Top Quotes: “The Gifts of Imperfection” — Brene Brown
“I can recognize shame when it’s happening. First, I know my physical symptoms of shame — the dry mouth, time slowing down, tunnel vision, hot face, racing heart. I know that playing the painful slow-motion reel over and over in my head is a warning sign.
I also know that the very best thing to do when this is happening feels totally counterintuitive: Practice courage and reach out! We have to own our story and share it with someone who has earned the right to hear it, someone whom we can count on to respond with compassion. We need courage, compassion, and connection. ASAP.”
“I see courage in myself when I’m willing to risk being vulnerable and disappointed. For many years, if I really wanted something to happen — an invite to speak at a special conference, a promotion, a radio interview — I pretended that it didn’t matter that much. If a friend or colleague would ask, ‘Are you excited about the TV interview?’ I’d shrug it off and say, ‘I’m not sure. It’s not that big of a deal.’ Of course, in reality, I was praying that it would happen.
It’s only been in the last few years that I’ve learned that 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 also creates a lot of isolation. Once you’ve diminished the importance of something, your friends aren’t likely to call and say, ‘I’m sorry that didn’t work out. I know you were excited about it.’
Now when someone asks me about a potential opportunity that I’m excited about, I’m more likely to practice courage and say, ‘I’m so excited about the possibility. I’m trying to stay realistic, but I really hope it happens.’ When things haven’t panned out, it’s been comforting to be able to call a supportive friend and say, ‘Remember that event I told you about? It’s not going to happen, and I’m so bummed.’”
“I explained, ‘Mean and nasty is my default setting. It doesn’t take courage for me to be shaming back. I can use my shame superpowers for evil in a split second. Letting myself feel hurt — that’s a totally different stroy. I think your default is my courage.’”
“If you want to kick-start your resilience and story-claiming, start with these questions. Figuring out the answers can change your life:
- Who do you become when you’re backed into that shame corner?
- How do you protect yourself?
- Who do you call to work through the mean-nasties or the cry-n-hides or the people-pleasing?
- What’s the most courageous thing you could do for yourself when you feel small and hurt?”
“There’s a full spectrum of human emotions and when we numb the dark, we numb the light. While I was taking ‘taking the edge off’ of the pain and vulnerability, I was also unintentionally dulling my experiences of good feelings, like joy. Looking back, I can’t imagine any research finding that has changed what my daily life looks like more than this. Now I can lean into joy, even when it makes me feel tender and vulnerable. In fact, I expect tender and vulnerable.
Joy is as thorny and sharp as any of the dark emotions. To love someone fiercely, to believe in something with your whole heart, to celebrate a fleeting moment in time, to fully engage in a life that doesn’t come with guarantees — these are risks that involve vulnerability and often pain. When we lose our tolerance for discomfort, we lose joy. In fact, addition research shows us that an intensely positive experience is as likely to cause relapse as an intensely painful experience.
We can’t make a list of all the ‘bad’ emotions and say, ‘I’m going to numb these’ and then make a list of the positive emotions and say, ‘I’m going to fully engage in these!’ You can imagine the vicious cycle this creates: I don’t experience much joy so I have no reservoir to draw from when hard things happen. They feel even more painful, so I numb. I numb so I don’t experience joy. And so on.”
“Brown argues that play isn’t an option. In fact he writes, ‘The opposite of play isn’t work — the opposite of play is depression.’ He explains, ‘Respecting our biologically programmed need for play can transform work. It can bring back excitement and newness to our job. Play helps us deal with difficulties, provides a sense of expansiveness, promotes mastery of our craft, and is an essential part of the creative process. Most important, true play that comes from our inner needs and desires is the only path to finding lasting joy and satisfaction in our work. In the long run, work doesn’t work without play.’”
“Do we want to infect people with more anxisety, or heal ourselves and the people around us with calm?
If we choose to heal with calm, we have to commit to practicing calm. Small things matter. For example, before we respond we can count to 10 or give ourselves permission to say, ‘I’m not sure. I need to think about this some more.’ It’s also extremely effective to identify the emotions that are the most likely to spark your reactivity and then practice non-reactive responses.”
“For me, breathing is the best place to start. Just taking a breath before I respond slows me down and immediately starts spreading calm. Sometimes I actually think to myself, I’m dying to freak out here! Do I have enough info to freak out? Will freaking out help? The answer is always no.”
“Gremlins are like toddlers. If you ignore them, they get louder. It’s usually best to just acknowledge these messages. Write them down. I know it seems counterintuitive, but writing them down and owning the gremlins’ messages doesn’t give the messages more power; it gives us more power. It gives us the opportunity to say, ‘I get it. I see that I’m afraid of this, but I’m going to do it anyway.”
