Brené Brown, Quotes

Shame cannot survive being spoken. It cannot tolerate having words wrapped around it. What it craves is secrecy, silence, and judgment. If you stay quiet, you stay in a lot of self-judgment.

Empathy is the antidote to shame.

We need to change what we say and what we allow to be said in front of us.

Men walk this tightrope where any sign of weakness illicits shame, and so they're afraid to make themselves vulnerable for fear of looking weak.

There is no joy without gratitude.

If we can’t stand up to the never good enough and who do you think you are? we can’t move forward.

When they teach [doctors] how to suture, they also teach them how to stitch their self-worth to being all-powerful.

Knowledge is important, but only if we're being kind and gentle with ourselves as we work to discover who we are.

Vulnerability is the core, the heart, the center, of meaningful human experience.

Courage originally meant "To speak one's mind by telling all one's heart

Vulnerability is the core of shame and fear and our struggle for worthiness, but it appears that it's also the birthplace of joy, of creativity, of belonging, of love.

I now see how gifts like courage, compassion, and connection only work when they are exercised. Every day.

Think about what’s pleasurable, not just what’s possible.

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.

One of the reasons we judge each other so harshly in this world of parenting is because... we perceive anyone else who's doing anything differently than what we're doing as criticizing our choices.

Courage - To tell the story of who you are with your whole heart.

We cannot ignore our pain and feel compassion for it at the same time.

You cannot talk about race without talking about privilege. And when people start talking about privilege, they get paralyzed by shame.

We cannot give our children what we don’t have.

The two most powerful words when we're in struggle: me too.

When you ask people about love, they tell you about heartbreak.

When we fail to set boundaries and hold people accountable, we feel used and mistreated.

What makes something better is connection.

Connection, the ability to feel connected, is neurobiologically wired, that’s why we’re here!

I don't just want someone who says they love me; I want someone who practices that love for me every day.

To live with courage, purpose, and connection - to be the person whom we long to be - we must again be vulnerable. We must ... show up, and let ourselves be seen.

But I don't think it's as dangerous, scary, or terrifying as getting to the end of our lives and wondering, what if I would have shown up?

When failure is not an option, we can forget about creativity, learning, and innovation.

How can we embrace rest and play if we've tied our self-worth to what we produce?

Shame works like the zoom lens on a camera. When we are feeling shame, the camera is zoomed in tight and all we see is our flawed selves, alone and struggling.(page 68)

Let go of who you think you should be in order to be who you are. Be imperfect and have compassion for yourself. Connection is the result of authenticity.

In order for connection to happen, we have to allow ourselves to be seen, really seen.

There really is "no effort without error and shortcoming" and there really is no triumph without vulnerability.

The one thing that keeps us out of connection is our fear that we're not worthy of connection.

Tell your story with your whole heart.

All the stuff that keeps you safe from feeling scary emotions? They also keep you from feeling the good emotions. You have to shake those off. You have to become vulnerable.

I think that shame is a universal, paralyzing, painful emotion.

There's no evidence that vulnerabilty is weakness.

Courage is a value. My faith is the organizing principle in my life and what underpins my faith is courage and love, and so I have to be in the arena if I'm going to live in alignment with my values.

That's what life is about: about daring greatly, about being in the arena.

Don't do anything that you're already not great at doing.

Share with people who have earned the right to hear your story.

Lean into the discomfort of the work.

It's hard to practice compassion when we're struggling with our authenticity or when our own worthiness is off-balance.

Vulnerability is not about fear and grief and disappointment; it is the birthplace of everything we're hungry for.

There are infinite numbers of do overs for your teen girls.

Unused creativity is not benign.

What's worth doing even if you fail?

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

Shame cannot survive being spoken. It cannot survive empathy.