Quotes from Brene Brown

Playing down the exciting stuff doesn't take the pain away when it doesn't happen. It does, however, minimize the joy when it does happen.

It turns out to be the place of true belonging, and it's the bravest and most sacred place you'll stand.

Yes, we all struggle with shame and the fear of not being enough.

The non-doing also makes sense—there is a body of research that indicates that we don't process other emotional information accurately when we feel overwhelmed, and this can result in poor decision making.

According to Dr. Hartling, in order to deal with shame, some of us move away by withdrawing, hiding, silencing ourselves, and keeping secrets. Some of us move toward by seeking to appease and please. And, some of us move against by trying to gain power over others, by being aggressive, and by using shame to fight shame (like sending really mean e-mails).

We know that vulnerability is the cornerstone of courage-building, but we often fail to recognize that without vulnerability there is no creativity or innovation. Why? Because there is nothing more uncertain than the creative process, and there is absolutely no innovation without failure.

I used to ask my graduate students to submit a semester-long goal the second week of school. After doing this for years, I knew I could expect 90 percent of the goals to be unrealistic. Setting realistic goals is a skill and a prerequisite for hope.

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. And, without comparison, concepts like ahead or behind or best or worst lose their meaning.

It starts to make sense that we dismiss vulnerability as weakness only when we realize that we've confused feeling with failing and emotions with liabilities. If we want to reclaim the essential emotional part of our lives and reignite our passion and purpose, we have to learn how to own and engage with our vulnerability and how to feel the emotions that come with it.

Our stories are not meant for everyone. Hearing them is a privilege,

I got sucked into proving I could, rather than stepping back and asking if I should—or if I really even wanted to.

If we are brave enough often enough, we will fall.

In our personal, social, and political worlds, we do a lot of screaming and finger-pointing, but we rarely hold people accountable. How could we? We're so exhausted from ranting and raving that we don't have the energy to develop meaningful consequences and enforce them.

Compassionate people ask for what they need. They say no when they need to, and when they say yes, they mean it.

Again, no matter what you do, you can't control other people's responses.

Perfect and bulletproof are seductive, but they don't exist in the human experience. We must walk in the arena, whatever it may be.

Oh, the audacity of authenticity. You're going to confuse, piss-off and terrify lots of people – including yourself.

When we practice generating compassion, we can expect to experience the fear of our pain. Compassion practice is daring. It involves learning to relax and allow ourselves to move gently toward what scares us.

Sometimes our first and greatest dare is asking for support.

However, no matter how much the lists vary, one item is on every list I've seen: the fear of social rejection. We can never forget that we experience social pain and physical pain in the same part of our brains, and the potential exposure to either type of pain drives fear.

What does support from me look like?" Not only does it offer the opportunity for clarity and set up the team for success, asking people for specific examples of what supportive behaviors look like—and what they do not look like—it also holds them accountable for asking for what they need.

Just as getting in and out of the weeds is a part of every waitstaff shift in a restaurant, navigating stressors is a daily part of living. However, daily stress can take a toll. In fact, chronic exposure to stressors can be detrimental to health. High levels of perceived stress have been shown to correlate with more rapid aging, decreased immune function, greater inflammatory processes, less sleep, and poorer health behaviors.

a surefooted and confident mapmaker does not a swift traveler make. I stumble and fall, and I constantly find myself needing to change course. And even though I'm trying to follow a map that I've drawn, there are many times when frustration and self-doubt take over, and I wad up that map and shove it into the junk drawer in my kitchen.

Martin Luther King, Jr. In a 1968 speech given to striking sanitation workers in Memphis, Reverend King defined power as the ability to achieve purpose and effect change.