Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead

by Brené Brown

you realize that your self-worth is hitched to what you’ve produced or created, it’s unlikely that you’ll share it, or if you do, you’ll strip away a layer or two of the juiciest creativity and innovation to make the revealing less risky.

you do share it in its most creative form and the reception doesn’t meet your expectations, you’re crushed.

You’ve handed over your self-worth to what people think. It’s panned out a couple of times, but now it feels a lot like Hotel California: You can check in, but you can never leave. You’re officially a prisoner of “pleasing, performing, and perfecting.”

You still want folks to like, respect, and even admire what you’ve created, but your self-worth is not on the table.

That deep fear we all have of being wrong, of being belittled and of feeling less than, is what stops us taking the very risks required to move our companies forward.

“Stop making up all of this stuff about what we’re thinking! What we’re really thinking is ‘Do you love me? Do you care about me? Do you want me? Am I important to you? Am I good enough?’ That’s what we’re thinking. When it comes to sex, it feels like our

life is on the line, and you’re worried about that crap?”

He explained that from the time boys are eight to ten years old, they learn that initiating sex is their responsibility and that sexual rejection soon becomes the hallmark of masculine shame. He explained, “Even in my own life, when my wife isn’t interested, I still have to battle feelings of shame. It doesn’t matter if I intellectually understand why she’s not in the mood. I’m vulnerable and it’s very difficult.”

And shaming someone we love around vulnerability is the most serious of all security breaches. Even if we apologize, we’ve done serious damage because we’ve demonstrated our willingness to use sacred information as a weapon.

We cultivate love when we allow our most vulnerable and powerful selves to be deeply seen and known, and when we honor the spiritual connection that grows from that offering with trust, respect, kindness, and affection. Love is not something we give or get; it is something that we nurture and grow, a connection that can only be cultivated between two people when it exists within each one of them—we can only love others as much as we love ourselves. Shame, blame, disrespect, betrayal, and the withholding of affection damage the roots from which love grows. Love can only survive these injuries if they are acknowledged, healed, and rare.

But are we walking the talk? Are we being our most vulnerable selves? Are we showing trust, kindness, affection, and respect to our partners?

It doesn’t matter if the group is a church or a gang or a sewing circle or masculinity itself, asking members to dislike, disown, or distance themselves from another group of people as a condition of “belonging” is always about control and power.

practicing the second element of shame resilience—critical awareness.

Shame whispers in the ear of the woman who’s out of town on business, “You’re not a good mother because you’re going to miss your son’s class play.” She replies, “I hear you, but I’m not playing that tape today. My mothering is way bigger than one class performance. You can leave now.”

One of the patterns revealed in the research was how all that role playing becomes almost unbearable around midlife.

Remembering that shame is the fear of disconnection—the fear that we’re unlovable and don’t belong—makes it easy to see why so many people in midlife overfocus on their children’s lives, work sixty hours a week, or turn to affairs, addiction, and disengagement. We start to unravel.

If we’re going to find our way out of shame and back to each other, vulnerability is the path and courage is the light.

To set down those lists of what we’re supposed to be is brave. To love ourselves and support

each other in the process of becoming real is perhaps the greatest single...

my work masks and armor are perfect metaphors for how we protect ourselves from the discomfort of vulnerability. Masks make us feel safer even when they become suffocating. Armor makes us feel stronger even when we grow weary from dragging the extra weight around. The irony is that when we’re standing across from someone who is hidden or shielded by masks and armor, we feel frustrated and disconnected. That’s the paradox here: Vulnerability is the last thing I want you to see in me, but the first thing I look for in you.

Whether we’re fourteen or fifty-four, our armor and our masks are as individualized and unique as the personal vulnerability, discomfort, and pain we’re trying to minimize.

I am enough (worthiness versus shame). I’ve had enough (boundaries versus one-upping and comparison). Showing up, taking risks, and letting myself be seen is enough (engagement versus disengagement).

“My first instinct is to ____________, but that never worked, so now I _______________, and that’s changed my life.” “I spent years ___________________ until one day I tried ________________, and it made my marriage stronger.”

These include foreboding joy, or the paradoxical dread that clamps down on momentary joyfulness; perfectionism, or believing that doing everything perfectly means you’ll never feel shame;

and numbing, the embrace of whatever deadens the pain of discomfort and pain.

In a culture of deep scarcity—of never feeling safe, certain, and sure enough—joy can feel like a setup.

We’re always waiting for the other shoe to drop. That expression originated in the early 1900s, when new immigrants and people flooding to the cities were crammed into tenement housing where you could literally hear your upstairs neighbor taking off his shoes at night. Once you heard the first shoe hit the floor you waited for the other shoe to drop. Even

These stories illustrate how the concept of foreboding joy as a method of minimizing vulnerability is best understood as a continuum that runs from “rehearsing tragedy” to what I call “perpetual disappointment.”

We’re visual people. We trust, consume, and mentally store what we see.

In fact, every participant who spoke about the ability to stay open to joy also talked about the importance of practicing gratitude.

Do we deserve our joy, given our inadequacies and imperfections? What about the starving children and the war-ravaged world? Who are we to be joyful?

That’s because I’ve learned more about worthiness, resilience, and joy from those people who courageously shared their struggles with me than from any other part of my work.

But every time we allow ourselves to lean into joy and give in to those moments, we build resilience and we cultivate hope. The joy becomes part of who we are, and when bad things happen—and they do happen—we are stronger.

For me, expressing gratitude is still bumpier than it is graceful or fluid.

As a recovering perfectionist and an aspiring good-enough-ist, I’m always finding myself skimming down the list to read the answer to this question first: Is perfectionism an issue for you?

“The most valuable and important things in my life came to me when I cultivated the courage to be vulnerable, imperfect, and self-compassionate.” Perfectionism is not the path that leads us to our gifts and to our sense of purpose; it’s the hazardous detour.

Perfectionism is correlated with depression, anxiety, addiction, and life paralysis or missed opportunities.

The fear of failing, making mistakes, not meeting people’s expectations, and being criticized keeps us outside of the arena where healthy competition and striving unfolds.

Perfectionism is a form of shame. Where we struggle with perfectionism, we struggle with shame.

Perfectionism is a self-destructive and addictive belief system that fuels this primary thought: If I look perfect and do everything perfectly, I can avoid or minimize the painful feelings of shame, judgment, and blame.

Perfectionism is more about perception than internal motivation, and there is no way to control perception, no matter how much time and energy we spend trying.

Perfectionism actually sets us up to feel shame, judgment, and blame, which then leads to even more shame and self-blame: “It’s my fault. I’m feeling this way because I’m not good enough.”

That journey

begins with shame resilience, self-compassion, and owning our stories. To claim the truths about who we are, where we come from, what we believe, and the very imperfect nature of our lives, we have to be willing to give ourselves a break and appreciate the beauty of our cracks or imperfections. To be kinder and gentler with ourselves and each other. To talk to ourselves the same way we’d talk to someone we care about.

According to Neff, self-compassion has three elements: self-kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness.

Self-Compassion: Stop Beating Yourself Up and Leave Insecurity Behind,

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 “overidentify” with thoughts and feelings, so that we are caught up and swept away by negativity.

Gretchen Rubin, the best-selling writer whose book The Happiness Project is the account of the year she spent test-driving studies and theories about how to be happier. Her new book, Happier at Home,

Andrea Scher

Superhero Journal,