Vulnerability is not weakness, it is courageously embracing uncertainty and emotion. True weakness comes from pretending to be invincible and shutting down feelings. Vulnerability requires mutual trust and healthy boundaries, it is not oversharing but appropriately opening up with those who've earned it.

Leaders should accept discomfort as normal. Look at strengths and weaknesses together to understand yourself. Have courage to improve.

Minding the gap is a strategy focusing on the gap between practiced values (what we’re actually doing, thinking, and feeling) and aspirational values (what we want to do, think, and feel), involving cultural values, vulnerability, and shame resilience.It's where we lose employees, clients, students, teachers, congregations, and even our own children.Minding the gap is a daring strategy to reconnect and re-engage with children.

Daring greatly is not about winning or losing. It’s about courage.

“When you shut down vulnerability, you shut down opportunity.”

Blame and shame stick together. Blaming happens when we're upset, letting out bad feelings on others. Fixing shame is important in places where blame happens a lot.

THE BLAME GAME

Engagement means investing time and energy. It means sitting down with our children and understanding their worlds, their interests, and their stories.

1) Joy comes in ordinary moments - don't miss them. 2) Be grateful - don't take life for granted. 3) Don't waste chances for joy - it builds resilience.

3 lessons on joy: 

We build shields like foreboding joy, perfectionism, and numbing to avoid vulnerability. But they prevent true connection. Embracing "enough" and self-compassion helps remove armor so we can live wholeheartedly and build trust through appropriate sharing.

Hope isn’t an emotion; it’s a way of thinking or a cognitive process.Hope happens when:- We have the ability to set realistic goals- We are able to figure out how to achieve those goals- We believe in ourselves.

1) Feel your feelings. 2) Stay mindful of numbing habits. 3) Lean into discomfort. Also, set boundaries.

To avoid numbing, live wholeheartedly: 

There’s nothing more important than having the courage to say, ‘I don’t know,’ and ‘I messed up’—being honest and open is key to success in every part of our lives.”

The opposite of scarcity is wholeheartedness - accepting ourselves despite uncertainty, which requires vulnerability.

Compassion and connection—the very things that give purpose and meaning to our lives—can only be learned if they are experienced.And our families are our first opportunities to experience these things.

In terms of teaching our children to dare greatly in the “never enough” culture, the question isn’t so much “Are you parenting the right way?” as it is: “Are you the adult that you want your child to grow up to be?”

<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">supporting leaders, </li><li class="ql-align-justify">identifying shame-functioning areas, </li><li class="ql-align-justify">normalizing and </li><li class="ql-align-justify">training employees.</li></ul>

To build shame-resilient organizations, four strategies are recommended: 

Who we are and how we engage with the world are much stronger predictors of how our children will do than what we know about parenting.

Raising children who are hopeful and who have the courage to be vulnerable means stepping back and letting them experience disappointment, deal with conflict, learn how to assert themselves, and have the opportunity to fail. If we’re always following our children into the arena, hushing the critics, and assuring their victory, they’ll never learn that they have the ability to dare greatly on their own.

Fitting in and Belonging are not the same thing. In fact, fitting in is one of the greatest barriers to belonging. Fitting in is about assessing a situation and becoming who you need to be to be accepted. Belonging, on the other hand, doesn’t require us to change who we are; it requires us to be who we are.

Women and men both feel shame. But what makes them feel ashamed is different. For women, the biggest shame is about looks - not being pretty, thin, or young enough. For men, shame is failure, being wrong, defective, soft, or weak in any way. Men feel shame if they show fear, get ridiculed, or get pushed around. The main message for men is "Don't be weak."Deviating from gender norms triggers shame. Women get shame for acting too strongly. Men get shame for showing emotion.

Narcissism is linked to behaviors like feeling very important, needing constant praise, and lacking empathy. But what few realize is that shame causes these behaviors, not pride. Shaming narcissists more won't help them - it will likely make things worse.Looking closely at certain behaviors is useful. But zooming out gives the full picture.This shows the biggest influence is not narcissism, but a wider culture of scarcity. This scarcity mindset shapes how we think, act, and connect across all areas of life.

Shame makes us feel flawed and unworthy, but we can overcome it by understanding shame, questioning expectations, connecting with others, and speaking openly. Shame drives unhealthy behaviors, but vulnerability and self-compassion heal shame.

Perfectionism is not healthy striving. It is a defense against shame and judgment. The belief is: If I'm perfect, I'll avoid pain and earn approval. But perfection doesn't exist, so it prevents growth.

**Now on Netflix as The Call to Courage** 'She's so good, Brené Brown, at finding the language to articulate collective feeling' Dolly Alderton Every time we are faced with change, no matter how great or small, we also face risk. We feel uncertain and exposed. We feel vulnerable. Most of us try to fight those feelings - or feel guilt for feeling them in the first place. In a powerful new vision Dr Brené Brown challenges everything we think we know about vulnerability, and dispels the widely accepted myth that it's a weakness. She argues that, in truth, vulnerability is strength and when we shut ourselves off from vulnerability - from revealing our true selves - we distance ourselves from the experiences that bring purpose and meaning to our lives. Daring Greatly is the culmination of 12 years of groundbreaking social research, across every area of our lives including home, relationships, work, and parenting. It is an invitation to be courageous; to show up and let ourselves be seen, even when there are no guarantees. This is vulnerability. This is daring greatly.

Understand yourself and those around you.

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Personal Development

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Mindfulness

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Motivation & Inspiration

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Love & Relationships

Dr. Brené Brown is a research professor at the University of Houston where she holds the Huffington Foundation – Brené Brown Endowed Chair at The Graduate College of Social Work. Brené is also a visiting professor in management at The University of Texas at Austin McCombs School of Business. She has spent the past two decades studying courage, vulnerability, shame, and empathy and is the author of five #1 New York Times bestsellers: The Gifts of Imperfection, Daring Greatly, Rising Strong, Braving the Wilderness, and her latest book, Dare to Lead.Brené hosts the Unlocking Us Podcast and the Dare to Lead Podcast. Her TED talk – The Power of Vulnerability – is one of the top five most viewed TED talks in the world with over 50 million views.

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