Atlas of the Heart Quotes

“I’m not mad because you’re resting. I’m mad because I’m so bone tired and I want to rest. But, unlike you, I’m going to pretend that I don’t need to.”
― Brené Brown, Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience

“David Kessler. I’ll never forget him saying this: “Each person’s grief is as unique as their fingerprint.28 But what everyone has in common is that no matter how they grieve, they share a need for their grief to be witnessed.”
― Brené Brown, Atlas of the Heart: The Bestselling Guide to Understanding our Emotions and Developing Meaningful Connections

“Grief does not obey your plans, or your wishes.25 Grief will do whatever it wants to you, whenever it wants to. In that regard, Grief has a lot in common with Love. —ELIZABETH GILBERT”
― Brené Brown, Atlas of the Heart: The Bestselling Guide to Understanding our Emotions and Developing Meaningful Connections

“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, to say yes to something scary.”
― Brené Brown, Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience

“Trying to outrun and outsmart vulnerability and pain is choosing a life defined by suffering and exhaustion.”
― Brené Brown, Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience

“...behavior that constantly jumped the line between girls-just-wanna-have-fun and self-destructive self-medicating... The eggshells weren't on the ground; they were duct-taped to the soles of my shoes. I could never step lightly enough or run fast enough to get away from the cracking, so I made everything around me so loud that it drowned out the sound.”
― Brené Brown, Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience

“I assumed that resentment was a form of anger related to my perfectionism. I mostly felt resentful toward people whom I perceived to be not working or sacrificing or grinding or perfecting or advocating as hard as I was.”
― Brené Brown, Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience

“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.” What does it mean if the vastness of human emotion and experience can only be expressed as mad, sad, or happy? What about shame, disappointment, wonder, awe, disgust, embarrassment, despair, contentment, boredom, anxiety, stress, love, overwhelm, surprise, and all of the other emotions and experiences that define what it means to be human?”
― Brené Brown, Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience

“Don't look away. Don't look down. Don't pretend not to see hurt. Look people in the eye. Even when their pain is overwhelming. And when you're hurting and in pain, find the people who can look you in the eye.”
― Brené Brown, Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience

“...we're a social species. That's why connection matters. It's why shame is so painful and debilitating. It's why we're wired for belonging.”
― Brené Brown, Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience

“The Center for Complicated Grief at Columbia is another tremendous resource. Their definitions are very helpful when thinking about grief. I think the most important line is "When a person adapts to a loss grief is not over." It doesn't mean that we're sad the rest of our lives, it means that "grief finds a place" in our lives. Imagine a world in which we honor that place in ourselves and others rather than hiding it, ignoring it, or pretending it doesn't exist.”
― Brené Brown, Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience

“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.”
― Brené Brown, Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience

“Belonging is a practice that requires us to be vulnerable, get uncomfortable, and learn how to be present with people without sacrificing who we are.”
― Brené Brown, Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience

“good friends aren’t afraid of your light. They never blow out your flame and you don’t blow out theirs—even when it’s really bright and it makes you worry about your own flame. When something good happens to you, they celebrate your flame. When something good happens to them, you celebrate their flame. To illustrate, we’d have our kids hold their hands out, palms flat and open, and say, “If this is your flame and the wind picks up, good friends cup their hands around your flame to prevent it from going out. And you do the same for them.”
― Brené Brown, Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience

“hubris is positively correlated with narcissism. In Daring Greatly, I write about how everything from Facebook and influencer culture to the increasingly insane behavior of politicians has pushed the term “narcissism” into the zeitgeist. While it’s penetrated social consciousness enough that most people correctly associate it with a pattern of behaviors that include grandiosity, a pervasive need for admiration, and a lack of empathy, almost no one understands how every level of severity in this diagnosis is underpinned by shame. Narcissism is shame-based. In fact, I define narcissism as the shame-based fear of being ordinary.”
― Brené Brown, Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience

“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. We can ask each other for help without judgment. Generosity: You extend the most generous interpretation possible to the intentions, words, and actions of”
― Brené Brown, Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience

“Humility is openness to new learning combined with a balanced and accurate assessment of our contributions, including our strengths, imperfections, and opportunities for growth.”
― Brené Brown, Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience

“Pride is a feeling of pleasure or celebration related to our accomplishments or efforts. Hubris is an inflated sense of one’s own innate abilities that is tied more to the need for dominance than to actual accomplishments. Humility is openness to new learning combined with a balanced and accurate assessment of our contributions, including our strengths, imperfections, and opportunities for growth. We really get this wrong.”
― Brené Brown, Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience

“Anguish is an almost unbearable and traumatic swirl of shock, incredulity, grief, and powerlessness. Shock and incredulity can take our breath away, and grief and powerlessness often come for our hearts and our minds. But anguish, the combination of these experiences, not only takes away our ability to breathe, feel, and think—it comes for our bones.”
― Brené Brown, Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience

“Cognitive dissonance is a state of tension that occurs when a person holds two cognitions (ideas, attitudes, beliefs, opinions) that are psychologically inconsistent with each other, such as “Smoking is a dumb thing to do because”
― Brené Brown, Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience

“We define nostalgia as a yearning for the way things used to be in our often idealized and self-protective version of the past.”
― Brené Brown, Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience

“Learning to label emotions with a more nuanced vocabulary can be absolutely transformative.”
― Brené Brown, Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience

“The edges taught me that the more I used alcohol, food, work, caretaking, and whatever else I could get my hands on to numb my anxiety and vulnerability, the less I would understand my feelings, thoughts, and behaviors.”
― Brené Brown, Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience

“Contempt is one of the most damaging of the four negative communication patterns that predict divorce. The other three are criticism, defensiveness, and stonewalling”
― Brené Brown, Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience

“Shame thrives on secrecy, silence, and judgment.”
― Brené Brown, Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience

“We like to be moved. We like to feel connected to what it means to be human, to be reminded of our inextricable connection to one another.”
― Brené Brown, Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience

“Permanence: This one is tough, because thinking that our struggle will never end is built in to the experiences of despair and hopelessness. This is the “Tomorrow will be no different from today” thinking. One way to build resilience is to practice thinking about the temporary nature of most setbacks as a part of how we look at adversity on a daily basis.”
― Brené Brown, Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience

“I think that’s the biggest watch-out with irony and sarcasm: Are you dressing something up in humor that actually requires clarity and honesty?”
― Brené Brown, Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience

“My favorite book on cognitive dissonance is Mistakes Were Made (but Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson.”
― Brené Brown, Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience

“An intolerance for uncertainty is an important contributing factor to all types of anxiety. Those of us who are generally uncomfortable with uncertainty are more likely to experience anxiety in specific situations as well as to have trait anxiety and anxiety disorders. Our anxiety often leads to one of two coping mechanisms: worry or avoidance. Unfortunately, neither of these coping strategies is very effective.”
― Brené Brown, Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience