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

by Brené Brown

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.

Rather than conveying the powerful “me too” of empathy, it communicates “not me,” and then adds, “But I do feel for you.” Sympathy is more likely to be a shame trigger than something that heals shame.

The brokenhearted are indeed the bravest among us—they dared to love, and they dared to forgive.

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.

Paul Tillich and telling the audience, “The opposite of faith is not doubt—it's certainty.”

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.

In this case, my SFD wasn’t based on traditional confabulations—explanations that offered me self-protection and pointed blame toward someone or something else—but it was equally troublesome because it was made up of half-truths.

the real reason I look away is not my fear of helping others, but my fear of needing help.

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.

Offering help is courageous and compassionate, but so is asking for help.

But in the middle of our lives, we mistakenly fall prey to the myth that successful people are those who help rather than need, and broken people need rather than help.

I screwed up (guilt) and I am a screwup (shame). The former is acceptance of our imperfect humanity. The latter is basically an indictment of our very existence.

Believe me, comparison sucks the creativity and joy right out of life.

“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.”

We think we’ll feel better after pointing a finger at someone or something, but nothing changes.

Feltman describes trust as “choosing to risk making something you value vulnerable to another person’s actions,”

he describes distrust as deciding that “what is important to me is not safe with this person in this situation (or any situation).”

Whatever the experience, failure feels like a lost opportunity, like something that can’t be redone or undone.

we are most dangerous to ourselves and to the people around us when we feel powerless. Powerlessness leads to fear and desperation.

Hope happens when we can set goals, have the tenacity and perseverance to pursue those goals, and believe in our own abilities to act.

I wasn’t going to get dressed up in my new outfit and wait for someone to knock on my door and ask me about my work. I’d put on my shit-kickers and start knocking on doors myself.

“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 I was doing the best I could with the intelligence we had.

“a safe container”—a place where people can share experiences honestly, knowing that what they share will be respected and kept in confidence.

Tender turns into ass kissing and people pleasing. Tough turns into neck wringing and bad mouthing.

nostalgia: nostos, meaning “returning home,” and algos, meaning “pain.” Romanticizing our history to relieve pain is seductive.

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.”

“What’s wrong with feeling nostalgic? It’s the only distraction left for those who have no faith in the future.”

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.

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

For us, circle back means “I moved forward too quickly and I’d like to revisit that conversation,”

When they deny their stories, people on the outside, like the media, take over the story’s authorship to write new narratives that could come to define the organization.

With social media, it’s easy for children (and adults) to look at all the perfectly edited pictures on Facebook and Twitter and make up stories about how glorious everyone else’s life is and how much our mundane existence sucks.

Emotions are contagious and when we’re stressed or anxious or afraid our children can be quickly engulfed in the same emotions. More information means less fear-based story-making.

For most people, grief never completely goes away but recedes into the background. Over time, healing diminishes the pain of a loss.

The absence of love, belonging, and connection always leads to suffering.