Quotes from Brene Brown

I think we should be born with a warning label similar to the ones that come on cigarette packages: Caution: If you trade in your authenticity for safety, you may experience the following: anxiety, depression, eating disorders, addiction, rage, blame, resentment, and inexplicable grief.

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.

What makes this constant assessing and comparing so self-defeating is that we are often comparing our lives, our marriages, our families, and our communities to unattainable, media-driven visions of perfection, or we're holding up our reality against our own fictional account of how great someone else has it. Nostalgia is also a dangerous form of comparison.

Revolution might sound a little dramatic, but in this world, choosing authenticity and worthiness is an absolute act of resistance. Choosing to live and love with our whole hearts is an act of defiance. You're going to confuse, piss off, and terrify lots of people—including yourself. One

The best story stewardship in these moments is just to say, "I'm grateful that you're sharing this with me. What does support look like? I can listen and be with you, I can help problem-solve, or whatever else you need. You tell me.

Silence is not brave leadership, and silence is not a component of brave cultures.

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?" Our stories of worthiness—of being enough—begin in our first families.

But there's no equation where taking risks, braving uncertainty, and opening ourselves up to emotional exposure equals weakness.

A brave leader is not someone who is armed with all the answers.

Here's what I found: Men and women who live Wholeheartedly do indeed DIG Deep. They just do it in a different way. When they're exhausted and overwhelmed, they get Deliberate in their thoughts and behaviors through prayer, meditation, or simply setting their intentions; Inspired to make new and different choices; Going. They take action.

acknowledge and reward great questions and instances of "I don't know, but I'd like to find out" as daring leadership behaviors. The big shift here is from wanting to "be right" to wanting to "get it right.

The big challenge for leaders is getting our heads and hearts around the fact that we need to cultivate the courage to be uncomfortable and to teach the people around us how to accept discomfort as a part of growth. For

If we believe empathy is finite, like pizza, and practicing empathy with someone leaves fewer slices for others, then perhaps comparing levels of suffering would be necessary. Luckily, however, empathy is infinite and renewable. The more you give, the more we all have.

Acknowledging vulnerability is possible only if we feel we can reach out for support. To do so, we must feel some competence in our relationships." The likelihood of our finding the insight and courage to acknowledge our personal vulnerabilities is dependent on our ability to share and talk about those vulnerabilities with someone we trust and with whom we feel safe.

If the opposite of scarcity is enough, then practicing gratitude is how we acknowledge that there's enough and that we're enough.

Twelve "shame categories" have emerged from my research: Appearance and body image Money and work Motherhood/fatherhood Family Parenting Mental and physical health Addiction Sex Aging Religion Surviving trauma Being stereotyped or labeled

I remember a very tender moment from that year, when Steve and I were lying on the floor watching Ellen do a series of crazy, arm-flinging, and knee-slapping dances and tumbles. I looked at Steve and said, "Isn't it funny how I just love her that much more for being so vulnerable and uninhibited and goofy. I could never do that. Can you imagine knowing that you're loved like that?" Steve looked at me and said, "I love you exactly like that.

On page 145, I defined belonging as the innate human desire to be part of something larger than us. One of the biggest surprises in this research was learning that fitting in and belonging are not the same thing. In fact, fitting in is one of the greatest barriers to belonging. Fitting in is about assessing a situation and becoming who you need to be in order to be accepted. Belonging, on the other hand, doesn't require us to change who we are; it requires us to be who we are.

Confabulation has a really great and subtle definition: a Confabulation is a lie told honestly. To confabulate is to replace missing information with something false that we believe to be true.

Leadership is scarce because few people are willing to go through the discomfort required to lead.

Belonging so fully to yourself that you're willing to stand alone is a wilderness—an untamed, unpredictable place of solitude and searching.

you cannot shame or belittle people into changing their behavior

The MIDDLE is messy, but it's also where the MAGIC happens.

I'm brave enough to listen. I don't have to take it all in or add it to my load, but I'm brave enough to listen.