Quotes from Brene Brown

Sufficiency isn't an amount at all. It is an experience, a context we generate, a declaration, a knowing that there is enough, and that we are enough.

In Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, Darth Vader says to Obi-Wan Kenobi, "If you're not with me, then you're my enemy.

But Brown argues that play is not an option. In fact he writes, "The opposite of play is not work—the opposite of play is depression.

When we don't give ourselves permission to be free, we rarely tolerate that freedom in others. We put them down, make fun of them, ridicule their behaviors, and sometimes shame them. We can do this intentionally or unconsciously. Either way the message is, "Geez, man. Don't be so uncool.

Can you love someone and cheat on them or treat them poorly?" I thought about it for a long time, then gave the best answer I could based on my work: "I don't know if you can love someone and betray them or be cruel to them, but I do know that when you betray someone or behave in an unkind way toward them, you are not practicing love. And, for me, I don't just want someone who says they love me; I want someone who practices that love for me every day.

What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?" I pushed that question out of my head to make room for a new question. As I walked up to the stage, I literally whispered aloud, "What's worth doing even if I fail?

If we want to know why we're all so afraid to let our true selves be seen and known, we have to understand the power of shame and fear. If we can't stand up to the never good enough and who do you think you are? we can't move forward.

Shame is about the fear of disconnection. When we are experiencing shame, we are steeped in the fear of being ridiculed, diminished or seen as flawed. We are afraid that we've exposed or revealed a part of us that jeopardizes our connection and our worthiness of acceptance.

Midlife and midcareer are when we often start to see the effects of having stockpiled emotion for too long. The body is holding down the emotional fort, and as a result, we can experience many symptoms including anxiety, depression, burnout, insomnia, and physical pain.

Don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive. – Howard Thurman

Keep everyone at a safe distance and always have an exit strategy.

Dread occurs frequently in response to high-probability negative events; its magnitude increases as the dreaded event draws nearer. Because

Everyone who risks explaining love and belonging is hopefully doing the best they can to answer an unanswerable question. Myself included.

you know how things always sound better when they're far away and you don't know the details?

When we experience shame, our first layer of defense often occurs involuntarily. It goes back to our primal flight, fight and freeze responses.

The Hopi Indians have a saying, "To watch us dance is to hear our hearts speak.

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.

To add to Snyder's work on hope, I found in my research that participants who self-report as hopeful put considerable value on persistence and hard work.

Participants described happiness as an emotion that's connected to circumstances, and they described joy as a spiritual way of engaging with the world that's connected to practicing gratitude.

Perfectionism is a self-destructive and addictive belief system that fuels this primary thought: If I look perfect and do everything perfectly, I can avoid or minimize the painful feelings of shame, judgment, and blame.

Like all of the experiences in this book, both our anxiety and our fear need to be understood and respected, perhaps even befriended. We need to pull up a chair and sit with them, understand why they're showing up, and ask ourselves what there is to learn. Dismissing fear and anxiety as not useful to our quest for connection is as dangerous as choosing to live in constant fear and anxiety.

Wholehearted living is not a onetime choice. It is a process.

empathy is infinite and renewable.

Charles Feltman. Feltman describes trust as "choosing to risk making something you value vulnerable to another person's actions," and he describes distrust as deciding that "what is important to me is not safe with this person in this situation (or any situation).