Quotes from Brene Brown

It's not what you do; it's why you do it that makes the difference.

Mastery requires feedback.

I'm not perfect and I'm not always right, but I'm here, open, paying attention, loving you, and fully engaged.

It was a long year. I lovingly refer to it on my blog as the 2007 Breakdown Spiritual Awakening. It felt like a textbook breakdown to me, but Diana called it a spiritual awakening. I think we were both right. In fact, I'm starting to question if you can have one without the other.

When you are grateful for what you have, I know you understand the magnitude of what I have lost.

There is no intimacy without vulnerability.

The irony is that we attempt to disown our difficult stories to appear more whole or more acceptable, but our wholeness—even our wholeheartedness—actually depends on the integration of all of our experiences, including the falls.

Too much twee emotional expression--too many claims like, "Everything is awesome," or "I just never really feel angry or upset," or "If you're just positive, you can turn that frown upside down,"--often masks real pain and hurt. These behaviors are as much red flags as brooding and anger are....Being all light is as dangerous as being all dark, simply because denial of emotion is what feeds the dark.

Shame resilience is about moving from shame to empathy—the real antidote to shame.

When we are experience shame we are often thrown into crisis mode... In this mode, the neocortex is bypassed and our acess to advanced, rational, calm thinking and processing of emotion all but disappears...we find ourselves becoming aggressive, wanting to run and hide and feeling paralyzed...

Real power is basically the ability to change something if you want to change it. It's the ability to make change happen. Real power is unlimited—we don't need to fight over it because there is plenty to go around. And the great thing about real power is our ability to create it. Real power doesn't force us to take it away from others—it's something we create and build with others.

We asked a thousand leaders to list marble-earning behaviors—what do your team members do that earns your trust? The most common answer: asking for help. When it comes to people who do not habitually ask for help, the leaders we polled explained that they would not delegate important work to them because the leaders did not trust that they would raise their hands and ask for help. Mind. Blown.

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

Vulnerability sounds like truth and feels like courage. Truth and courage aren't always comfortable, but they're never weakness.

Because we do believe in the light. Yes, we know that Harry Potter is not real, but we know that colective light is is real. And powerful. And in the face of hatred and bigotry and cruelty and everything that dark sky stood for, we were so much stronger together.

We love seeing raw truth and openness in other people, but we're afraid to let them see it in us. We're afraid that our truth isn't enough—that what we have to offer isn't enough without the bells and whistles, without editing, and impressing.

It seems that gratitude without practice may be a little like faith without works—it's not alive.

Cognitive empathy, sometimes called perspective taking or mentalizing, is the ability to recognize and understand another person's emotions. Affective empathy, often called experience sharing, is one's own emotional attunement with another person's experience.

Creativity, which is the expression of our originality, helps us stay mindful that what we bring to the world is completely original and cannot be compared.

We need happy moments and happiness in our lives; however, I'm growing more convinced that the pursuit of happiness may get in the way of deeper, more meaningful experiences like joy and gratitude. I know, from the research and my experiences, that when it comes to parenting, what makes children happy in the moment is not always what leads them to developing deeper joy, grounded confidence, and meaningful connection.

When we spend a lifetime trying to distance ourselves from the parts of our lives that don't fit with who we think we're supposed to be, we stand outside of our story and hustle for our worthiness by constantly performing, perfecting, pleasing, and proving.

There is an incredibly important, uncomfortable, and brave discussion that every single leader and every organization in the world should be having about privilege.

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.

Because we are compelled to make stories, we are often compelled to take incomplete stories and run with them.