Close: Listening to Shame

On change and the third thing:

Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change. To create is to make something that has never existed before. There’s nothing more vulnerable than that. Adaptability to change is all about vulnerability.

On where we have to go:

I want to walk you in to shame. Jungian analysts call shame the swampland of the soul. And we’re going to walk in. And the purpose is not to walk in and construct a home and live there. It is to put on some galoshes and walk through and find our way around.

On finding our way back to each other:

We have to understand and know empathy, because empathy is the antidote to shame. If you put shame in a Petri Dish, it needs three things to grow exponentially: secrecy, silence and judgment. If you put the same amount of shame in a Petri dish and douse it with empathy, it can’t survive. The two most powerful words when we’re in struggle: me too.

And so I’ll leave you with this thought. If we’re going to find our way back to each other, vulnerability is going to be that path. And I know it’s seductive to stand outside the arena (because I think I did it my whole life), and think to myself, I’m going to go in there and kick some ass when I’m bulletproof and when I’m perfect… But the truth is that never happens. And even if you got as perfect as you could and as bulletproof as you could possible muster when you got in there, that’s not what we want to see. We want you to go in. We want to be with you and across from you. And we just want, for ourselves and the people we care about and the people we work with, to dare greatly.

Brené Brown, TED2012 March 2012

Open: The Power of Vulnerability

On the “whole-hearted”:

The original definition of courage, when it first came into the the English language, is from the Latin word cor, meaning “heart” - and the original definition was to tell the story of who you are with your whole heart. And so these folks had, very simply, the courage to be imperfect. They had the compassion to be kind to themselves first and then to others, because, as it turns out, we can’t practice compassion with other people if we can’t treat ourselves kindly. And the last was they had connection, and - this was the hard part - as a result of authenticity, they were willing to let go of who they thought they should be in order to be who they were, which you have to absolutely do for that connection.

The other thing they had in common was this: they fully embraced vulnerability. They believed that what made them vulnerable made them beautiful. They didn’t talk about vulnerability being comfortable, nor did they really talk about it being excruciating… They just talked about it being necessary. They talked about the willingness to say, “I love you” first, the willingness to do something where there are no guarantees, the willingness to breathe through waiting for the doctor to call after your mammogram. They’re willing to invest in a relationship that may or may not work out. They thought this was fundamental.

Brené Brown, TEDXHouston June 2010