Rising Strong: The Reckoning. The Rumble. The Revolution.

by Brené Brown

To strip failure of its real emotional consequences is to scrub the concepts of grit and resilience of the very qualities that make them both so important—toughness, doggedness, and perseverance.

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.

I want to be brave with my life.

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.

Daring is saying, “I know I will eventually fail and I’m still all in.”

The opposite of scarcity is not abundance; the opposite of scarcity is simply enough. Empathy is not finite, and compassion is not a pizza with eight slices.

To bear witness to the human potential for transformation through vulnerability, courage, and tenacity can be either a clarion call for more daring or a painful mirror for those of us stuck in the aftermath of the fall, unwilling or unable to own our stories.

Spirituality is recognizing and celebrating that we are all inextricably connected to one another by a power greater than all of us, and that our connection to that power and to one another is grounded in love and belonging. Practicing spirituality brings a sense of perspective, meaning, and purpose to our lives.

The middle is messy, but it’s also where the magic happens.

I started off by telling myself a version of the story that allowed me to be the victim (and the hero)

Creating is the act of paying attention to our experiences and connecting the dots so we can learn more about ourselves and the world around us.

The opposite of recognizing that we’re feeling something is denying our emotions. The opposite of being curious is disengaging. When we deny our stories and disengage from tough emotions, they don’t go away; instead, they own us, they define us.

Being all light is as dangerous as being all dark, simply because denial of emotion is what feeds the dark.

Owning our stories means reckoning with our feelings and rumbling with our dark emotions—our fear, anger, aggression, shame, and blame. This isn’t easy, but the alternative—denying our stories and disengaging from emotion—means choosing to live our entire lives in the dark.