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

by Brené Brown

If you reread this checklist and change the pronouns, you’ll see that BRAVING also works as a powerful tool for assessing our level of self-trust. B—Did I respect my own boundaries? Was I clear about what’s okay and what’s not okay? R—Was I reliable? Did I do what I said I was going to do? A—Did I hold myself accountable? V—Did I respect the vault and share appropriately? I—Did I act from my integrity? N—Did I ask for what I needed? Was I nonjudgmental about needing help? G—Was I generous toward myself?

mistakes don’t bankrupt trust in the way that violations of personal accountability, integrity, or values can. Trust and mistakes can coexist, and often do, as long as we make amends, stay aligned with our values, and confront shame and blame head-on.

Many of us have a negative, almost stomach-clenching reaction to the word power. I think this is because we automatically conflate power and power over. But the type of power I’m talking about is more in line with Martin Luther King, Jr.’s definition of it: the ability to achieve our purpose and to effect change.

My favorite definition of despair comes from author and pastor Rob Bell: Despair is a spiritual condition. It’s the belief that tomorrow will be just like today.

In my work, I’ve found that moving out of powerlessness, and even despair, requires hope. Hope is not an emotion: It’s a cognitive process—a thought process made up of what researcher C. R. Snyder called the trilogy of “goals, pathways, and agency.” Hope happens when we can set goals, have the tenacity and perseverance to pursue those goals, and believe in our own abilities to act. Snyder also found that hope is learned. When boundaries, consistency, and support are in place, children learn it from their parents. But even if we didn’t get it as kids, we can still learn hope as adults. It’s just tougher when we’re older because we have to resist and unlearn old habits, like the tendency to give up when things get tough. Hope is a function of struggle. If we’re never allowed to fall or face adversity as children, we are denied the opportunity to develop the tenacity and sense of agency we need to be hopeful.

If there is one thing failure has taught me, it is the value of regret. Regret is one of the most powerful emotional reminders that change and growth are necessary. In fact, I’ve come to believe that regret is a kind of package deal: A function of empathy, it’s a call to courage and a path toward wisdom. Like all emotions, regret can be used constructively or destructively, but the wholesale dismissal of regret is wrongheaded and dangerous. “No regrets” doesn’t mean living with courage, it means living without reflection. To live without regret is to believe you have nothing to learn, no amends to make, and no opportunity to be braver with your life.

If you have no regrets, or you intentionally set out to live without regrets, I think you’re missing the very value of regret.

I believe that what we regret most are our failures of courage, whether it’s the courage to be kinder, to show up, to say how we feel, to set boundaries, to be good to ourselves. For that reason, regret can be the birthplace of empathy.

In her book The Rise, Sarah Lewis writes, “The word failure is imperfect. Once we begin to transform it, it ceases to be that any longer. The term is always slipping off the edges of our vision, not simply because it’s hard to see without wincing, but because once we are ready to talk about it, we often call the event something else—a learning experience, a trial, a reinvention—no longer the static concept of failure.” Failure can become nourishment if we are willing to get curious, show up vulnerable and human, and put rising strong into practice.

We call shame the master emotion for a reason.

Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life, Jungian analyst James Hollis

From Long Island to Silicon Valley, a fear of being perceived as weak forces men into pretending they are never afraid, lonely, confused, vulnerable, or wrong; and an extreme fear of being perceived as cold-hearted, imperfect, high maintenance, or hostile forces women to pretend they’re never exhausted, ambitious, pissed off, or even hungry.

Nostalgia sounds relatively harmless, even like something to indulge in with a modicum of comfort, until we examine the two Greek root words that form nostalgia: nostos, meaning “returning home,” and algos, meaning “pain.” Romanticizing our history to relieve pain is seductive.

genetics loads the gun and environment pulls the trigger.

Stephanie Coontz, author of The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap, puts her finger on some real dangers of nostalgia. She writes, “There’s nothing wrong with celebrating the good things in our past. But memories, like witnesses, do not always tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. We need to cross-examine them, recognizing and accepting the inconsistencies and gaps in those that make us proud and happy as well as those that cause us pain.”

“Both as individuals and as a society, we must learn to view the past in three dimensions before we can move into the fourth dimension of the future.”

There is a line in director Paolo Sorrentino’s gorgeous and haunting film The Great Beauty that illuminates the pain often underlying nostalgia. One of the main characters, a man reconciling his past while longing for love and relevance in his present life, asks, “What’s wrong with feeling nostalgic? It’s the only distraction left for those who have no faith in the future.” Nostalgia can be a dangerous distraction, and it can underpin a feeling of resignation or hopelessness after a fall. In the rising strong process, looking back is done in the service of moving forward with an integrated and whole heart.

To avoid criticism say nothing, do nothing, be nothing. —Aristotle

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.

On a one-inch-by-one-inch square of paper, I want you to write down the names of the people who really matter. This is a sacred little space. If you have more names than can fit on a square this size, you need to edit. These should be the people who love you not despite your imperfections and vulnerabilities, but because of them. When you’re facedown in the arena, these are the folks who will pick you up and confirm that the fall totally sucked, then remind you that you’re brave and they’ll be there to dust you off the next time. You should also include the people who are brave enough to say “I disagree” or “I think you’re wrong,” and who will question you when they see you acting outside of your values. I carry my square in my wallet. That way when I’m trying to hack into the back end of Amazon to find the IP address of the jerk who left the hurtful review about me and not the book, I can catch myself. Yes, this hurts. But he’s not on my list. When I’m struggling to make a difficult decision, rather than closing my eyes and trying to imagine how the cheap seats will respond, I go to someone on my list who will hold me accountable to my own standards.

Toni Morrison wrote, “Definitions belong to the definers, not the defined,”

Our identities are always changing and growing, they’re not meant to be pinned down. Our histories are never all good or all bad, and running from the past is the surest way to be defined by it. That’s when it owns us. The key is bringing light to the darkness—developing awareness and understanding.

“While it’s hard to look at the areas in our lives where we feel shame, it’s often much more painful to acknowledge that we’ve all used shame and caused others significant pain.”

THE 5 RS: THIS IS HOW WE WORK • Respect for self, for others, for story, for the process • Rumble on ideas, on strategies, on decisions, on creativity, on falls, on conflicts, on misunderstandings, on disappointments, on hurt feelings, on failures • Rally together to own our decisions, own our successes, own our falls, own and integrate our key learnings into our culture and strategies, and practice gratitude • Recover with family, friends, rest, and play • Reach out to each other and the community with empathy, compassion, and love

MANIFESTO OF THE BRAVE AND BROKENHEARTED There is no greater threat to the critics and cynics and fearmongers Than those of us who are willing to fall Because we have learned how to rise With skinned knees and bruised hearts; We choose owning our stories of struggle, Over hiding, over hustling, over pretending. When we deny our stories, they define us. When we run from struggle, we are never free. So we turn toward truth and look it in the eye. We will not be characters in our stories. Not villains, not victims, not even heroes. We are the authors of our lives. We write our own daring endings. We craft love from heartbreak, Compassion from shame, Grace from disappointment, Courage from failure. Showing up is our power. Story is our way home. Truth is our song. We are the brave and brokenhearted. We are rising strong.

TEN GUIDEPOSTS FOR WHOLEHEARTED LIVING 1. Cultivating authenticity: letting go of what people think 2. Cultivating self-compassion: letting go of perfectionism 3. Cultivating a resilient spirit: letting go of numbing and powerlessness 4. Cultivating gratitude and joy: letting go of scarcity and fear of the dark 5. Cultivating intuition and trusting faith: letting go of the need for certainty 6. Cultivating creativity: letting go of comparison 7. Cultivating play and rest: letting go of exhaustion as a status symbol and productivity as self-worth 8. Cultivating calm and stillness: letting go of anxiety as a lifestyle 9. Cultivating meaningful work: letting go of self-doubt and “supposed to” 10. Cultivating laughter, song, and dance: letting go of being cool and “always in control”

Love and belonging are irreducible needs of all men, women, and children. We’re hardwired for connection—it’s what gives purpose and meaning to our lives. The absence of love, belonging, and connection always leads to suffering.

If you roughly divide the men and women I’ve interviewed into two groups—those who feel a deep sense of love and belonging, and those who struggle for it—there’s only one variable that separates the groups: Those who feel lovable, who love, and who experience belonging simply believe they are worthy of love and belonging. They don’t have better or easier lives, they don’t have fewer struggles with addiction or depression, and they haven’t survived fewer traumas or bankruptcies or divorces, but in the midst of all of these struggles, they have developed practices that enable them to hold on to the belief that they are worthy of love, belonging, and joy.

A strong belief in our worthiness doesn’t just happen—it’s cultivated when we understand the guideposts as choices and daily practices.

The main concern of wholehearted men and women is living a life defined by courage, engagement, a...

The wholehearted identify vulnerability as the catalyst for courage, engagement, and a clear sense of purpose. In fact, the willingness to be vulnerable emerged as the single clearest value shared by all of the women and men whom I would describe as wholehearted. They attribute everything—from their professional success to ...

Key Learning: We’re living in a culture of scarcity, a culture of “never enough.” The opposite of “never enough” isn’t abundance or “more than you could ever imagine.” The opposite of scarcity is enough, or what I call wholeheartedness. There are ten guideposts to wholeheartedness, but at its core are vulnerability and worthiness: facing uncertainty, exposure, and emotional risk, and knowing that you are enough.

Key Learning: I define vulnerability as exposure, uncertainty, and emotional risk. Yes, feeling vulnerable is at the core of difficult emotions like fear, grief, and disappointment, but it’s also the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, empathy, innovation, and creativity. When we shut ourselves off from vulnerability, we distance ourselves from the experiences that bring purpose and meaning to our lives. Myth #1: Vulnerability is weakness.Myth #2: “I don’t do vulnerability.” Myth #3: We can go it alone. Myth #4: Trust comes before vulnerability.

Key Learning: Shame derives its power from being unspeakable. That’s why it loves perfectionists—we’re so easy to keep quiet. If we cultivate enough awareness about shame to name it and speak to it, we’ve basically cut it off at the knees. Just the way exposure to light was deadly for the Gremlins, language and story bring light to shame and destroy it.

Key Learning: As children we found ways to protect ourselves from vulnerability, from being hurt, diminished, and disappointed. We put on armor; we used our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors as weapons; and we learned how to make ourselves scarce, even to disappear. Now as adults we realize that to live with courage, purpose, and connection—to be the people we long to be—we must again be vulnerable. The courage to be vulnerable means taking off the armor we use to protect ourselves, putting down the weapons that we use to keep people at a distance, showing up, and letting ourselves be seen.

Key Learning: Who we are and how we engage with the world are much stronger predictors of how our children will do than what we know about parenting. In terms of teaching our children to dare greatly in the “never enough” culture, the question isn’t so much “Are you parenting the right way?” as it is “Are you the adult that you want your child to grow up to be?” Our stories of worthiness—of being enough—begin in our first families. The narrative certainly doesn’t end there, but what we learn about ourselves and how we learn to engage with the world as children set a course that either will require us to spend a significant part of our lives fighting to reclaim our self-worth or will give us hope, courage, and resilience for our journey.