Quotes from Brene Brown

When we've self-examined and shared expectations with someone and we feel they've let us down, it's important to keep the lines of communication open, circle back, and talk about our feelings and move to accountability. "I let you know how important this was to me…

But embracing failure without acknowledging the real hurt and fear that it can cause, or the complex journey that underlies rising strong, is gold-plating grit. To strip failure of its real emotional consequences is to scrub the concepts of grit and resilience of the very qualities that make them both so important—toughness, doggedness, and perseverance.

if you don't put value on your work, no one is going to do that for you.

We all fear pain and struggle, but they are often necessary for growth, and, more important, they don't present the level of danger that hopelessness and despair bring to us. We can't ignore hopelessness and despair in ourselves or others—they are both reliable predictors of suicidal thoughts, suicide attempts, and completed suicide, especially when hopelessness is accompanied by emotional pain.

Self-Compassion A moment of self-compassion can change your entire day. A string of such moments can change the course of your life. — CHRISTOPHER K. GERMER

If we're going to put ourselves out there and love with our whole hearts, we're going to experience heartbreak.

Belonging, on the other hand, doesn't require us to change who we are; it requires us to be who we are.

And just because someone failed to see the value in what we can create or achieve doesn't change its worth or ours.

Who has earned the right to hear my story?" If we have one or two people in our lives who can sit with us and hold space for our shame stories, and love us for our strengths and struggles, we are incredibly lucky. If we have a friend, or a small group of friends, or family who embraces our imperfections, vulnerabilities, and power, and fills us with a sense of belonging, we are incredible lucky.

Hope is a function of struggle—we develop hope not during the easy or comfortable times, but through adversity and discomfort.

The paradox is that we all love the ready-made filing system, so handy when we want to quickly characterize people, but we resent it when we're the ones getting filed away.

What if what we experience close up is real, and what we hear on the news and from the mouths of politicians who are jockeying for power needs to be questioned? It is not easy to hate people close up. And when we are in pain and fear, anger and hate are our go-to emotions.

We avoid tough conversations, including giving honest, productive feedback

The main concern of wholehearted men and women is living a life defined by courage, engagement, and a clear sense of purpose.

Shame breeds fear. It crushes our tolerance for vulnerability, thereby killing engagement, innovation, creativity, productivity, and trust.

Cuando nos pasamos la vida esperando ser perfectos o inmunes antes de salir al ruedo, sacrificamos relaciones y oportunidades que quizá sean irrecuperables, derrochamos nuestro valioso tiempo y tal vez le damos la espalda a nuestras aptitudes, a esas contribuciones únicas que sólo nosotros podemos hacer.

I think the most important line is "When a person adapts to a loss grief is not over." It doesn't mean that we're sad the rest of our lives, it means that "grief finds a place" in our lives. Imagine a world in which we honor that place in ourselves and others rather than hiding it, ignoring it, or pretending it doesn't exist because of fear or shame.

Without exception, every person I interviewed who described living a joyful life or who described themselves as joyful actively practiced gratitude and attributed their joyfulness to their gratitude practice.

Technology, for instance, has become a kind of imposter for connection, making us believe we're connected when we're really not—at least not in the ways we need to be. In our technology-crazed world, we've confused being communicative with feeling connected. Just because we're plugged in, doesn't mean we feel seen and heard.

If you're not in the arena with the rest of us, fighting and getting your ass kicked on occasion, I'm not interested in your feedback.

Choose courage over comfort.

The stealth intention is a self-protection need that lurks beneath the surface and often drives behavior outside our values. Closely related is the stealth expectation—a desire or expectation that exists outside our awareness and typically includes a dangerous combination of fear and magical thinking. Stealth expectations almost always lead to disappointment, resentment, and more fear.

hurt feelings are most often caused by people with whom we have close relationships when we feel devalued or rejected by the other person. Most behaviors that result in hurt feelings are not intended to be hurtful; they typically involve actions that are thoughtless, careless, or insensitive. However, "the more intentional an action is perceived [as], the more hurtful it feels.

In addition to the fear of disappointing people or pushing them away with our stories, we're also afraid that if we tell our stories, the weight of a single experience will collapse upon us. There is a real fear that we can be buried or defined by an experience that, in reality, is only a sliver of who we are.