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

by Brené Brown

The core (sometimes the entirety) of my SFD is normally these six sentences with maybe a few notes. The story I’m making up: My emotions: My body: My thinking: My beliefs: My actions:

Self-righteousness starts with the belief that I’m better than other people

scofflaws.

Boundaries are hard when you want to be liked and when you are a pleaser hell-bent on being easy, fun, and flexible. Compassionate people ask for what they need. They say no when they need to, and when they say yes, they mean it. They’re compassionate because their boundaries keep them out of resentment.

scofflaws

The trick to staying out of resentment is maintaining better boundaries—blaming others less and holding myself more accountable for asking for what I need and want.

This rumble taught me why self-righteousness is dangerous. Most of us buy into the myth that it’s a long fall from “I’m better than you” to “I’m not good enough”—but the truth is that these are two sides of the same coin. Both are attacks on our worthiness.

We don’t compare when we’re feeling good about ourselves; we look for what’s good in others. When we practice self-compassion, we are compassionate toward others. Self-righteousness is just the armor of self-loathing.

We could all stand to be more generous, but we also need to maintain our integrity and our boundaries. I call the solution to this issue Living BIG: Boundaries, Integrity, and Generosity.

Integrity is choosing courage over comfort; choosing what is right over what is fun, fast, or easy; and choosing to practice our values rather than simply professing them.

As Anne Lamott said, “Expectations are resentments waiting to happen.” We have the tendency to visualize an entire scenario or conversation or outcome, and when things don’t go the way we’d imagined, disappointment can become resentment. This often happens when our expectations are based on outcomes we can’t control, like what other people think, what they feel, or how they’re going to react. It’s going to be a great holiday! My sister-in-law is going to love her gift and be so impressed with dinner. I can’t wait to share my project ideas with the team tomorrow. They’re going to be blown away.

Nelson Mandela wrote, “Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies.” Wholeheartedness requires being conscious of the litany of expectations that hum along below the surface so we can reality-check our thinking. This process can lead to stronger and deeper relationships and connections.

To love with any level of intensity and honesty is to become vulnerable. I used to tell couples getting married that the only thing I could tell them with certainty was that they would hurt each other. To love is to know the loss of love. Heartbreak is unavoidable unless we choose not to love at all. A lot of people do just that.

heartbreak is its association with one of the most difficult emotions in the human experience: grief. If what I’m experiencing is heartbreak, then grieving is inevitable.

grief is perhaps the emotion we fear the most. As individuals, we’re afraid of the darkness grief brings. As a society, we have pathologized it and turned it into something to cure or get over. Owning our stories of heartbreak is a tremendous challenge when we live in a culture that tells us to deny our grief.

the three most foundational elements of grief that emerged from my studies: loss, longing, and feeling lost.

Grief seems to create losses within us that reach beyond our awareness—we feel as if we’re missing something that was invisible and unknown to us while we had it, but is now painfully gone.

Longing—Related to loss is longing. Longing is not conscious wanting; it’s an involuntary yearning for wholeness, for understanding, for meaning, for the opportunity to regain or even simply touch what we’ve lost. Longing is a vital and important part of grief, yet many of us feel we need to keep our longings to ourselves for fear we will be misunderstood, perceived as engaging in magical or unrealistic thinking, or lacking in fortitude and resilience.

Feeling lost—Grief requires us to reorient ourselves to every part of our physical, emotional, and social worlds. When we imagine the need to do this, most of us picture the painful struggle to adjust to a tangible change, such as someone dying or moving away. But again, this is a very limited view of grief.

The more difficult it is for us to articulate our experiences of loss, longing, and feeling lost to the people around us, the more disconnected and alone we feel. Of the coping strategies my research participants have shared with me, writing down experiences of heartbreak and grief have emerged as the most helpful in making clear to themselves what they were feeling so they could articulate it to others.

“In order for forgiveness to happen, something has to die. If you make a choice to forgive, you have to face into the pain. You simply have to hurt.”

Given the dark fears we feel when we experience loss, nothing is more generous and loving than the willingness to embrace grief in order to forgive. To be forgiven is to be loved.

To forgive is not just to be altruistic. It is the best form of self-interest. It is also a process that does not exclude hatred and anger. These emotions are all part of being human. You should never hate yourself for hating others who do terrible things: The depth of your love is shown by the extent of your anger. However, when I talk of forgiveness, I mean the belief that you can come out the other side a better person. A better person than the one being consumed by anger and hatred. Remaining in that state locks you in a state of victimhood, making you almost dependent on the perpetrator. If you can find it in yourself to forgive, then you are no longer chained to the perpetrator. You can move on, and you can even help the perpetrator to become a better person, too.

Pema Chödrön. In her book The Places That Scare You, Chödrön writes: When we practice generating compassion, we can expect to experience our fear of pain. Compassion practice is daring. It involves learning to relax and allow ourselves to move gently toward what scares us….In cultivating compassion we draw from the wholeness of our experience—our suffering, our empathy, as well as our cruelty and terror. It has to be this way. 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.

Compassion: Recognizing the light and dark in our shared humanity, we commit to practicing loving-kindness with ourselves and others in the face of suffering.

Empathy: The most powerful tool of compassion, empathy is an emotional skill that allows us to respond to others in a meaningful, caring way. Empathy is the ability to understand what someone is experiencing and to reflect back that understanding. It’s important to note here that empathy is understanding what someone is feeling, not feeling it for them.

Empathy is the antidote to shame and it is the heart of connection.

Sympathy: Rather than being a tool for connection, sympathy emerged in the data as a form of disconnection. Sympathy is removed: When someone says, “I feel sorry for you” or “That must be terrible,” they are standing at a safe distance. Rather than conveying the powerful “me too” of empathy, it communicates “not me,” and then adds, “But I do feel for you.”

The brokenhearted are indeed the bravest among us—they dared to love, and they dared to forgive. C. S. Lewis captured this so beautifully in one of my favorite quotes of all time: To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.

I’ve learned enough about privilege to know that we’re at our most dangerous when we think we’ve learned everything we need to know about it. That’s when you stop paying attention to injustice. And make no mistake, not paying attention because you’re not the one getting harassed or fired or pulled over or underpaid is the definition of privilege. Maybe looking away is about privilege. I need to think harder and longer about my choices and recognize that choosing whom I see and whom I don’t see is one of the most hurtful functions of privilege.

In Harriet Lerner’s book The Dance of Connection, she explains that we all have patterned ways of managing anxiety—some of us over-function and others under-function. Over-functioners tend to move quickly to advise, rescue, take over, micromanage, and basically get in other people’s business rather than looking inward. Under-functioners tend to get less competent under stress: They invite others to take over and often become the focus of worry or concern. On the outside, over-functioners appear to be tough and in control, and under-functioners can seem irresponsible or fragile. Many of these behaviors are learned and line up with the roles we play in our families. It’s not uncommon for firstborns to be over-functioners, as is certainly the case for me.

Looking at these responses through a vulnerability lens, it’s easy to see that both ways of functioning are forms of armor—learned behaviors for getting out from under fear and uncertainty. Over-functioning: I won’t feel, I will do. I don’t need help, I help. Under-functioning: I won’t function, I will fall apart. I don’t help, I need help.

I knew exactly why I looked away. I was so afraid of my own need that I couldn't look need in the eye.

This story is a great example of how the rising strong process can stretch out over months, even years. The reason I call rising strong a practice is that had I not stayed curious after each one of these experiences, the rumble would have fallen apart. If I hadn’t connected these separate incidents by the common discomfort each one provoked in me, I’d be no closer to understanding a key piece of how I engage with the world and the people around me.

My facedown moment was hearing Father Murray articulate so powerfully how the choice not to see someone fundamentally diminishes our shared humanity. I’m not even sure I was conscious of that behavior before he spoke those words. It was a quiet moment: I didn’t flinch or cry or get angry. You wouldn’t have noticed me falling if you were watching me, but I felt it.

Maybe part of the metaphorical power of Roosevelt’s quote—“The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood”—is that it’s possible to feel our faces marred with dust and sweat and blood when the arena is an emotional smackdown rather than a physical one. I felt beat-up on the way home from the lecture. Father Murray shined a light into a dark, unexplored corner of my behavior, and I knew that what I saw had to change.

My rumbles with shame, judgment, privilege, connection, need, fear, and self-worth taught me that it wasn’t the pain or the hurt that made me look away. It was my own need. Act 2 is all about trying to find a comfortable way to solve the problem until those options are exhausted and you have to walk straight into discomfort—“the lowest of the low.” Helping and giving are comfortable for me. I wanted to solve this issue by doing more of what I already do. When I look back at this rising strong example now, I think about how often we all try to solve problems by doing more of what’s not working—just doing it harder, grinding it out longer. We’ll do anything to avoid the lowest of the low—self-examination.

The key learnings from this rumble totally challenged this system: • 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. • The danger of tying your self-worth to being a helper is feeling shame when you have to ask for help. • Offering help is courageous and compassionate, but so is asking for help.

In my work with the Daring Way leadership groups, we talk about what it means to trust people. We ask leaders to identify two or three specific behaviors that allow them to trust others. Two of the top answers that always emerge are: • I trust people who will ask for help or support. • If someone asks me for help, I’m more likely to trust them because they’re willing to be vulnerable and honest with me.

“There’s certainly a skill set when it comes to interpreting the creative piece and the management piece in terms of time and materials, but the real key is knowing yourself. You have to know where the quicksand is—everyone has their own sinkholes.” When I asked Andrew for examples of “sinkholes,” he gave me what he thought were the five most common ones: 1. Emotional blinders—I’m so emotionally invested in working with this client that I’m blind to the fact that our bid is too low for the scope of the work. 2. The loss leader—I’m convinced that a big discount on this project, even if we lose money, will lead to future work that will be more profitable and eventually offset this loss. 3. Uncharted territory—I’m going after business in a category I have no experience in. I don’t know what I don’t know. 4. Win at any cost—I’m addicted to the thrill of the win. Another variation: My self-worth is tied to how much business I bring in. 5. Defensive pricing—I have to protect my turf with an existing client by making it difficult for a competitor to match my price, even if we take a loss. As I wrote these down, I couldn’t help but notice their application to everyday life. I told Andrew that I’d never in my life put together a bid, but I’d spent plenty of time in similar sinkholes, like getting sucked in emotionally, living in the future, thinking in the short term, wanting to win, and being defensive. We laughed for a bit before Andrew got more serious and said, “But sometimes t...

When people are stretched, their coping skills start to fray.

The difference between shame and guilt lies in the way we talk to ourselves. Shame is a focus on self, while guilt is a focus on behavior. This is not just semantics. There’s a huge difference between I screwed up (guilt) and I am a screwup (shame).

It’s always helpful to remember that when perfectionism is driving, shame is riding shotgun. Perfectionism is not healthy striving. It is not asking, How can I be my best self? Instead, it’s asking, What will people think? When looking at our own stories, we can benefit from wondering: Did something happen in this story that left me feeling like my cover was blown, revealing that I’m really not what I want people to think I am? Did my pretend/please/perfect/perform/prove house of cards come tumbling down?

Another one of shame’s sidekicks is comparison.

In research terms, we think about blame as a form of anger used to discharge discomfort or pain. The shame-blame combo is so common because we’re desperate to get out from underneath the pain of shame, and we see blame as a quick fix. If, for example, I suddenly realize that I missed an important conference call earlier, sometimes in a split second I’m discharging that frustration by yelling at my child or my student or my employee. I always say, “When we’re in shame, we’re not fit for human consumption. And we’re especially dangerous around people over whom we have some power.”

Accountability is a prerequisite for strong relationships and cultures. It requires authenticity, action, and the courage to apologize and make amends. Rumbling with accountability is a hard and time-consuming process. It also requires vulnerability. We have to own our feelings and reconcile our behaviors and choices with our values.

Several of the Daring Way facilitators referred me to Charles Feltman’s The Thin Book of Trust. While the book focuses on building trust at work, I found Feltman’s definitions of trust and distrust to fit powerfully with my own findings. Feltman describes trust as “choosing to risk making something you value vulnerable to another person’s actions,” and he describes distrust as deciding that “what is important to me is not safe with this person in this situation (or any situation).”

In my research, seven elements of trust emerged as useful in both trusting others and trusting ourselves. I came up with an acronym—BRAVING—for the elements. It also serves as a checklist when I’m rumbling with trust issues with the people in my life. As Feltman so wisely suggests, breaking down the attributes of trust into specific behaviors allows us to more clearly identify and address breaches of trust. I love the BRAVING checklist because it reminds me that trusting myself or other people is a vulnerable and courageous process.

Boundaries—You respect my boundaries, and when you’re not clear about what’s okay and not okay, you ask. You’re willing to say no. Reliability—You do what you say you’ll do. At work, this means staying aware of your competencies and limitations so you don’t overpromise and are able to deliver on commitments and balance competing priorities. Accountability—You own your mistakes, apologize, and make amends. Vault—You don’t share information or experiences that are not yours to share. I need to know that my confidences are kept, and that you’re not sharing with me any information about other people that should be confidential. Integrity—You choose courage over comfort. You choose what is right over what is fun, fast, or easy. And you choose to practice your values rather than simply professing them. Nonjudgment—I can ask for what I need, and you can ask for what you need. We can talk about how we feel without judgment. Generosity—You extend the most generous interpretation possible to the intentions, words, and actions of others.

Experiencing failure often leads to feeling powerless simply because we didn’t achieve our purpose and/or effect the change we wanted to see. The connection between failure and powerlessness is important, because all of my years of research lead me to argue that we are most dangerous to ourselves and to the people around us when we feel powerless. Powerlessness leads to fear and desperation. Look behind an act of violence, from bullying to terrorism, and you will often find a frantic attempt to escape powerlessness.