curiosity, like vulnerability, can lead to hurt. As a result, we turn to self-protecting--choosing certainty over curiosity, armor over vulnerability, and knowing over learning.
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Brené Brown |
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1a8a03c
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No matter what gets done and how much is left undone, I am enough. It's going to bed at night thinking, Yes, I am imperfect and vulnerable and sometimes afraid, but that doesn't change the truth that I am also brave and worthy of love and belonging.
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Brené Brown |
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05c91cd
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Vulnerability is the core, the heart, the center, of meaningful human experiences.
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Brené Brown |
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1dcb48b
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that imposter or phony feeling at work or school rarely has anything to do with our abilities, but has more to do with that fearful voice inside of us that scolds and asks, "Who do you think you are?"
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Brené Brown |
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7f4d56d
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We've survived and are surviving events that have torn at our sense of safety with such force that we've experienced them as trauma even if we weren't directly involved.
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Brené Brown |
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f58ba9e
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It was divine intervention--the act of starting to turn on the lights to alleviate my discomfort made me think of my favorite quote about darkness and compassion from Pema Chodron, who writes: "Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It's a relationship between equals. Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others. Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared human..
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Brené Brown |
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1c94307
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Grief seems to create losses within us that reach beyond our awareness--we feel as if we're missing something that was invisible and unknown to us while we had it, but is now painfully gone...Longing is not conscious wanting; it's an involuntary yearning for wholeness, for understanding, for meaning, for the opportunity to regain or even simply touch what we've lost.
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loss
yearning
wholeness
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Brené Brown |
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b20198d
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One of the greatest barriers to going back is related to empathy. If our goal is perfection rather than growth, it is unlikely that we are willing to go back, because it requires a level of self-empathy--the ability to look at our own actions with understanding and compassion; to understand our experiences in the context in which they happened and to do all this without judgment.
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Brené Brown |
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d1d413b
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Creativity, which is the expression of our originality, helps us stay mindful that what we bring to the world is completely original and cannot be compared.
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Brené Brown |
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ce5e425
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We are worthy of love and belonging now. Right this minute. As is.
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Brené Brown |
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0a8de15
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When we spend a lifetime trying to distance ourselves from the parts of our lives that don't fit with who we think we're supposed to be, we stand outside of our story and hustle for our worthiness by constantly performing, perfecting, pleasing, and proving.
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Brené Brown |
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d24cbdb
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It's only in the last few years that I've learned that playing down the exciting stuff doesn't' take the pain away when it doesn't happen. It also creates a lot of isolation. Once you've diminished the importance of something, your friends are not likely to call and say, "I'm sorry that didn't work out. I know you were excited about it." Now when someone asks me about the potential opportunity that I'm excited about, I'm more likely to prac..
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brene-brown
priorities
vulnerability
disappointment
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Brené Brown |
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4dcf8fe
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Living BIG (boundaries, integrity, and generosity).
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Brené Brown |
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cf74e0e
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Only when diverse perspectives are included, respected, and valued can we start to get a full picture of the world:
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Brené Brown |
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a64872a
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the only thing I know for sure after all of this research is that if you're going to dare greatly, you're going to get your ass kicked at some point. If you choose courage, you will absolutely know failure, disappointment, setback, even heartbreak. That's why we call it courage. That's why it's so rare.
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Brené Brown |
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657f22b
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Serpentining" means trying to control a situation, backing out of it, pretending it's not happening, or maybe even pretending that you don't care. We use it to dodge conflict, discomfort, possible confrontation, the potential for shame or hurt, and/or criticism (self- or other-inflicted). Serpentining can lead to hiding out, pretending, avoidance, procrastination, rationalizing, blaming, and lying. I have a tendency to want to serpentine wh..
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options-in-life
options
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Brené Brown |
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038ae56
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Mindfulness: Taking a balanced approach to negative emotions so that feelings are neither suppressed nor exaggerated. We cannot ignore our pain and feel compassion for it at the same time. Mindfulness requires that we not "over-identify" with thoughts and feelings, so that we are caught up and swept away by negativity."
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Brené Brown |
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826359b
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Feeding people half-truths or bullshit to make them feel better (which is almost always about making ourselves feel more comfortable) is unkind
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Brené Brown |
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1760d2b
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So often, when someone is in pain, we're afraid to say, "Yes, this hurts. Yes, this is a big deal. Yes, this sucks." We think our job is to make things better, so we minimize the pain."
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Brené Brown |
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f61e4a6
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Writer Mary Jo Putney says, "What one loves in childhood stays in the heart forever."
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Brené Brown |
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438f2ac
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When you are in the middle of a story it isn't a story at all, but only a confusion; a dark roaring, a blindness, a wreckage of shattered glass and splintered wood; like a house in a whirlwind, or else a boat crushed by the icebergs or swept over the rapids, and all aboard powerless to stop it. It's only afterwards that it becomes anything like a story at all. When you are telling it, to yourself or to someone else. --Margaret Atwood, Alias..
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Brené Brown |
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2324236
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In addition to the gremlins, another thing that gets in the way of meaningful work is the struggle to define who we are and what we do in an honest way. In a world that values the primacy of work, the most common question that we ask and get asked is, "What do you do?" I used to wince every time someone asked me this question. I felt like my choices were to reduce myself to an easily digestible sound bite or to confuse the hell out of peopl..
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Brené Brown |
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3476817
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Daring greatly is not about winning or losing. It's about courage.
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Brené Brown |
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19d07b5
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The opposite of scarcity is not abundance; the opposite of scarcity is simply enough.
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Brené Brown |
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1d1267c
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Heroics is often about putting our life on the line. Ordinary courage is about putting our vulnerability on the line. In today's world, that's pretty extraordinary.
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vulnerability
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Brené Brown |
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f9d8ad2
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And in case I'm feeling more ornery than usual, I have a little Post-it Note under my tightrope picture that reads, "Cruelty is cheap, easy, and chickenshit." That's also a touchstone of my spiritual beliefs."
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Brené Brown |
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d22dee4
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Many of us will spend our entire lives trying to slog through the shame swampland to get to a place where we can give ourselves permission to both be imperfect and to believe we are enough.
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Brené Brown |
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311938f
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Cassandra Dahnke and Tomas Spath, write: Civility is claiming and caring for one's identity, needs, and beliefs without degrading someone else's in the process....[Civility] is about disagreeing without disrespect, seeking common ground as a starting point for dialogue about differences, listening past one's preconceptions, and teaching others to do the same. Civility is the hard work of staying present even with those with whom we have dee..
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Brené Brown |