I think we lose sight of the beauty the most beautiful things I look back on in my life are coming out from underneath things I didn't know I could get out from underneath you know the moments I look back in my life and thank God those are the moments that made me were moments of struggle in a culture where we like to fix or prevent vulnerability brené Brown is reviving the knowledge that our struggles make us who we are and it's based on data social scientific research she conducted first into shame and then into qualities that distinguish lives with a strong sense of worthiness she's frank about the resistance her own findings awakened in her a classic American perfectionist who wore exhaustion as a status symbol she also discovered a stark gulf between what we want to be true and what is true invulnerability between men and women and she exquisitely uncomfortably describes the difference between making our children happy or raising brave engaged human beings I'm Krista Tippett and this is on being I spoke with Bernie Brown in 2012 she's a research professor at the University of Houston Graduate School of Social Work and she's the author of several books including the gifts of imperfection and daring greatly millions of people have viewed brené Brown stock at a TEDx event in Houston and her later talk on the main stage at Ted with the arguably unappealing title listening to shame so you know I've been steeped in you for the last few days and and I thought I might start by mentioning one of the articles about you in The Telegraph the UK that started out Brene brown is a shame and vulnerability expert I know that was my reaction to I'm really not hardwired for this stuff but bear with me and you often make the point that as a fifth generation Texan you would not have believed that you'd be hardwired for this stuff either no true so so can I just say the word shame is hard for me you know yeah as I as I was reading you and especially in the beginning I was thinking you know I get what you're talking about but I don't identify with the word shame yeah and then I wondered if maybe the fact that I'm so uncomfortable with it it's part of what you're describing I mean I think I think that is I don't know about you know for you personally I don't know but I think that is often very often the case I mean I sometimes say that when I use the word shame people have one of two responses I don't know what you're talking about but I'm pretty sure doesn't have anything to do with me or I know exactly what you're talking about and I don't want to discuss it with you right well to me it has this connotation of shamed of something right but you're talking about something that it's actually at a layer below I mean that can be part of it but that's not doesn't capture it does it no I'm really talking about that kind of warm wash that we experience of not good enough you know I always think you know shame drives two primary tapes not good enough and who do you think you are and so to me it's it's a very formidable emotion it's it's survival is based on us not talking about it so it's done everything it can do to make it unspeakable so so vulnerability is this other word you use a lot that is that our culture is almost allergic to and I think it's really interesting how you your work on vulnerability came out of your attempt to kind of put this shame learning into a positive context right to figure out what were the ingredients of the lives that you saw as wholehearted mm-hmm and you say that you started with an assumption that people who who were able to live in a wholeheartedly were acting out of a place of knowing their worthiness right but then you started to see it differently it kind of shaped shifted and I wonder if you tell the story of this epiphany that you had in and you date it November 2006 you know it's so funny because I still have that painted redwood kitchen table or everything amazing has happened in my life and everything hard have happened in my life too and I actually was running out of the house this morning and looked at it and thought about that that moment this morning you know for me because I had spent that first six years really trying to understand the anatomy of shame and understand scarcity and fear and this struggle with worthiness it wasn't until you know I'd really kind of put a theory together about what shame is and how it worked that I thought oh man I have all this data and I've interviewed so many people who are just you know they're they're like me and they're like a lot of the people I know you know there's you know they struggle they're trying their best but their lives seems so different than mine they they really seem to engage with the world from this place of worthiness you know they say yeah I'm screwing things up and I'm perfect and I'm afraid but I'm still worthy of love and belonging like their love and belonging wasn't on the table it was a negotiable right and so I sent my husband and my kids to they went to my in-laws for the weekend in San Antonio and I stayed and pulled out a bunch of data and kind of spread everything across the house and I started thinking you know what I'm looking for are these kind of very wholehearted people and the word actually came to me because I go to an Episcopal Church and in one of our prayers there's a phrase that you know I have not loved you with my whole heart and I keep thinking these are people who are really loving with her whole heart like even if they're getting hurt they're still loving with their whole heart right so I started coding data and looking for patterns and themes and words and they started emerging very quickly and I just started put together lists like here are the things that wholehearted men and women really consciously choose and hear the things that they push away from and try to move away from you know and so I ended up with two lists and you know I called one kind of the bad list and the this is what would the wholehearted list and and I was so in such a like a little kind of a coding trance that I wasn't paying attention and I think I've only sat down the kitchen table and put these two huge poster size post-it notes up with all these words and I just remember looking up and looking at the kind of do not do list and it just described my entire life like I'm on the wrong list well let me just ask you this for that yeah did you think that you were gonna find that these people hadn't better parented or had less trauma or it had better support systems I mean did what did you think oh I had a lot of self-righteousness about that well I think I thought well these people you know the people who believed in their worthiness their lives probably panned out extremely well better yeah yeah the people whose they were dealt a better hand of course their nail polish doesn't ship no stretch marks no struggles yeah but but there wasn't the case there wasn't you know there weren't fewer divorces or bankruptcies or history of trauma or addiction I mean they were just like the general population and the in terms of those variables they were just like everyone else so what was on the list that described you [Laughter] perfectionism judgment exhaustion as a status symbol productivity is self-worth cool what do people think performing proving quest for certainty such a pretty picture yeah you know on the other side were things that I had really strong emotional reactions to like the one that the first one that I saw that just ah I just was so mad was creativity okay came up creativity was not correlated with perfectionism or activity no yeah creativity was on the other side and you know and I think before this you know I was one of those people who have someone said you know hey do you want to you know take this painting class with me or do you want a scrapbook or do you want to you know I was like oh that's really cute you know you do your a arty I've got a J OB and you know and it's so funny because as a shame researcher my lens on this was very different my lens was not just like okay so we should be more creative and we should incorporate more rest and play into our lives and my question was like okay so I get rest it's important and play and creativity and all these things that make me super uncomfortable but what are the shame triggers that get in the way of us doing these things like I wasn't satisfied with just knowing what we were supposed to do I wanted to know what is it that the wholehearted if they were just like us what did they have to overcome in order to soften into some of these things and so like with creativity the primary shame trigger around that is comparison so that when you get into comparison you're not gonna be able to soften in to create no it just kills creativity mmm-hmm for every one of these choices that leads to wholeheartedness there is real shame work to be done about how we get there well I mean how can we embrace rest and play if we've tied our self-worth to what we produce and was vulnerability the way you used the word now just kind of an underlying quality of these lives yeah of wholeheartedness absolutely activity play rest yeah absolutely because you know these were folks who they show up in their lives without a lot of guarantees I remember sitting at that table a couple days later went kind of making the decision that I was going to put the date away and get a therapist and I did but I remember thinking does this mean that our capacity for wholeheartedness can never be greater than our willingness to be brokenhearted [Music] I'm Krista Tippett and this is on being today I'm with vulnerability researcher brené Brown here's a statement you make vulnerability is the core the heart center of meaningful human experience so explain that sentence to me vulnerability I think you know when I ask people what is vulnerability the answers were things like sitting with my wife who has stage 3 breast cancer and trying to make plans for our children my first date after my divorce saying I love you first asking for a raise yep sending my child to school being enthusiastic and supportive of him and knowing how excited he is about Orchestra tryouts and how much he wants to make first chair and encouraging and supporting him and knowing that's not going to happen yeah to me vulnerability is courage it's about the willingness to show up and be seen in our lives and in those moments when we show up I think those are the most powerful meaning-making moments of our lives even if they don't go well mm-hmm I think they define who we are and it's easy to associate a warlike vulnerability with a word like gullibility mm-hmm or even like as a parent like Dane you know associated with is that dangerous right no for sure so so how do you make that distinction because that's not really what you're talking about well I think it's part of you know I love that you said we're allergic to vulnerability I think it's a part of the allergy uh-huh I think it is part of the vulnerabilities weakness it's gullibility it's being naive getting taken advantage of upsetting Curt right but to separate that from the reality of vulnerability I just always asked a very simple question of people I just say think of the last time you did something that you thought was really brave or the last time you saw someone do something really brave you know I think without question and I can tell you as a researcher 11,000 pieces of data I've never I cannot find a single example of courage moral courage spiritual courage leadership courage relational courage I cannot find a single example of courage in my research that was not born completely a vulnerability and so I think we buy into some mythology about vulnerability being weakness and being gullibility and being frailty because it gives us permission not to do it right and one point you make also is I think it's really important for me to hear these people who live Molnar believe in this healthy way don't find it comfortable right I mean there's some place you say that's part of the way to become this ways to practice being uncomfortable right so there's nothing flowery about this you're not saying oh it's fun you'll get to like it and you're not saying it won't go it will go well all the time no it doesn't I can speak from experience you know one of the things that happened for me you know I did this TEDx Houston talk in June of 2010 and then in December of 2010 the talk was chosen to be on the main Ted website and it went viral very quickly and one of the things that happened during that experience for me it was the most intense vulnerability of ever experienced in my professional life like 6 million views for the TEDx talk now and right in the 1 million for the other and that thing was an experiment uh-huh like I never had if someone would have told me that was gonna happen I would have never said that things I said and my experiment was let me just try being vulnerable while talking about vulnerability let me see what that's like one of the things for me that happened in the midst of that is I realized that I worked very hard to get my work out as widely as I could without getting too big and listening too much criticism I mean I was so afraid of the hard- terrible stuff that happens at our culture today you know the anonymous comments and the just the crappy stuff right and you were taking risks in your profession right I mean you were blazing some new territory was trying right yeah I mean very much like you I think trying to hold space for a new conversation mm-hmm and so it was really painful there were parts of it that were very hard for me and that I felt very unprepared for and somewhere I write something about you know I'm a big Leonard Cohen fan and there's you know the Hallelujah lyric that says love is not a victory March it's a cold and broken hallelujah boner ability is not a victory March either it is but you know the other lesson in that is success is not a victory March yeah because you are talking about what for you may have been the thing that you led in most which was the criticism in the heart side of vulnerability and a lot of people would look at that phenomenon and see the six million views right and only see that as an unqualified success right it's very interesting premise here that you're talking about because a lot of people do define success as a strictly positive experience or they imagined that it would be right we're striving for that moment when it's just positive right yeah and so I think vulnerability has you know gritty and tenacious is kind of in my DNA it's kind of who I am and and I am very hard-headed about some things and I think being vulnerable has made me a lot stronger and a lot tougher hmm because when I reflect back on times where I've shown up and you know one of the reasons that you know I used the Theodore Roosevelt quote for the book titles and I use it as kind of the art to talk about vulnerability this idea of daring greatly yeah is because I think there's something incredibly brave and daring about showing up and putting your idea I don't care if raising your hand a PTO meeting if you're putting your pottery on Etsy I don't you know whatever you're daring is whatever however you're trying to show up in your life I think there's something incredibly contagious and powerful about it I think it makes the people around us a little bit braver and I think it helps us get very clear on the ideals and values that guide our lives and how that's making sense to me as I hear you now is going back to what you described as kind of the default shame place in us which is not good enough why do I forget the other one which is so familiar to me to you what was the other one who do you think you are that one um so if you do something and you think my identity is on the line here right like if it fails I'm mad the difference between that or being vulnerable and and that well the only thing that's at stake is it could fail it could fail but not that you are nothing that's I mean that's the whole heart of it for me mm-hmm and that's very hard and it's really hard and you can't have it both ways right right which I want both ways FYI yeah when it's really great and supported and successful I want it to be about me right when it sucks I want it to be about the work figured that out yet yeah so something that I think is really important also that you've gotten into it's the difference between men and women in this and the way women do shame and perfectionism and vulnerability and the way men do it and I want you to tell the story about the man in the yellow golf jacket okay so when I started researching shame I only studied women and I did that for a couple reasons the first selfish I wanted to know you know that was my interest cuz that was my experience and because there was a lot of argument in the academic literature about men and women are different that we don't experience shame the same way so I thought let me keep it really clean and just teddy women and said it also kind of feels like a word that women would say more like even if I said I didn't like the word feels like a word that it's hard to met and men talking about no it's true but I also came up under a pretty you know pretty rigorous feminist upbringing yeah in my studies and so I was really interested because you know you think about shame and women you think about media body image think about yeah so it made sense to me so I was at a book signing and a couple came up to me and I signed for books for the woman and she grabbed him and she's walked away from the table and her husband who was standing with her stayed and she said come on babe let's go and he said no I want to talk to her for a minute and you meaning me and she said no come on let's go we're here let's go and he said I'm gonna talk to her for a second and it was there was some tension in that conversation I was thinking oh my god you need to go like I don't know why you want to stay whether your wife yeah go because you're hell-bent for leather to talk to me and I'd rather you not he said I really really liked everything you said I really like this idea of you know reaching out and telling our stories and showing up but you didn't mention men and you know my initial thought was oh gosh thank God yeah this is gonna wrap up quick because I don't yeah and so I looked at him and I said I don't study men and he said well that's convenient and my heart just just was like oh God and he said because we have shame we have deep shame but when we reach out and tell our stories we get the emotional beat out of us and he said and before you say anything about those mean fathers and those coaches and those brothers and those bully friends my wife and three daughters the ones who you just signed the books for they had rather see me die on top of my white horse than have to watch me fall off and then he just walked away you know when truth hits you it just hits you and you know you know what it is the second it comes to you I knew that my research was going to be profoundly changed and I knew that it was going to be difficult and painful and that I was going to learn things about myself that I probably didn't want to know and that's exactly what happened I mean I think you learn things also that women growing up now and feminists and post feminist women I mean it's it's like a reckoning it felt like a reckoning and it felt like a reckoning for years doing this Reese talking to men about their experiences I think you know shame is a universal human experience like you say if it washes over me it's gonna be the same as it washes over you know my husband Steve but the messages and expectations that fuel shame the messages and expectations that bring us to our knees are so organized by gender hmm you know for women it's really about do it all do it perfectly and make sure you make it look effortless and it's also about how we look right I mean part of that is and look great while you're doing it so you know no question I mean that's the part that better look effortless yeah appearance and body image is still the number one shame trigger for women for men there's a really kind of singular suffocating expectation and that is do not be perceived as weak and so for men the perception of weakness is often very shaming and that one of the things that's interesting is as I talked to men you know what I heard over and over was some variation of look you know my wife my girlfriend whomever they say be afraid they say tell me you know share your vulnerability with me open up but the truth is they can't stomach it the truth is that when I'm very vulnerable when I'm in fear when I talk about it openly it permanently changes the dynamics in our relationship and when I started sharing this with women or when I started interviewing couples you know women are like oh god it's true yeah I want you to be open and I want them to be intimacy but I don't want you to go there you know and so I've come to this belief that if you show me a woman who can sit with a man and real vulnerability and deep fear and be with him in it I will show you a woman who a has done her work and B does not derive her power from that man mm-hmm if you show me a man who can sit with a woman in deep struggle and vulnerability and not try to fix it but just hear her and be with her and hold space for it I'll show you a guy who's done his work and a man who doesn't derive his power from controlling and fixing everything hmm that's really important really it's jarring right it's like yes we need to just say that a lot and sit with it it's so jarring mm-hmm I remember driving home and having this moment where I was like oh my god I am the patriarchy like hmm I am facilitating this I'm participating in this it's just a conversation that's way overdue I it sure is yeah baby I have been here before I've seen this room and I've walked this floor you know I used to and I've seen your flag on the Marble Arch and love is not a victory March it's a cold and it's a broken [Music] you can listen again or share this conversation with brené Brown at on being gorg there you'll also find her popular talk at TEDx Houston halleluyah halleluyah [Music] coming up if courage is a function of struggle what are we doing to our children when we try to make their lives perfect I'm Krista Tippett on being continues in a moment this episode is brought to you in part by the great courses they offer over 500 engaging lectures taught by top professors and experts in their field such as the great courses lecture series on the meaning of life perspectives from the world's greatest thinkers from Aristotle to Marcus Aurelius from Conte to Tolstoy a great fit for enquiring on being listeners you can watch or listen to the great courses DVDs and CDs or you can use the great courses apps to both stream and download and for a limited time the great courses has a special offer for on being listeners order from eight of their best-selling courses including the meaning of life and you'll get up to 80% off the original price to order today go to the great courses dot-com slash on being that's the great courses comm slash on being [Music] I'm Krista Tippett and this is on being today Brene brown who's taken the world of TED talks healthcare and corporate leadership by storm with her research into vulnerability she says vulnerability and struggle are fundamentals of wholehearted living lives of relationship courage and creativity I want to talk about parenting you know when a joke I've made across the ears about parenting is there's so many joys about it but but it's it's also this unfolding variety of reasons to feel guilty like you know my daughter's in college now I've just found a new one and don't tell me that but you know it's it's funny and but it's I think one of the things I was most aware of when I had my daughter my first child is that it is utter excruciating vulnerability like you have never known before you are not in control you do not know what's gonna happen next yeah it I mean just to hear you say it takes my breath away it is it is the ultimate experience and vulnerability I think and no one prepares you for that no and I think first child first time that voluntary of that vulnerability mm-hmm can be crazy-making like I remember looking at Ellen sitting in her little bucket seat you know and thinking who has left her with me and I just remember you know that that completely Universal car ride home from the hospital yeah well you're like Jesus they're in our lane move over slow down you know and it's just and it never ends yeah it's it is it is where the rubber meets the road but as you write so well about and this gets back to our cultural allergy to vulnerability what we have done with this primal zone vulnerability and I think you know which is not a good in a bad impulse our need to protect it's that we've gone perfectionistic on this we have and that I mean I think we're kind of waking up to that but you really really point out why that is just destructive for us and for our children in a whole new way I think it's so hard because you know one of the things I write about very openly is you know I called the 2007 breakdown slash spiritual awakening you know and at that red kitchen table at that red kitchen table where it all started and then I took my syllabus to my therapist and said you know I need more vulnerability I have six weeks go I think the part that really pushed me kind of to getting help and wanting to live differently was what I was seeing about parenting that this whole idea that who we are and how we engage with the world is such a far more accurate predictor of how our children will do than what we know about parenting right and and I will start by saying I agree with you I think we're we're in a gentle quiet Awakening period right now yeah but I started my research just very coincidentally six months before 9/11 and so over the course of the last 12 years I have seen fear absolutely run roughshod over our families yeah and I have seen us go to these crazy links to protect ourselves and our children from the uncertainty that had that the world has become and I've not only seen that through my lens as a researcher but certainly experienced it as a parent but as a college professor you know this is my 15th year teaching and I only teach masters and doctoral level students but I see students come to us who have never had experiences real experiences with adversity yeah and how that shows up is hopelessness you know one of the most interesting things I've found and doing this work is you know something the wholehearted share in common is this use real profound sense of hopefulness and as I got into the literature on hope it's very specifically see our Schneider's work from the University of Kansas at Lawrence that hope is a function of struggle right I think that's one of the most stunning sentences that I saw in your writing yeah and that that hope is not an emotion but hope is a cognitive behavioral process that we learn when we experience adversity when we have relationships that are trustworthy when people have faith in our ability to get out of a jam right which is different from this pattern of having faith in us which means telling us everything we do is wonderful and shielding us from pain right long as they can right and you know I am literally speak I don't even know how to talk about it it takes it really just it floors me that when I go out and I do a lot of talks for big corporations you know fortune 100 companies just and how many people tell me like the HR folks so I end up luckily I love them and I get to talk to them a lot who will tell me how often parents call to go over the performance evaluation of their children or to find out why they didn't get a raise or a promotion really yeah oh yeah I mean I just took my daughter to college and we got this lecture that the parents and the families who were there from like the Dean of Students and it was so clear that they were dealing with that same thing right I mean they he basically said I I need you to understand that we're going to take great care of your gem and also that my relationship is to them and not to you and you know we got this lecture which was clearly based on parents still trying to control and you know again it's like boy we know this don't we this desire that you have to create a beautiful world and life and experience for these people you love but you know what I think we lose sight of the beauty the most beautiful things I look back on in my life are coming out from underneath things I didn't know I could get out from underneath you know the moments I look back in my life and thank God those are the moments that made me were moments of struggle yeah or I look back at things I did where if my parents or I had understood how crazy it was yeah like if it had been me I would have tried to intervene and rescue oh for sure and you're right those are the moments you become who you are you know and I've seen how this research has really changed you know like I'll give you just a very specific example my my daughter decides you know that she wants to try out for something that she's really new at you know she's a sport or something that she's just taking up and I think before maybe even three years ago before this research not only before I wrote it up before I started trying to practice it and live it I think I would have been the parent who said you know either let's get you in 34 camps before you try out so you've mastered it or I don't think you should try out for that because there you know there are girls who've been playing this board as long as you've been playing soccer do you want to shield their home disappointment right and I want to take away that moment that I had and you know it wasn't the moment when I think back and I talked to parents a lot about this it wasn't the hard moments that we don't want to expose them to it was the isolation and shame we felt around those moments because a lot of us didn't have people to process them with like I think when I went out for something and didn't make it I don't think my parents were ashamed of me but I think they were ashamed for me I don't think they knew how to talk about that I don't think we had a conversation I know we didn't have a conversation that I can have with my daughter today where I say you know what I'm so proud of you not only for but for letting the people around you who you care about let you let us know how much you wanted it and it doesn't get braver than that right well I mean here's this other sentence that's a corollary to the sentence the hope is a function of struggle when you say you look at a baby your newborn baby is hardwired for struggle it's built in us that that's what we're gonna encounter that's how we're gonna shape ourselves that's actually a really hard thing to take in you know it's a parent especially thinking about those moments early on when you first meet this being that is gonna have dominance over your life yeah because I think we look and think I can make this right yeah I can do for her or him what wasn't done for me I can protect them for the things that hurt me yeah I think we are so much more hardwired for who we are than what people especially parents want to believe yeah and I don't think our job as parents is to make everything right and perfect and beautiful and true I think our job is during struggle to look at our kids and say yeah this is hard and this is tough and you're hurt and you're not alone you're not alone but you're not alone to fix it but you're not right you're not alone and I want to make sure you understand that this doesn't change the fact that you're worthy of love and belonging [Music] I'm Krista Tippett and this is on being today I'm with vulnerability researcher brené Brown it's interesting to me that you are I've taken up this subject and maybe this is partly why it's gone so viral at precisely at a moment in which Americans I think after a few generations of pretending like collectively we weren't that vulnerable at least have rediscovered right geopolitical vulnerability economic vulnerability so I've been thinking about this a lot in terms of how that manifests itself in our civic life I mean you have this really great sentence feeling vulnerable imperfect and afraid is human it's when we lose our capacity to hold space for these struggles that we become dangerous and it seems to me you know that's one way to describe what is happening in our culture in our political life we have no space to be honest about that to be vulnerable to be imperfect and afraid together and it's become dangerous no we don't you know on a micro level as individuals we're not our best selves in fear and collectively we're certainly not our best selves and we're in fear and the national conversation and I think this is true politically I think it's true socially economically I think in the sector where we talk about religion and spirituality the conversation has really centered on what are we supposed to be afraid of and who's to blame for it right right and I'm hoping it's not wishful thinking but I'm thinking we've grown weary of that I think we're sick of being afraid and I think there's a silent a growing silent majority of people who are really kind of thinking at a very basic human level I don't want to spend my days like this I don't want to spend every ounce of energy I have ducking and weaving mm-hmm I don't know where we'll go next but I really believe with every fiber of my professional and personal self that we won't move forward without some honest conversations about who we are when we're in fear and what we're capable of doing to each other when we're afraid right I do like again that idea of hope as a function of struggle it's still it's like you know it would be counter intuitive counter culturally to say we need to struggle with this honestly vulnerably to cultivate the hope that we need to figure out what's next and I see happening I mean I mean I see some movement and I think I'm you know I do too I feel hopeful for it about it I feel like I always think about things in terms of family you know I think about systems and organizations and it's probably this is probably a function of my Social Work training to always think about systems but I you know I think about families I think about schools I think about organizations I think about community I think we're awakening maybe from a period of deep disengagement mmm-hmm that no one else is sick of being disengaged and we're citizens engaged yeah we are I think it's hey not caring and choosing to live disappointed because that's easier than feeling disappointment yeah has not paid off you know something else that runs through your work that I have to say it just so matches up in such a beautiful way with a question that I've asked myself over time about you know what are what the way I've asked the question which is a very kindred question to yours is what are the qualities of you know the genius and the art of living it's kind of a phrase of Einstein's spiritual genius the wholehearted lives would be another way to say it it's not just that the things that go wrong for us are part of our wholeness right as you described the the vulnerability is what makes us keeps us in but also that what goes and wrong for us is part of our gift to the world it's what enables us to connect and be compassionate and I mean that's a lovely way to think about you know the hard possibly excruciatingly upside of the fact that so many of us are struggling and suffering right now agree hundred percent I think it points to maybe one the the deepest paradox is about vulnerability which is when I meet you vulnerability is the very first thing I try to find in you and it's the very last thing I want to show you and me hmm because it's the glue that holds connection together it's it's all about our common humanity and when we own our stories and we share our stories with one another and we see ourselves reflected back in the stories of people in our lives we know we're not alone and to me that's the heart of wholeheartedness it's the it's the center of spirituality to me that's the nature of connection to be able to see myself and hear myself and learn more about myself in the stories you tell about your experiences I also see an upside of aging is that when I see people aging badly in a sad way it seems to me that the common denominator is they have not faced their demons and they just get smaller it's like they just get eaten alive from the inside and that's about being vulnerable and you know claiming what's gone wrong and what the imperfection but there's a way in which getting older I'm especially kind of getting into your 40s you know kind of it kind of pushes you to finally do this if you haven't done it right and that's you know that's in your story not now I just wonder if you think that this is something we can lean into almost as a gift no I think what you're describing is what I have found is a very critical developmental milestone for us you know some people call it the midlife crisis you know I called the midlife unraveling yeah I think there is a place and time in our lives where we realize that growing up when we felt pain when we felt small when we felt unseen we constructed walls and moats and we protected ourselves and we shut parts of ourselves and then I think this happens in midlife where we realize Oh God to be the person we want to be to be the partner to be the parent we have to take down everything we put up that was supposed to be keeping us safe and that has not served us and it has not served us right what do you say you say if you shut down vulnerability you shut down all these other qualities that you longed to have right right because you know vulnerability is the center of things like shutdown joy yeah nice joy and when you describe to us people who you know don't seem to be aging well I think knowingly or unknowingly and probably more so unknowingly they get to that place where they say I have to make a choice whether to pull all this stuff down and be seen mm-hmm or keep going with all this up and I think they keep going carrying all this and I think it is just so heavy yeah and do you think that we have an intuition for this I mean is there any advice you can give it let me say this when I look at your story okay from the outside mm-hmm it seems to me that you were completely shocked that day at the red kitchen table when you discovered vulnerability right but on the other hand if I look at it from this removed privileged removed perspective it seems to me almost like you were heading towards it like a heat-seeking missile no like you didn't want to go there but you found exactly the way in in your research which was a departure from the other research that took you there right and you got there at a moment in your life when you realized you had you know it was a stark choice and do you think that we is your experience that that maybe we all are kind of on that trajectory or whether we want to be or not and you know how can we listen to that impulse or how can we follow it what can we cultivate to get there gracefully as possible I don't think I think grace will have a lot to do it with it I don't think gracefully will be a part of it okay absolutely at least I don't see many people do it some people do it gracefully not any I know but um I think it's the long walk from what will people think to I am enough I think it is recognizing that if courage is a value that we hold as important that vulnerability is the only way in and through it starts by an openness to seeing ourselves and seeing kind of how we're protecting ourselves from vulnerability mm-hmm I think that's where it started I think for me at that red kitchen table even for me today I am the most successful doing you know this work and trying to be real and transparent and me and feel good in my own skin when I stay very aware of what kind of armor I'm throwing up or when I feel afraid I think maybe the definitive piece of knowing that has helped me with this is that I was raised in a very kind of binary culture things were good or bad you know you were brave or you were afraid you were courageous or you were fearful and I think for me one of the definitive moments in my life was realizing that most of us are brave and afraid in the exact same moment all day long [Music] Brene brown is a research professor at the University of Houston Graduate School of Social Work her books include the gifts of imperfection and daring greatly how the courage to be vulnerable transforms the way we live love parent and lead you can listen again or share this episode on our website on being org you can also access everything we do through our iPhone and Android apps and the new on being tablet up [Music] on being is Trent Gilles Chris Eagle Lily Percy Mariah Helgeson David shim key and Selena Carlson and is supported by the Ford Foundation working with visionaries on the front lines of social change worldwide at Ford Foundation org by the Fetzer Institute fostering awareness of the power of love and forgiveness to transform our world find them at Fetzer org and by Kalia pea foundation contributing to organizations that we've reverence reciprocity and resilience into the fabric of modern life on being is distributed by American public media and is a Krista Tippett public production there are always lovely things that don't make it into our final produced radio hour there were more than a few of these moments in my conversation with brené Brown like when she and I discovered a favorite line of wisdom in common I love there's a line that I think it's disputed who said this but Sherwin Nuland the physician quoted it to me and supposedly it came from Philo be kind for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle I love that quote and you know I think about that irregular intervals and it you know I think about it in terms of myself and like kind of forgiving myself and I think of it and I mean it's so true and it's a way to describe what you're talking about I have goosebumps right now no no because I mean really the hairs on my arm or standing up yeah it's a quote that we use a lot in our house oh is it and if you think about what the cultural message is it's you can do anything right right achieve your potential all right yeah I use it even like when I have a 13 year old daughter who's kind of navigating some of the Mean Girls stuff right now yeah and I even used that quote you know sometimes as a parent I know more about what's going on in the households of some of the kids who are struggling than my daughter does but you know we talk a lot about you know be kind yeah you don't know what kind of battle people are engaged in in their lives find more to hear and share both edited and unedited at on being org [Music] you