Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience

by Brené Brown

People will do almost anything to not feel pain, including causing pain and abusing power;

Compassion is a daily practice and empathy is a skill set that is one of the most powerful tools of compassion.

The most effective approach to meaningful connection combines compassion with a specific type of empathy called cognitive empathy. Let’s get into it.

data: Compassion is the daily practice of recognizing and accepting our shared humanity so that we treat ourselves and others with loving-kindness, and we take action in the face of suffering.

Empathy, the most powerful tool of compassion, is an emotional skill set that allows us to understand what someone is experiencing and to reflect back that understanding.

empathy helps interpersonal decision making; facilitates ethical decision making and moral judgments; enhances short-term subjective well-being; strengthens relational bonds; allows people to better understand how others see them; and enhances prosocial and altruistic behavior.

Cognitive empathy, sometimes called perspective taking or mentalizing, is the ability to recognize and understand another person’s emotions.

Theresa Wiseman’s Attributes of Empathy:

Perspective taking: What does that concept mean for you? What is that experience like for you? Staying out of judgment: Just listen,

Recognizing emotion: How can I touch within myself something that helps me identify and connect with what the other person might be feeling?

Communicating our understanding about the emotion:

Practicing mindfulness (from Kristin Neff): This is not pushing away emotion because it’s uncomfortable, but feeling it and moving through it.

There’s compelling research that shows that compassion fatigue occurs when caregivers focus on their own personal distress reaction rather than on the experience of the person they are caring for.

True belonging doesn’t require us to change who we are; it requires us to be who we are.

A theme Brown explores deeply in Braving the Wildnerness

Because we can feel belonging only if we have the courage to share our most authentic selves with people, our sense of belonging can never be greater than our level of self-acceptance.

We cultivate love when we allow our most vulnerable and powerful selves to be deeply seen and known, and when we honor the spiritual connection that grows from that offering with trust, respect, kindness, and affection.

Love is not something we give or get; it is something that we nurture and grow,

Refusal to stand up for what you believe in weakens individual morality and ethics as well as those of the culture.

Hear ye, hear ye, America!

No wonder then that we are a nation of people, the majority of whom, across race, class, and gender, claim to be religious, claim to believe in the divine power of love, and yet collectively remain unable to embrace a love ethic and allow it to guide behavior, especially if doing so would mean supporting radical change. Fear of radical changes leads many citizens of our nation to betray their minds and hearts.

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.

Such a good quote.

Seven elements of trust emerged from our data, and we use the acronym BRAVING:

Boundaries:

Reliability:

Accountability:

Vault:

Integrity:

Nonjudgment:

Generosity:

For there to be betrayal, there would have to have been trust first.

happiness as a trait (part of who we are), not a state (something we experience).

Calm is an intention. Do we want to infect people with more anxiety, or heal ourselves and the people around us with calm?

But when you practice contentment, you can say to yourself, “Oh yes—I already have everything that I really need.” — The 14th DALAI LAMA

If we’re not satisfied with our life as a whole, does this mean we need to go get and do the stuff that will make us satisfied so we can be content, or does this mean we stop taking for granted what we have so we can experience real contentment and enoughness?

joy, contentment, and gratitude, to name a few—have appreciation in common.

There is overwhelming evidence that gratitude is good for us physically, emotionally, and mentally.

Gratitude is an emotion that reflects our deep appreciation for what we value, what brings meaning to our lives, and what makes us feel connected to ourselves and others.

The good news? In our research we found that everyone who showed a deep capacity for joy had one thing in common: They practiced gratitude.

“Tranquility is associated with the absence of demand” and “no pressure to do anything.”

Anger is an action emotion—we want to do something when we feel it and when we’re on the receiving end of it.

When someone is angry at you, you’ve still got traction with them, but when they display contempt, you’ve been dismissed. — PAMELA MEYER

Contempt is one of the most damaging of the four negative communication patterns that predict divorce. The other three are criticism, defensiveness, and stonewalling.

Contempt, simply put, says, “I’m better than you. And you are lesser than me.”

“motive attribution asymmetry”—the assumption that your ideology is based in love, while your opponent’s is based in hate—suggests an answer. The researchers found that the average Republican and the average Democrat today suffer from a level of motive attribution asymmetry that is comparable with that of Palestinians and Israelis.

People often say that our problem in America today is incivility or intolerance. This is incorrect. Motive attribution asymmetry leads to something far worse: contempt, which is a noxious brew of anger and disgust.

With contempt, we look down on the other person and we want to exclude or ignore them. With disgust, inferiority is not the issue, the feeling is more physical—we want to avoid being “poisoned” (either literally or figuratively).

once a target is viewed with disgust, this judgment seems to be permanent;

Successful dehumanizing, however, creates moral exclusion.