Home > Work > Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead
101 " Vulnerability is the last thing I want you to see in me, but the first thing I look for in you. "
― Brené Brown , Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead
102 " Shame tells you that you shouldn’t have even tried. Shame tells you that you’re not good enough and you should have known better. "
103 " There’s a quote that I share every time I talk about vulnerability and perfectionism. My fixation with these words from Leonard Cohen’s song “Anthem” comes from how much comfort and hope they give me as I put “enough” into practice: “There’s a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in. "
104 " This notion that the leader needs to be “in charge” and to “know all the answers” is both dated and destructive. Its impact on others is the sense that they know less, and that they are less than. A recipe for risk aversion if ever I have heard it. Shame becomes fear. Fear leads to risk aversion. Risk aversion kills innovation. "
105 " Don’t squander joy. "
106 " Nothing serves as a better reminder of that than the immortal words of my friend Scott Stratten, author of UnMarketing: “Don’t try to win over the haters; you’re not the jackass whisperer. "
107 " Connection is why we’re here. We are hardwired to connect with others, it’s what gives purpose and meaning to our lives, and without it there is suffering. I wanted to develop research that explained the anatomy of connection. "
108 " 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? "
109 " I know that these examples are symptomatic of the cruelty culture that we live in today and that everyone is fair game, but think about how and what they chose to attack. They went after my appearance and my mothering—two kill shots taken straight from the list of feminine norms. They didn’t go after my intellect or my arguments. That wouldn’t hurt enough. "
110 " 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. "
111 " Empathy is a strange and powerful thing. There is no script. There is no right way or wrong way to do it. It’s simply listening, holding space, withholding judgment, emotionally connecting, and communicating that incredibly healing message of “You’re not alone. "
112 " Perfection is crucial in building an aircraft, a bridge, or a high-speed train. The code and mathematics residing just below the surface of the Internet is also this way. Things are either perfectly right or they will not work. So much of the world we work and live in is based upon being correct, being perfect. "
113 " Waking up every day and loving someone who may or may not love us back, whose safety we can't ensure, who may stay in our lives or may leave without a moment's notice, who may be loyal to the day they die or betray us tomorrow - that's vulnerability. Love is uncertain. "
114 " eventually our anxiety is compounded and made unbearable by our belief that if we were just smarter, stronger, or better, we’d be able to handle everything. "
115 " There is no intimacy without vulnerability. "
116 " It is not joy that makes us grateful; it is gratitude that makes us joyful. —Brother David Steindl-Rast "
117 " Vulnerability is the core, the heart, the center, of meaningful human experiences. "
118 " Vulnerability sounds like truth and feels like courage. Truth and courage aren’t always comfortable, but they’re never weakness. "
119 " We've survived and are surviving events that have torn at our sense of safety with such force that we've experienced them as trauma even if we weren't directly involved. "
120 " It was divine intervention—the act of starting to turn on the lights to alleviate my discomfort made me think of my favorite quote about darkness and compassion from Pema Chödrön, who writes: “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. "