brene brown have the courage to stand alone

The first two strategies of numbing or repressing do not tend to work out well long term. Remember the First Noble Truth, that being alive means you will experience suffering and unsatisfactoriness. In a lot of ways, it’s a fairly Buddhist worldview. We find the courage to own the pain and develop a level of empathy and compassion for ourselves and others….We deny our pain, and our denial ensures that we pass it on to those around us….We live in constant pain and seek relief by numbing it and/or inflicting it on others.Specifically, Brown’s research has found that when we feel like we don’t belong in enough aspects of our lives, we tend to respond in one of three ways: After all, it’s important to be honest that, for many of us, what finally gives us the courage to brave the wilderness is that our current situation has gotten bad enough that we are ready to risk trying something different. Don’t get me wrong: self-compassion is much easier to talk about than to practice, but I appreciate the encouragement to start there.īut before I go too quickly into the details of true belonging and the courage to stand alone, allow me to spend a little time on some counter-examples. Those words are challenging, but what I appreciate most about this perspective is that it turns the focus away from what we have little control over (what other people say and do) and turns the focus toward what we have at least somewhat more control over: our own self-acceptance. But there’s an important additional insight that Brown’s work highlights: “Because true belonging only happens when we present out authentic, imperfect selves to the world, our sense of belonging can never be greater than our level of self-acceptance” (32). Brown’s work around courage, vulnerability, shame, and empathy is one of many related potential paths toward a better, healthier, and more equitable future.īrown writes that for many of us, we only take the risk of leaving home to find out if we fit in someplace new because we have a “desire to be part of something larger than ourselves” (31). The updated blurb for that book reads, “Twenty-six years before the #MeToo movement, Anita Hill sparked a national conversation about sexual harassment in the workplace.” Regardless of what happens in the case of Judge Kavanaugh, this story is yet one more reminder of the culture of toxic masculinity that we are all called to be a part of dismantling. This moment is also an auspicious time to revisit Anita Hill’s 1998 book, Speaking Truth to Power.

Brene brown have the courage to stand alone