Top Quotes: “Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience” — Brené Brown
“I understood that people would do almost anything to not feel pain, including causing pain and abusing power, and I understood that there were very few people who could handle being held accountable for causing hurt without rationalizing, blaming, or shutting down.”
“Regardless of how strongly our body responds to stress (increases in heart rate and cortisol), our emotional reaction is more tied to our cognitive assessment of whether we can cope with the situation than to how our body is reacting. I found this really interesting because I always assumed that my emotions responded to my body freaking out. But really, my emotions are responding to my “thinking” assessment of how well I can handle something.”
“Rather than suppressing worry, we need to dig into and address the emotion driving the thinking.”
“Even though excitement is described as an energized state of enthusiasm leading up to or during an enjoyable activity, it doesn’t always feel great. We can get the same “coming out of our skin” feeling that we experience when we’re feeling anxious. Similar sensations are labeled “anxiety” when we perceive them negatively and “excitement” when we perceive them positively. One important strategy when we’re in these feelings is to take a deep breath and try to determine whether we’re feeling anxiety or excitement. Researchers found that labeling the emotion as excitement seems to hinge on interpreting the bodily sensations as positive. The labels are important because they help us know what to do next.”
“Even if we do not choose whether or not to make a comparison, we can choose whether or not to let that comparison affect our mood or self-perceptions.”
“As someone who can fall prey to comparing myself and my life to edited and curated Instagram feeds, I laughed so hard when he told me that due to the physics of how grass grows, when we peer over our fence at our neighbor’s grass, it actually does look greener, even if it is truly the same lushness as our own grass. I mean, does it get better than that? The grass actually does look greener on the other side, but that means nothing comparatively because it’s all perspective.
So the bad news is that our hardwiring makes us default to comparison — it seems to happen to us rather than be our choice.
The good news is that we get to choose how we’re going to let it affect us. If we don’t want this constant automatic ranking to negatively shape our lives, our relationships, and our future, we need to stay aware enough to know when it’s happening and what emotions it’s driving. My new strategy is to look at the person in the lane next to me, and say to myself, as if I’m talking to them, Have a great swim. That way I acknowledge the inevitable and make a conscious decision to wish them well and return to my swim. So far, it’s working pretty well.”
“Envy occurs when we want something that another person has.
Jealousy is when we fear losing a relationship or a valued part of a relationship that we already have.”
“Now when I start to feel resentful, instead of thinking, What is that person doing wrong? or What should they be doing? I think, What do I need but am afraid to ask for? While resentment is definitely an emotion, I normally recognize it by a familiar thought pattern: What mean and critical thing am I rehearsing saying to this person?
Here’s our definition:
Resentment is the feeling of frustration, judgment, anger, and/or hidden envy related to perceived unfairness or injustice. It’s an emotion that we often experience when we fail to set boundaries or ask for what we need, or when expectations let us down because they were based on things we can’t control, like what other people think, what they feel, or how they’re going to react.”
“When someone demonstrates joy when we share ours, we can express gratitude: “Thank you for celebrating this with me. It means so much that you’re happy for me.””
“From the time my kids were little, I never rushed to alleviate their boredom. If I could wait out the “I’m soooo bored” episodes, things would eventually turn quiet and I’d find them doing something really important, like daydreaming or creating. I’ve seen Ellen turn a boring day into a fully choreographed song and dance routine to the Wicked soundtrack, and Charlie go from “Ugh. I don’t know what to do” to writing an illustrated book about rocks.
As researcher and writer Sherry Turkle says, “Boredom is your imagination calling to you.””
“I finally said to Steve, “I’m tired of this argument about it being easier without the other one here. It totally hurts my feelings. I feel like I don’t belong here. Something about the story we’re telling ourselves is not true. I don’t believe it.” He confessed that it also hurt his feelings, so we started examining the patterns.
It took a lot of trial and error — and several near melt-downs — until Steve finally said, “When it’s just me with the lads, I have no expectations for getting my own stuff done. I give up my to-do list so I can actually enjoy the craziness.” It was that simple.
This fight was all about stealth expectations.”
“Now, before weekends, vacations, or even busy school or workweeks, we talk about expectations. We specifically ask each other, “What do you want this weekend to look like?”
I might say, “This is going to be a busy weekend. I’m down for whatever we need to do, but I would like to swim at least one day and play pickleball for a couple of hours on Saturday.”
Steve might say, “Let’s try to grab dinner, just the two of us, on Saturday night after we drop off Charlie. I’d like to play water polo for a couple of hours on Sunday. What time is pickleball?”
That doesn’t mean stealth expectations no longer trip us up. They do. But now we help each other. We help each other reality-check our expectations, we ask each other a lot of questions about what we think will happen or what we want to happen, and we often ask ourselves and each other: What’s this about? What are you not saying?”
“We’re also trying to teach our kids how to reality-check, communicate, and dig into the intentions driving their expectations. We try to model the questions: What expectations do you have going into this? What do you want to happen? Why? What will that mean to you? Do you have a movie in your head? And in this perception-driven world, the big question is always: Are you setting goals and expectations that are completely outside of your control?
Unexamined and unexpressed expectations can also lead to serious disappointment at work. In Dare to Lead, I write about the power of “painting done.” When I hand off an assignment at work, I will often say “Let me paint done” — and if I don’t, you can be assured that the person on my team will say “I’m on it. But I need you to paint done.”
“Painting done” means fully walking through my expectations of what the completed task will look like, including when it will be done, what I’ll do with the information, how it will be used, the context, the consequences of not doing it, the costs — everything we can think of to paint a shared picture of the expectations. It’s one of the most powerful tools we have.”
“It’s going to be a great holiday! I’ve got everything planned to the minute. Is this a setup for success? What do you need from this gathering and why? Have you talked about your needs, or are you assuming everyone is on board? Have you shared your plans and talked about why they’re important to you? Have you asked the other people what they want and need?”
“When someone shares their hopes and dreams with us, we are witnessing deep courage and vulnerability. Celebrating their successes is easy, but when disappointment happens, it’s an incredible opportunity for meaningful connection.
Think how powerful it might have been for Elizabeth to hear, “You had such courage to apply for that promotion and even more courage to be honest about how much you wanted it. I’m so proud to be your daughter/son/mentor/ friend/parent.”
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..””
“The idea of “no regrets” doesn’t mean living with courage, it means living without reflection. To live without regret is to believe we have nothing to learn, no amends to make, and no opportunity to be braver with our lives.
One reason we may avoid regret is the fact that it can be accompanied by an element of self-blame and even guilt. Maybe we don’t like the accountability that often comes with regret.”
“I love how researchers Ulrich Weger and Johannes Wagemann explain it. They write, “Wonder inspires the wish to understand; awe inspires the wish to let shine, to acknowledge and to unite.” When feeling awe, we tend to simply stand back and observe, “to provide a stage for the phenomenon to shine.””
“A study led by Sidney D’Mello found that when we’re trying to work through our confusion, we need to stop and think, engage in careful deliberation, develop a solution, and revise how we approach the next problem.”
“We have to have some level of knowledge or awareness before we can become curious. We aren’t curious about something we are unaware of or know nothing about. This has huge implications for education. Lowenstein explains that simply encouraging people to ask questions doesn’t go very far toward stimulating curiosity. He writes, “To induce curiosity about a particular topic, it may be necessary to “prime the pump’” – to use intriguing information to get folks interested so they become more curious and to create opportunities for exposure to new ideas and experiences.”
“An increasing number of researchers believe that curiosity and knowledge building grow together – the more we know, the more we want to know.”
“There’s evidence that surprise amplifies subsequent emotion, with more surprising events resulting in stronger emotional reactions.”
“Research shows that surprising news is more likely to be shared, surprising advertisements are more likely to be noticed, and people are more likely to return to a restaurant that was surprisingly better than expected.”
“New research suggests that when journalists acknowledge the uncertainties around facts on complex issues like climate change and immigration, it doesn’t undermine their readers’ trust. And multiple experiments have shown that when experts express doubt, they become more persuasive. When someone knowledgeable admits uncertainty, it surprises people, and they end up paying more attention to the substance of the argument.
While Adam didn’t write this about our emotions, thoughts, and behaviors, the same wisdom applies. When we gather information from our emotions, thoughts, and behaviors, especially the layered, messy ones, the tension can serve us. When we’re communicating our feelings and thoughts to ourselves and others, we might want to consider sharing our uncertainties.”
“In the late 1600s, Swiss medical student Johannes Hofer noticed a pattern in his patients who were living far from home. Those who were obsessed with returning to their estranged locations became physically, sometimes fatally, sick. To reflect this phenomenon, he coined the medical term “nostalgia” in 1688, which he created by combining the Greek words nostos (homecoming) and alga (pain).
The disease’s reported symptoms included loss of appetite, fainting, heightened suicide risk, and, according to Swiss doctor Albert Van Holler, hallucinations of the people and places you miss….It ran so rampant among Swiss mercenaries fighting far-flung wars that playing “Khue-Reyen” — an old Swiss milking song that seemed to send soldiers into a contagiously nostalgic frenzy was punishable by death.
Matei goes on to explain how cures for nostalgia included being burned with a hot poker and punishments included being buried alive.
Nostalgia was considered a medical disease and a psychiatric disorder until the early nineteenth century. Today, researchers describe nostalgia as a frequent, primarily positive, context-specific bittersweet emotion that combines elements of happiness and sadness with a sense of yearning and loss.”
“Garrido presents evidence that nostalgia can be a part of both healthy and unhealthy coping strategies, depending on an individual’s personality and coping style. In her study, she found that for individuals who are prone to depression or rumination, nostalgia tends to be associated with negative emotional outcomes.”
“On December 21, 1988, while coming home for the holidays, our older son Alexander was murdered along with 258 others aboard Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. A total of 270 people lost their lives in that terrorist act, 259 aboard the jumbo jet and 11 on the ground. Alexander was 21 years young.
Dark Elegy is made up of 75 larger than life size pieces, each portraying a mother or wife at that moment when they first heard the awful news of the death of their loved one.
What makes this memorial so unique, even more so than the sheer number of pieces or the personal and individual loss each mother portrays, is the fact that it was created by one of those affected rather than by an outsider portraying someone else’s tragedy. I am one of the depicted figures.
Although the concept of my sculpture, Dark Elegy, was spawned out of this, my personal tragedy, it has always been dedicated to all victims of terrorism.”
“Hartling suggests that humiliation can trigger a series of reactions, including social pain, decreased self-awareness, increased self-defeating behavior, and decreased self-regulation, that ultimately lead to violence. Hartling and colleagues state that “humiliation is not only the most underappreciated force in international relations, it may be the missing link in the search for root causes of political instability and violent conflict — perhaps the most toxic social dynamic of our age.””
“As someone who has to work on calm as a practice rather than a trait, I’ve shortened this to two quick questions I ask myself when I feel fear, panic, or anxiety rising:
Do I have enough information to freak out? The answer is normally no.
Will freaking out help? The answer is always no.”
