18. Rising Strong - Brene Brown (📱)
24 May 2017
Rating 9.5/10
Reading Notes:
We can choose courage or we can choose comfort, but we can’t have both. Not at the same time.
Daring is not saying, “I’m willing to risk failure.” Daring is saying, “I know I will eventually fail and I’m still all in.”
We’re wired for story. In a culture of scarcity and perfectionism, there’s a surprisingly simple reason we want to own, integrate, and share our stories of struggle. We do this because we feel the most alive when we’re connecting with others and being brave with our stories—it’s in our biology.
We own our stories so we don’t spend our lives being defined by them or denying them.
Creating is the tool. Creating is the act of paying attention to our experiences and connecting the dots so we can learn more about ourselves and the world around us.
The only decision we get to make is what role we’ll play in our own lives: Do we want to write the story or do we want to hand that power over to someone else? Choosing to write our own story means getting uncomfortable; it’s choosing courage over comfort.
One of the truisms of wholehearted living is You either walk into your story and own your truth, or you live outside of your story, hustling for your worthiness
you’d be surprised how many of us never recognize our emotions or feelings—we off-load instead. Rather than saying I failed and it feels so crappy, we move to I am a failure. We act out and shut down rather than reaching out.
When we deny our stories and disengage from tough emotions, they don’t go away; instead, they own us, they define us. Our job is not to deny the story, but to defy the ending—to rise strong, recognize our story, and rumble with the truth until we get to a place where we think, Yes. This is what happened. This is my truth. And I will choose how this story ends.
Einstein said, “The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence.” Curiosity’s reason for existing is not simply to be a tool used in acquiring knowledge; it reminds us that we’re alive.
A study published in the October 22, 2014, issue of the journal Neuron suggests that the brain’s chemistry changes when we become curious, helping us better learn and retain information. But curiosity is uncomfortable because it involves uncertainty and vulnerability.
Depression and anxiety are two of the body’s first reactions to stockpiles of hurt.
You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them. —Maya Angelou
Mindfulness means maintaining a moment-by-moment awareness of our thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, and surrounding environment. Mindfulness also involves acceptance, meaning that we pay attention to our thoughts and feelings without judging them—without believing, for instance, that there’s a “right” or “wrong” way to think or feel in a given moment. When we practice mindfulness, our thoughts tune in to what we’re sensing in the present moment rather than rehashing the past or imagining the future.
“Because we are compelled to make stories, we are often compelled to take incomplete stories and run with them.”
Our rational, grown-up selves are good liars. The five-year-old tyrants within us are the ones who can tell it like it is.
Unfortunately, being low maintenance also meant not asking for what you needed and never inconveniencing anyone.
Self-righteousness starts with the belief that I’m better than other people and it always ends with me being my very worst self and thinking, I’m not good enough.
“Steve says his life is better when he assumes people are doing the best they can. I think he’s right. I learned some hard things about myself and about people. It’s a powerful question.”
How can we expect people to put value on our work when we don’t value ourselves enough to set and hold uncomfortable boundaries?
Living BIG: Boundaries, Integrity, and Generosity.
What boundaries do I need to put in place so I can work from a place of integrity and extend the most generous interpretations of the intentions, words, and actions of others?
Setting boundaries means getting clear on what behaviors are okay and what’s not okay. Integrity is key to this commitment because it’s how we set those boundaries and ultimately hold ourselves and others accountable for respecting them.
Integrity is choosing courage over comfort; choosing what is right over what is fun, fast, or easy; and choosing to practice our values rather than simply professing them.
Living BIG is saying: “Yes, I’m going to be generous in my assumptions and intentions while standing solidly in my integrity and being very clear about what’s acceptable and what’s not acceptable.”
boundaries are simply our lists of what’s okay and what’s not okay.
I now recognize that people learn how to treat us based on how they see us treating ourselves. If I don’t put value on my work or my time, neither will the person I am helping. Boundaries are a function of self-respect and self-love.
As Anne Lamott said, “Expectations are resentments waiting to happen.”
Nelson Mandela wrote, “Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies.” Disappointment doesn’t grow into heartbreak, nor does failure. Heartbreak comes from the loss of love or the perceived loss of love. My heart can be broken only by someone (or something, like my dog, though a part of me really believes my dog is a person) to whom I have given my heart.
In the moving novel The Fault in Our Stars, John Green captures one of those secret losses that accompanies grief. “The pleasure of remembering had been taken from me, because there was no longer anyone to remember with.
Of the coping strategies my research participants have shared with me, writing down experiences of heartbreak and grief have emerged as the most helpful in making clear to themselves what they were feeling so they could articulate it to others.
The Book of Forgiving is one of the most important books I’ve ever read.
Pema Chödrön. In her book The Places That Scare You, Chödrön writes: When we practice generating compassion, we can expect to experience our fear of pain. Compassion practice is daring. It involves learning to relax and allow ourselves to move gently toward what scares us….In cultivating compassion we draw from the wholeness of our experience—our suffering, our empathy, as well as our cruelty and terror. It has to be this way. 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.
C. S. Lewis captured this so beautifully in one of my favorite quotes of all time: To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken.
We don’t have to do all of it alone. We were never meant to
We ask leaders to identify two or three specific behaviors that allow them to trust others. Two of the top answers that always emerge are: • I trust people who will ask for help or support. • If someone asks me for help, I’m more likely to trust them because they’re willing to be vulnerable and honest with me.
Perfectionism is not healthy striving. It is not asking, How can I be my best self? Instead, it’s asking, What will people think?
In my research, seven elements of trust emerged as useful in both trusting others and trusting ourselves. I came up with an acronym—BRAVING
Boundaries — You respect my boundaries, and when you’re not clear about what’s okay and not okay, you ask. You’re willing to say no.
Reliability — You do what you say you’ll do.
Vault — You don’t share information or experiences that are not yours to share.
Integrity — You choose courage over comfort. You choose what is right over what is fun, fast, or easy.
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.
Generosity — You extend the most generous interpretation possible to the intentions, words, and actions of others.
Mistakes don’t bankrupt trust in the way that violations of personal accountability, integrity, or values can.
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.
I’ve also learned in all of my rumbles that if you don’t put value on your work, no one is going to do that for you.
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.
We can’t be brave in the big world without at least one small safe space to work through our fears and falls.
Of all the things trauma takes away from us, the worst is our willingness, or even our ability, to be vulnerable. There’s a reclaiming that has to happen.
we start playing smaller and smaller, making ourselves harder targets. We’re more difficult to hit when we’re small, but we’re also less likely to make a contribution.
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. The solution is getting totally clear on the people whose opinions actually matter.
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.