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f8a6cee Joy comes to us in moments--ordinary moments. We risk missing out on joy when we get too busy chasing down the extraordinary. Scarcity culture may keep us afraid of living small, ordinary lives, but when you talk to people who have survived great losses, it is clear that joy is not a constant. Brené Brown
38fa49a Our stories are not meant for everyone. Hearing them is a privilege, and we should always ask ourselves this before we share: "Who has earned the right to hear my story?" If we have one or two people in our lives who can sit with us and hold space for our shame stories, and love us for our strengths and struggles, we are incredibly lucky. If we have a friend, or a small group of friends, or family who embraces our imperfections, vulnerabili.. Brené Brown
36d92e1 I took a deep breath and recited my vulnerability prayer as I waited for my turn: Give me the courage to show up and let myself be seen. Then, seconds before I was introduced, I thought about a paperweight on my desk that reads, "What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?" I pushed that question out of my head to make room for a new question. As I walked up to the stage, I literally whispered aloud, "What's worth doing eve.. Brené Brown
06e9c00 We like recovery stories to move quickly through the dark so we can get to the sweeping redemptive ending. I worry that this lack of honest accounts of overcoming adversity has created a Gilded Age of Failure. Brené Brown
5587358 So much of what we hear today about courage is inflated and empty rhetoric that camouflages personal fears about one's likability, ratings, and ability to maintain a level of comfort and status. We need more people who are willing to demonstrate what it looks like to risk and endure failure, disappointment, and regret--people willing to feel their own hurt instead of working it out on other people, people willing to own their stories, live .. Brené Brown
6d5c961 When we go against the grain and put ourselves and our work out in the world, some people will feel threatened and they will go after what hurts the most--our appearance, our lovability, and even our parenting. Brené Brown
c0a0683 Living with air pollution increases your odds of dying early by 5 percent. Living with obesity, 20 percent. Excessive drinking, 30 percent. And living with loneliness? It increases our odds of dying early by 45 percent. Brené Brown
909c311 Creativity is the power to connect the seemingly unconnected." Connecting the dots of our lives, especially the ones we'd rather erase or skip over, requires equal parts self-love and curiosity: How do all of these experiences come together to make up who I am?" Brené Brown
f11ec2b If empathy is the skill or ability to tap into our own experiences in order to connect with an experience someone is relating to us, compassion is the willingness to be open to this process. Brené Brown
c4288a6 Shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing we are flawed and therefore unworthy of acceptance and belonging. Brené Brown
fc408d3 I think the dilemma exists because art, among all the other tidy categories, most closely resembles what it is like to be human. To be alive. It is our nature to be imperfect. To have uncategorized feelings and emotions. To make or do things that don't sometimes necessarily make sense. Brené Brown
9ec5227 The most powerful moments of our lives happen when we string together the small flickers of light created by courage, compassion, and connection and see them shine in the darkness of our struggles. Brené Brown
4fdf90f We're wired for story. In a culture of scarcity and perfectionism, there's a surprisingly simple reason we want to own, integrate, and share our stories of struggle. We do this because we feel the most alive when we're connecting with others and being brave with our stories - it's in our biology. courage stories storytelling Brené Brown
8bab86d I was not prepared to hear over and over from men how the women--the mothers, sisters, girlfriends, wives--in their lives are constantly criticizing them for not being open and vulnerable and intimate, all the while they are standing in front of that cramped wizard closet where their men are huddled inside, adjusting the curtain and making sure no one sees in and no one gets out. There was a moment when I was driving home from an interview .. Brené Brown
a1fb6c4 I want to be in the arena. I want to be brave with my life. And when we make the choice to dare greatly, we sign up to get our asses kicked. We can choose courage or we can choose comfort, but we can't have both. Not at the same time. Vulnerability is not winning or losing; it's having the courage to show up and be seen when we have no control over the outcome. Vulnerability is not weakness; it's our greatest measure of courage. A lot of ch.. Brené Brown
61de52e Quick and dirty wins the race. Perfection is the enemy of done. Good enough is really effin' good. Brené Brown
7bd4082 When we stop caring what people think, we lose our capacity for connection. But when we are defined by what people think, we lose the courage to be vulnerable. Brené Brown
5826e83 True belonging is not passive. It's not the belonging that comes with just joining a group. It's not fitting in or pretending or selling out because it's safer. It's a practice that requires us to be vulnerable, get uncomfortable, and learn how to be present with people without sacrificing who we are. Brené Brown
933c1df 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 humanity."3" Brené Brown
69c57a0 A study published in the October 22, 2014, issue of the journal Neuron suggests that the brain's chemistry changes when we become curious, helping us better learn and retain information. But curiosity is uncomfortable because it involves uncertainty and vulnerability. Brené Brown
199700c The special courage it takes to experience true belonging is not just about braving the wilderness, it's about becoming the wilderness. It's about breaking down the walls, abandoning our ideological bunkers and living from our wild heart rather than our weary hurt. We're going to need to intentionally be with people who are different from us. We're going to have to sign up, join and take a seat at the table. We're going to have to learn how.. Brené Brown
adf76ff Vulnerability is based on mutuality and requires boundaries and trust. It's not oversharing, it's not purging, it's not indiscriminate disclosure, and it's not celebrity-style social media information dumps. Vulnerability is about sharing our feelings and our experiences with people who have earned the right to hear them. Being vulnerable and open is mutual and an integral part of the trust-building process. We can't Brené Brown
6488cdb Dr. Kristin Neff is a researcher and professor at the University of Texas at Austin. She runs the Self-Compassion Research Lab, where she studies how we develop and practice self-compassion. According to Neff, self-compassion has three elements: self-kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness. Here are abbreviated definitions for each of these: Self-kindness: Being warm and understanding toward ourselves when we suffer, fail, or feel inadeq.. mindfulness Brené Brown
afa7ca1 Brene Brown writes: In a 2011 study funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, researchers found that, as far as the brain is concerned, physical pain and intense experiences of social rejection hurt in the same way...Neuroscience advances confirm what we've known all along: emotions can hurt and cause pain. And just as we often struggle to define physical pain, describing emotional pain is difficult. Shame is particularly hard because.. Amanda Palmer
04db18a Stop walking through the world looking for confirmation that you don't belong. You will always find it because you've made that your mission. Stop scouring people's faces for evidence that you're not enough. You will always find it because you've made that your goal. True belonging and self-worth are not goods; we don't negotiate their value with the world. The truth about who we are lives in our hearts. Our call to courage is to protect ou.. self-criticism self-evaluation self-identity Brené Brown
1ccf39c If you are not in the arena getting your ass kicked on occasion, I'm not interested in or open to your feedback. There are a million cheap seats in the world today filled with people who will never be brave with their lives but who will spend every ounce of energy they have hurling advice and judgment at those who dare greatly. Their only contributions are criticism, cynicism, and fearmongering. If you're criticizing from a place where you'.. Brené Brown
b5ea3fa Gulliver describes a royal personage inspiring awe among the tiny Lilliputians because he was taller than his brethren by the breadth of a human fingernail. pride Jonathan Swift
890449e My hours of leisure I spent in reading the best authors, ancient and modern, being always provided with a good number of books; and when I was ashore, in observing the manners and dispositions of the people, as well as learning their language; wherein I had a great facility, by the strength of my memory. Jonathan Swift
30c5f28 I desired that the Senate of Rome might appear before me in one large chamber, and a modern representative, in counterview, in another. The first seemed to be an assembly of heroes and demi-gods; the other, a knot of pedlars, pick-pockets, highwaymen, and bullies. Jonathan Swift
98ca457 I believe this movement will prevail. I don't mean it will defeat, conquer, or create harm to someone else. Quite the opposite. I don't tender the claim in an oracular sense. I mean that the thinking that informs the movement's goals will reign. It will soon suffuse most institutions, but before then, it will change a sufficient number of people so as to begin the reversal of centuries of frenzied self-destructive behavior. Some say it is .. Paul Hawken
171bfe2 I am forced to admit that I am, to them, nothing but a series of destinations with no meaningful expanses in between. diaspora Monique Truong
77d6466 We are here to inscribe ourselves on the universe, and it is not inappropriate to remind ourselves of this when blank slates are given us. Kim Stanley Robinson
f2fdddd Desire is life trying to continue to be life. All living things desire... Life is wanting. Kim Stanley Robinson
c891ea6 Each of us have a gift, you see, given us freely by the universe. And each of us with every breath gives something back Kim Stanley Robinson
61425ab And Sarah still looked like the sexiest librarian on earth, which is as those of you who frequent libraries know means very sexy indeed, but with that added owlish touch that drives you wild. librarians sex-appeal sexy Kim Stanley Robinson
e1b7600 Sometimes I think it's post-scarcity that evil exists. Before that, it could always be put down to want or fear. It was possible to believe, as apparently you did, that when fear and want went away, bad deeds would too. Humanity would be revealed as some kind of bonobo, an altruistic cooperator, a lover of all. Kim Stanley Robinson
7126a6a Because life is robust, Because life is bigger than equations, stronger than money, stronger than guns and poison and bad zoning policy, stronger than capitalism, Because Mother Nature bats last, and Mother Ocean is strong, and we live inside our mothers forever, and Life is tenacious and you can never kill it, you can never buy it, So Life is going to dive down into your dark pools, Life is going to explode the enclosures and bring back th.. commons life nature structures-of-power Kim Stanley Robinson
8b55faa Sax had always been so uninterested in [power and gain] that it was hard for him to understand why anyone else would be. What was personal gain but the freedom to do what you wanted to do? And what was power but the freedom to do what you wanted to do? And once you had that freedom, any more wealth or power actually began to restrict one's options, and reduce one's freedom. One became a servant of one's wealth or power, constrained to spend.. Kim Stanley Robinson
f833d51 His cynicism - a veteran's cynicism - was a thing that disturbed him all the time. It seemed to him after the war that the world was thoroughly altered. It was not even a thing you could explain to anybody, why it was that everything was folly. People appeared enormously foolish to him. He understood that they were only animated cavities full of jelly and strings and liquids. He had seen the insides of jaggedly ripped-open dead people. He k.. David Guterson
e7f40b5 As soon as he was gone, we opened, "Baucis and Philemon." An elderly couple living in a cottage, they're granted a wish by Jove. They confer in private before Philemon asks, "May one hour take us both away; let neither outlive the other." The wish is granted. I said, "Simultaneous deaths? Why didn't they wish for eternal happiness instead? What else would anyone wish for?" "They did wish for that," answered Jamie." love wish David Guterson
57fa5fb It's hard to get mad at Neal, because he suffers from a medical condition called total fucking stupidity. Douglas Coupland
f4ab92e You wait for fate to bring about the changes in life which you should be bringing about yourself. Douglas Coupland
997041d Anna-Louise leans over and whispers in my ear. "This is so surreal," she says, "I think I'm turning into a melting clock." Douglas Coupland
65d9734 One reason these atrocities are still with us is that we have learned to bury them in a mass of other facts, as radioactive wastes are buried in containers in the earth. We have learned to give them exactly the same proportion of attention that teachers and writers often give them in the most respectable of classrooms and textbooks. This learned sense of moral proportion, coming from the apparent objectivity of the scholar, is accepted more.. Howard Zinn