Quotes from Brene Brown

The most powerful moments of our lives happen when we string together the small flickers of light created by courage, compassion, and connection and see them shine in the darkness of our struggles.

Quoting Viola Davis (who is sharing rules she lives by): '4. I will not be a mystery to my daughter. She will know me and I will share my stories with her—the stories of failure, shame, and accomplishment. She will know she's not alone in that wilderness.

Vulnerability is the last thing I want you to see in me, but the first thing I look for in you.

Empathy is not relating to an experience, it's connecting to what someone is feeling about an experience.

Lying is a defiance of the truth. Bullshitting is a wholesale dismissal of the truth.

Grief seems to create losses within us that reach beyond our awareness–we feel as if we're missing something that was invisible and unknown to us while we had it, but now painfully gone.

Shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing we are flawed and therefore unworthy of acceptance and belonging.

Perfectionism is not a way to avoid shame. Perfectionism is a form of shame.

Quick and dirty wins the race. Perfection is the enemy of done. Good enough is really effin' good.

To practice courage, compassion, and connection is to look at life and the people around us, and say, "I'm all in.

The power of owning our stories, even the difficult ones, is that we get to write the ending.

You either walk into your story and own your truth, or you live outside of your story, hustling for your worthiness.

The origin of the word "courage" comes from the word "cour", which mean heart, and it means to completely share your story with your whole heart.

So often, when someone is in pain, we're afraid to say, "Yes, this hurts. Yes, this is a big deal. Yes, this sucks." We think our job is to make things better, so we minimize the pain.

All I know is that my life is better when I assume that people are doing their best. It keeps me out of judgment and lets me focus on what is, and not what should or could be.

We can choose courage or we can choose comfort, but we can't have both. Not at the same time.

Very few people can handle being held accountable without rationalizing, blaming, or shutting down;

Joy comes to us in moments—ordinary moments. We risk missing out on joy when we get too busy chasing down the extraordinary. Scarcity culture may keep us afraid of living small, ordinary lives, but when you talk to people who have survived great losses, it is clear that joy is not a constant.

Again, there's no question that feedback may be one of the most difficult arenas to negotiate in our lives. We should remember, though, that victory is not getting good feedback, avoiding giving difficult feedback, or avoiding the need for feedback. Instead it's taking off the armor, showing up, and engaging.

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.

We can't selectively numb emotion. Numb the dark and you numb the light.

Heartbreak is more than just a particularly hard form of disappointment or failure. It hurts in an entirely different way because heartbreak is always connected to love and belonging. Over time, the more I've thought about heartbreak and love, the more clearly I've realized how vulnerable we are when we love anyone. The brokenhearted are the bravest among us—they dared to love.

The Ham-Foldover Debacle:.....you make yourself the center of something that has nothing to do with you, out of your own fear or scarcity, only to be reminded that you're not the axis over which the world turns

Belonging is being somewhere where you want to be, and they want you. Fitting in is being somewhere where you want to be, but they don't care one way or the other. • Belonging is being accepted for you. Fitting in is being accepted for being like everyone else. • If I get to be me, I belong. If I have to be like you, I fit in.