Quotes About Authenticity

Dare to Lead: I'm here to get it right, not to be right.

Belonging to ourselves means being called to stand alone - to brave the wilderness of uncertainty, vulnerability, and criticism.

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.) HOW

The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself. —ANNA QUINDLEN1

Far from being an effective shield, the illusion of invulnerability undermines the very response that would have supplied genuine protection.

Howard Thurman with my graduate students. It's always been one of my favorites, but now that I've studied the importance of meaningful work, it's taken on new significance: "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.

We hustle for worthiness by slipping on the emotional and behavioral straitjacket of cool and posturing as the tragically hip and terminally "better than." Being "in control" isn't always about the desire to manipulate situation, but often it's about the need to manage perception. We want to be able to control what other people think about us so that we can feel good enough.

sharing appropriately, with boundaries, means sharing with people with whom we've developed relationships that can bear the weight of our story. The result of this mutually respectful vulnerability is increased connection, trust, and engagement.

E. E. Cummings wrote, "To be nobody-but-yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody but yourself—means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight—and never stop fighting.

Here's a list: RUMBLING TOPICS

They practice critical awareness by reality-checking the messages and expectations that tell us that being imperfect means being inadequate.

I believe that vulnerability—the willingness to show up and be seen with no guarantee of outcome—is the only path to more love, belonging, and joy. He quickly followed up with, "And the downside?" This time I was the one laughing. "You're going to stumble, fall, and get your ass kicked.

Betrayal is an important word with this guidepost. When we value being cool and in control over granting ourselves the freedom to unleash the passionate, goofy, heartfelt, and soulful expressions of who we are, we betray ourselves. When we consistently betray ourselves, we can expect to do the same to the people we love.

No matter what gets done and how much is left undone, I am enough. It's going to bed at night thinking, Yes, I am imperfect and vulnerable and sometimes afraid, but that doesn't change the truth that I am brave and worthy of love and belonging.

Who we are matters immeasurably more than what we know or who we want to be.

I can definitely say, "Hi. My name is Brené, and today I'd like to deal with vulnerability and uncertainty with an apple fritter, a beer and cigarette, and spending seven hours on Facebook." That feels uncomfortably honest.

On a cultural level, I think the absence of honest conversation about the hard work that takes us from lying facedown in the arena to rising strong has led to two dangerous outcomes: the propensity to gold-plate grit and a badassery deficit.

When I interviewed the participants whom I'd describe as living a Wholehearted life about the same topic, they consistently talked about trying to feel the feelings, staying mindful about numbing behaviors, and trying to lean into the discomfort of hard emotions.

by-products of shame—fear, blame and disconnection—and move toward the courage, compassion and connection we need to live our best, authentic lives.

How much we know and understand ourselves is critically important, but there is something that is even more essential to living a Wholehearted life: loving ourselves. Knowledge

It's in our biology to trust what we see with our eyes. This makes living in a carefully edited, overproduced, and Photoshopped world very dangerous. If we want to cultivate a resilient spirit and stop falling prey to comparing our ordinary lives with manufactured images, we need to know how to reality-check what we see.

it is less about who people are, and more about how they behave and show up in difficult situations. Fear is the emotion at the center of that list of problematic behaviors

we just can't fill a self-worth gap by leading and using power over people,

We are a culture of people who've bought into the idea that if we stay busy enough, the truth of our lives won't catch up with us. Second,