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

by Brené Brown

I believe that vulnerability—the willingness to show up and be seen with no guarantee of outcome—is

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 cheap seats in the arena are filled with people...

onto the floor. They just hurl mean-spirited criticisms and put-downs...

But when we’re defined by what people think, we lose the courage to be vulnerable.

don’t think of these as “rules,” but they have certainly become guiding principles for me.

1. If we are brave enough often enough, we will fall; this is the physics of vulnerability. When we commit to showing up and risking falling, we are actually committing to falling.

2. Once we fall in the service of being brave, we can never go back. We can rise up from our failures, screwups, and falls, but we can never go back to where we stood before we were brave or before we fell.

Courage transforms the emotional structure of our being.

3. This journey belongs to no one but you; however, no one successfully goes it alone. Since the beginning of time, people have found a way to rise after falling, yet there is no well-worn path leading the way.

We still need to dig into the grit of issues like resentment, grief, and forgiveness.

The most transformative and resilient leaders that I've worked with over the course of my career have three things in common: First, they recognize the central role that relationships and story play in culture and strategy, and they stay curious about their own emotions, thoughts, and behaviors. Second, they understand and stay curious about how emotions, thoughts,

and behaviors are connected in the people they lead, and how those factors affect relationships and perception. And, third, they have the ability and willingness to lean in to discomfort and vulnerability.

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.

the opposite of scarcity is simply enough.

When you practice empathy and compassion with someone, there is not less of these qualities to go around. There’s more.

You can’t engineer an emotional, vulnerable, and courageous process into an easy, one-size-fits-all formula.

Courage is contagious. Rising strong changes not just you, but also the people around you.