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68599af
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Until we teach our children that they need to be concerned with how they look and with what other people think, they dance.
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Brené Brown |
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f2ba5fa
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Tonight we will exhale and teach. Now it's time to inhale. There is the in-breath and there is the out-breath, and it's easy to believe that we must exhale all the time, without ever inhaling. But the inhale is absolutely essential if you want to continue to exhale.
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Brené Brown |
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d40de02
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Owning our story and loving ourselves through that process is the bravest thing we'll ever do." I still believe in this quote from two of my previous books--maybe now more than ever. But I know that it takes more than courage to own your story. We own our stories so we don't spend our lives being defined by them or denying them. And while the journey is long and difficult at times, it is the path to living a more wholehearted life."
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Brené Brown |
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c954181
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The definition of vulnerability is uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure. But vulnerability is not weakness; it's our most accurate measure of courage. When the barrier is our belief about vulnerability, the question becomes: 'Are we willing to show up and be seen when we can't control the outcome?' When the barrier to vulnerability is about safety, the question becomes: 'Are we willing to create courageous spaces so we can be fully see..
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Brené Brown |
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9ed42f0
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Our culture teaches us about shame--it dictates what is acceptable and what is not. We weren't born craving perfect bodies. We weren't born afraid to tell our stories. We weren't born with a fear of getting too old to feel valuable. We weren't born with a Pottery Barn catalog in one hand and heartbreaking debt in the other. Shame comes from outside of us--from the messages and expectations of our culture. What comes from the inside of us is..
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Brené Brown |
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21a87b1
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It was a long year. I lovingly refer to it on my blog as the 2007 Breakdown Spiritual Awakening. It felt like a textbook breakdown to me, but Diana called it a spiritual awakening. I think we were both right. In fact, I'm starting to question if you can have one without the other.
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Brené Brown |
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3f572f0
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When a group or community doesn't tolerate dissent and disagreement, it forgoes any experience of inextricable connection. There is no true belonging, only an unspoken treaty to hate the same people. This fuels our spiritual crisis of disconnection.
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Brené Brown |
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9a16317
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When you judge yourself for needing help, you judge those you are helping. When you attach value to giving help, you attach value to needing help.
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judgement
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Brené Brown |
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a397b3e
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The irony is that we attempt to disown our difficult stories to appear more whole or more acceptable, but our wholeness--even our wholeheartedness--actually depends on the integration of all of our experiences, including the falls.
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Brené Brown |
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3446cf0
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We run from grief because loss scares us, yet our hearts reach toward grief because the broken parts want to mend. C. S. Lewis wrote, "No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear." We can't rise strong when we're on the run."
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Brené Brown |
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94afddb
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Lying is a defiance of the truth. Bullshitting is a wholesale dismissal of the truth.
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lying
truth
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Brené Brown |
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d5c6728
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We fail the minute we let someone else define success for us.
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Brené Brown |
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e77afbf
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When we hear people referred to as animals or aliens, we should immediately wonder, "Is this an attempt to reduce someone's humanity so we can get away with hurting them or denying them basic human rights?"
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Brené Brown |
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57b912d
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I believe Black Lives Matter is a movement to rehumanize black citizens. All lives matter, but not all lives need to be pulled back into moral inclusion. Not all people were subjected to the psychological process of demonizing and being made less than human so we could justify the inhumane practice of slavery.
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Brené Brown |
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7035333
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Neither one of us could really articulate how we felt until I heard Lamott referencing Paul Tillich and telling the audience, "The opposite of faith is not doubt--it's certainty." Steve and I didn't leave religion because we stopped believing in God. Religion left us when it started putting politics and certainty before love and mystery."
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Brené Brown |
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8afc6d9
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Common enemy intimacy is counterfeit connection and the opposite of true belonging. If the bond we share with others is simply that we hate the same people, the intimacy we experience is often intense, immediately gratifying, and an easy way to discharge outrage and pain. It is not, however, fuel for real connection. It's fuel that runs hot, burns fast, and leaves a trail of polluted emotion. And if we live with any level of self-awareness,..
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Brené Brown |
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12feabe
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Ordinary courage is about putting our vulnerability on the line. In today's world, that's pretty extraordinary.
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Brené Brown |
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f87efd4
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Vulnerability sounds like truth and feels like courage. Truth and courage aren't always comfortable, but they're never weakness.
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Brené Brown |
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e6c89c5
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There's a quote that I share every time I talk about vulnerability and perfectionism. My fixation with these words from Leonard Cohen's song "Anthem" comes from how much comfort and hope they give me as I put "enough" into practice: "There's a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in."
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Brené Brown |
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bbdcfe1
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This notion that the leader needs to be "in charge" and to "know all the answers" is both dated and destructive. Its impact on others is the sense that they know less, and that they are less than. A recipe for risk aversion if ever I have heard it. Shame becomes fear. Fear leads to risk aversion. Risk aversion kills innovation."
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Brené Brown |
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b241f3b
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Until both men and women are allowed to be who we are rather than who we are supposed to be, it will be impossible to achieve freedom and equality.
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Brené Brown |
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3ec25ef
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Don't squander joy.
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Brené Brown |
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e5f0194
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The problem is that when we don't care at all what people think and we're immune to hurt, we're also ineffective at connecting. Courage is telling our story, not being immune to criticism. Staying vulnerable is a risk we have to take if we want to experience connection.
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Brené Brown |
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fdb56b2
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Without exception, spirituality--the belief in connection, a power greater than self, and interconnections grounded in love and compassion--emerged as a component of resilience. Most people spoke of God, but not everyone. Some were occasional churchgoers; others were not. Some worshipped at fishing holes; others in temples, mosques, or at home. Some struggled with the idea of religion; others were devout members of organized religions. The ..
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Brené Brown |
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As Kelly Rae so beautifully demonstrated, boundaries are simply our lists of what's okay and what's not okay. In fact, this is the working definition I use for boundaries today. It's so straightforward and it makes sense for all ages in all situations. When we combine the courage to make clear what works for us and what doesn't with the compassion to assume people are doing their best, our lives change. Yes, there will be people who violate..
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Brené Brown |
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9b8e490
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Nothing serves as a better reminder of that than the immortal words of my friend Scott Stratten, author of UnMarketing: "Don't try to win over the haters; you're not the jackass whisperer."
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Brené Brown |
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0f41ee7
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Connection is why we're here. We are hardwired to connect with others, it's what gives purpose and meaning to our lives, and without it there is suffering. I wanted to develop research that explained the anatomy of connection.
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Brené Brown |
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9d5f6e2
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Our unexpressed ideas, opinions, and contributions don't just go away. They are likely to fester and eat away at our worthiness. I think we should be born with a warning label similar to the ones that come on cigarette packages: Caution: If you trade in your authenticity for safety, you may experience the following: anxiety, depression, eating disorders, addiction, rage, blame, resentment, and inexplicable grief.
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Brené Brown |
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2e3e9e0
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We don't need love and belonging and story-catching from everyone in our lives, but we need it from at least one person. If we have that one person or that small group of confidants, the best way to acknowledge these connections is to acknowledge our worthiness. If we're working toward relationships based in love, belonging, and story, we have to start in the same place: I am worthy.
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Brené Brown |
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9699ba1
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Often people attempt to live their lives backwards: they try to have more things, or more money, in order to do more of what they want so that they will be happier. The way it actually works is the reverse. You must first be who you really are, then do what you really need to do, in order to have what you want. -- Margaret Young
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Brené Brown |
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aff2e2c
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eventually our anxiety is compounded and made unbearable by our belief that if we were just smarter, stronger, or better, we'd be able to handle everything.
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Brené Brown |
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940d5df
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Theodore Roosevelt's powerful quote from his 1910 "Man in the Arena" speech: It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly;...who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst,..
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Brené Brown |
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d465ea4
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What's the difference between shame and guilt? The majority of shame researchers and clinicians agree that the difference between shame and guilt is best understood as the differences between "I am bad" and "I did something bad." Guilt = I did something bad. Shame = I am bad. Shame is about who we are, and guilt is about our behaviors."
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Brené Brown |
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26155ba
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Who we are and how we engage with the world are much stronger predictors of how our children will do than what we know about parenting. In terms of teaching our children to dare greatly in the "never enough" culture, the question isn't so much "Are you parenting the right way?" as it is: "Are you the adult that you want your child to grow up to be?" --
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example
parenting
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Brené Brown |
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792a754
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We want to be part of something, but we need it to be real - not conditional or fake or constantly up for negotiation.
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Brené Brown |
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0a145a4
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Belonging is being somewhere where you want to be, and they want you. Fitting in is being somewhere where you want to be, but they don't care one way or the other. * Belonging is being accepted for you. Fitting in is being accepted for being like everyone else. * If I get to be me, I belong. If I have to be like you, I fit in.
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Brené Brown |
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4bcda48
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But as poet Mizuta Masahide wrote, "Barn's burnt down / now / I can see the moon."
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Brené Brown |
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eb95db6
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I know that these examples are symptomatic of the cruelty culture that we live in today and that everyone is fair game, but think about how and what they chose to attack. They went after my appearance and my mothering--two kill shots taken straight from the list of feminine norms. They didn't go after my intellect or my arguments. That wouldn't hurt enough.
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Brené Brown |
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02730c9
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The opposite of "never enough" isn't abundance or "more than you could ever imagine." The opposite of scarcity is enough, or what I call Wholeheartedness."
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Brené Brown |
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ae7bb94
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Conspiracy thinking is all about fear-based self-protection and our intolerance for uncertainty.
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Brené Brown |
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d659df8
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Here's the bottom line: If we want to live and love with our whole hearts, and if we want to engage with the world from a place of worthiness, we have to talk about the things that get in the way--especially shame, fear, and vulnerability.
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Brené Brown |
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550766d
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And, if that's not news enough, here's something else: Hope is learned! Snyder suggests that we learn hopeful, goal-directed thinking in the context of other people. Children most often learn hope from their parents. Snyder says that to learn hopefulness, children need relationships that are characterized by boundaries, consistency, and support. I think it's so empowering to know that I have the ability to teach my children how to hope. It'..
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Brené Brown |
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4f00d66
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For many of us, our first response to vulnerability and pain of these sharp points is not to lean into the discomfort and feel our way through but rather to make it go away.
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Brené Brown |
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2409c9a
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You may not have signed up for a hero's journey, but the second you fell down, got your butt kicked, suffered a disappointment, screwed up, or felt your heart break, it started. It doesn't matter whether we are ready for an emotional adventure--hurt happens. And it happens to every single one of us. Without exception. The only decision we get to make is what role we'll play in our own lives: Do we want to write the story or do we want to ha..
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Brené Brown |