Casandra Brené Brown
Brené Brown is an American research professor, lecturer, author, and podcast host. (Brené Brown Quotes)
“A wild heart is not something you can always see and yet it is our greatest spiritual possession.”
Brené Brown
Braving the Wilderness
“Ads sell a great deal more than products. They sell values, images, and concepts of success and worth.”
Brené Brown
The Gifts of Imperfection
“Again, the difference between empathy and sympathy: feeling with and feeling for. The empathic response: I get it, I feel with you, and I’ve been there. The sympathetic response: I feel sorry for you.”
Brené Brown
Dare to Lead
“Again, there’s no question that feedback may be one of the most difficult arenas to negotiate in our lives. We should remember, though, that victory is not getting good feedback, avoiding giving difficult feedback, or avoiding the need for feedback. Instead it’s taking off the armor, showing up, and engaging.”
Brené Brown
Daring Greatly
“And often the result of daring greatly isn’t a victory march as much as it is a quiet sense of freedom mixed with a little battle fatigue.”
Brené Brown
Daring Greatly
“Anger is a powerful catalyst but a life-sucking companion.”
Brené Brown
Braving the Wilderness
“Are you the adult that you want your child to grow up to be?”
Brené Brown
Daring Greatly
“Art has the power to render sorrow beautiful, make loneliness a shared experience, and transform despair into hope. Only art can take the holler of a returning soldier and turn it into a shared expression and a deep, collective experience.”
Brené Brown
Braving the Wilderness
“As I dug deeper into true belonging, it became clear that it’s not something we achieve or accomplish with others; it’s something we carry in our heart. Once we belong thoroughly to ourselves and believe thoroughly in ourselves, true belonging is ours.”
Brené Brown
Braving the Wilderness
“At the end of the day, at the end of the week, at the end of my life, I want to say I contributed more than I criticized. It’s that simple.”
Brené Brown
Dare to Lead
“Authenticity is a collection of choices that we have to make every day. It’s about the choice to show up and be real. The choice to be honest. The choice to let our true selves be seen.”
Brené Brown
The Gifts of Imperfection
“Authenticity is the daily practice of letting go of who we think we’re supposed to be and embracing who we are.”
Brené Brown
The Gifts of Imperfection
“Because true belonging only happens when we present our authentic, imperfect selves to the world, our sense of belonging can never be greater than our level of self-acceptance.”
Brené Brown
Daring Greatly
“Being alone in the midst of a widely reported trauma, watching endless hours of twenty-four-hour news or reading countless articles on the Internet, is the quickest way for anxiety and fear to tiptoe into your heart and plant their roots of secondary trauma.”
Brené Brown
Braving the Wilderness
“Being ourselves means sometimes having to find the courage to stand alone, totally alone.”
Brené Brown
“Belonging so fully to yourself that you’re willing to stand alone is a wilderness – an untamed, unpredictable place of solitude and searching. It is a place as dangerous as it is breathtaking, a place as sought after as it is feared.”
Brené Brown
Braving the Wilderness
“Children experience shame as the threat of being unlovable.”
Brené Brown
The Gifts of Imperfection
“Choosing to be curious is choosing to be vulnerable because it requires us to surrender to uncertainty. It wasn’t always a choice; we were born curious. But over time, we learn that curiosity, like vulnerability, can lead to hurt. As a result, we turn to self-protecting—choosing certainty over curiosity, armor over vulnerability, and knowing over learning.”
Brené Brown
Rising Strong
“Clear is kind. Unclear is unkind.”
Brené Brown
Dare to Lead
“Compassion is knowing our darkness enough so we can sit in the dark with others.”
Brené Brown
The Gifts of Imperfection
“Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It’s a relationship between equals. Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others. Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.”
Brené Brown
I Thought It Was Just Me
“Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It’s a relationship between equals. Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others. Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.”
Brené Brown
The Gifts of Imperfection
“Compassion is not a virtue it is a commitment. It’s not something we have or don’t have it’s something we choose to practice.”
Brené Brown
I Thought It Was Just Me
“Compassionate people ask for what they need. They say no when they need to, and when they say yes, they mean it. They’re compassionate because their boundaries keep them out of resentment.”
Brené Brown
Rising Strong
“Connection is why we’re here. We are hardwired to connect with others, it’s what gives purpose and meaning to our lives, and without it there is suffering.”
Brené Brown
Daring Greatly
“Courage gives us a voice and compassion gives us an ear. Without both, there is no opportunity for empathy and connection.”
Brené Brown
I Thought It Was Just Me
“Courage is a heart word. The root of the word courage is cor – the Latin word for heart. In one of its earliest forms, the word courage meant “To speak one’s mind by telling all one’s heart.” Over time, this definition has changed, and today, we typically associate courage with heroic and brave deeds. But in my opinion, this definition fails to recognize the inner strength and level of commitment required for us to actually speak honestly and openly about who we are and about our experiences — good and bad. Speaking from our hearts is what I think of as “ordinary courage.”
Brené Brown
I Thought It Was Just Me
“Courage is contagious. My friend Katherine Center says, “You have to be brave with your life so that others can be brave with theirs.”
Brené Brown
The Gifts of Imperfection
“Courage originally meant “To speak one’s mind by telling all one’s heart.”
Brené Brown
The Gifts of Imperfection
“Courage starts with showing up and letting ourselves be seen.”
Brené Brown
Daring Greatly
“Daring leaders work to make sure people can be themselves and feel a sense of belonging.”
Brené Brown
Dare to Lead
“Diminishing trust caused by a lack of connection and empathy.”
Brené Brown
Dare to Lead
“Empathy heals shame; sympathy exacerbates shame. We don’t want people to feel sorry for us; we want people to be with us.”
Brené Brown
Men, Women, and Worthiness
“Empathy is connecting to the feeling under the experience, not the experience itself.”
Brené Brown
Dare to Lead
“Empathy is connecting with the emotion that someone is experiencing, not the event or the circumstance.”
Brené Brown
Daring Greatly
“Everyone seems to know too little and say too much.”
Brené Brown
I Thought It Was Just Me
“Everyone wants to know why customer service has gone to hell in a handbasket. I want to know why customer behavior has gone to hell in a handbasket.” (Brené Brown Quotes)
Brené Brown
Daring Greatly
“Faith is a place of mystery, where we find the courage to believe in what we cannot see and the strength to let go of our fear of uncertainty.”
Brené Brown
The Gifts of Imperfection
“Feeding people half-truths or bullshit to make them feel better (which is almost always about making ourselves feel more comfortable) is unkind”
Brené Brown
Dare to Lead
“Grace will take you places hustling can’t.”
Brené Brown
Rising Strong
“Have we created a space in our families where our kids know that they belong. Where there are no prerequisites for worthiness, you don’t have to hustle here for me to believe you’re worthy of loving. You don’t have to perform here for me to think that you belong here. You don’t have to be perfect. You don’t have to get a certain grade on your test. You don’t have to hit so many home-runs. You belong here.”
Brené Brown
The Gifts of Imperfection
“He gave her his heart. She took it and placed it quietly in the pocket of her gown. No one observed what she did.”
Brené Brown
Daring Greatly
“Hope is not an emotion; it’s a way of thinking or a cognitive process.”
Brené Brown
The Gifts of Imperfection
“How can we apologize for something we are, rather than something we did?”
Brené Brown
I Thought It Was Just Me
“How can we expect people to put value on our work when we don’t value ourselves enough to set and hold uncomfortable boundaries?”
Brené Brown
Rising Strong
“How do I know if I can trust someone enough to be vulnerable? Can I build trust without ever risking vulnerability?”
Brené Brown
Dare to Lead
“How much we know ourselves is extremely important but how we treat ourselves is the most important.”
Brené Brown
The Power of Vulnerability
“I always bring my core values to feedback conversations. I specifically bring courage, which means that I don’t choose comfort over being respectful and honest—choosing politeness over respect is not respectful.”
Brené Brown
Dare to Lead
“I believe Black Lives Matter is a movement to rehumanize black citizens. All lives matter, but not all lives need to be pulled back into moral inclusion. Not all people were subjected to the psychological process of demonizing and being made less than human so we could justify the inhumane practice of slavery.”
Brené Brown
Braving the Wilderness
“I believe that owning our worthiness is the act of acknowledging that we are sacred. Perhaps embracing vulnerability and overcoming numbing is ultimately about the care and feeding of our spirits.”
Brené Brown
Daring Greatly
“I can always tell about the health of a culture of an organization by how much gossiping is happening”
Brené Brown
The Power of Vulnerability
“I can confidently say that stories of pain and courage almost always include two things: praying and cussing. Sometimes at the exact same time.”
Brené Brown
Braving the Wilderness
“I define a leader as anyone who takes responsibility for finding the potential in people and processes, and who has the courage to develop that potential.”
Brené Brown
Dare to Lead
“I only share when I have no unmet needs that I’m trying to fill. I firmly believe that being vulnerable with a larger audience is only a good idea if the healing is tied to the sharing, not to the expectations I might have for the response I get.”
Brené Brown
Daring Greatly
“I want to be in the arena. I want to be brave with my life. And when we make the choice to dare greatly, we sign up to get our asses kicked. We can choose courage or we can choose comfort, but we can’t have both. Not at the same time. Vulnerability is not winning or losing; it’s having the courage to show up and be seen when we have no control over the outcome. Vulnerability is not weakness; it’s our greatest measure of courage.”
Brené Brown
Rising Strong
“I’m brave enough to listen. I don’t have to take it all in or add it to my load, but I’m brave enough to listen.”
Brené Brown
Dare to Lead
“I’ve come to the conclusion that the way we engage with social media is like fire—you can use them to keep yourself warm and nourished, or you can burn down the barn. It all depends on your intentions, expectations, and reality-checking skills.”
Brené Brown
Braving the Wilderness
“If connection is the energy that surges between people, we have to remember that those surges must travel in both directions.”
Brené Brown
The Gifts of Imperfection
“If empathy is the skill or ability to tap into our own experiences in order to connect with an experience someone is relating to us, compassion is the willingness to be open to this process.”
Brené Brown
I Thought It Was Just Me
“If I get to be me, I belong. If I have to be like you, I fit in.”
Brené Brown
Braving the Wilderness
“If men and women are going to find their ways back to each other, and back to a relationship where we’re allowed to be less than perfect and allowed to be vulnerable and afraid, we have to understand shame.”
Brené Brown
Men, Women, and Worthiness
“If our goal is perfection rather than growth, it is unlikely that we are willing to go back, because it requires a level of self-empathy—the ability to look at our own actions with understanding and compassion; to understand our experiences in the context in which they happened and to do all this without judgment. I call this ability to reflect on our own actions with empathy “grounding.”
Brené Brown
I Thought It Was Just Me
“If we believe empathy is finite, like pizza, and practicing empathy with someone leaves fewer slices for others, then perhaps comparing levels of suffering would be necessary. Luckily, however, empathy is infinite and renewable. The more you give, the more we all have.”
Brené Brown
Dare to Lead
“If we can find someone who has earned the right to hear our story, we need to tell it. Shame loses power when it is spoken. In this way, we need to cultivate our story to let go of shame, and we need to develop shame resilience in order to cultivate our story.”
Brené Brown
The Gifts of Imperfection
“If we can share our story with someone who responds with empathy and understanding, shame can’t survive.”
Brené Brown
Daring Greatly
“If we share our shame story with the wrong person, they can easily become one more piece of flying debris in an already dangerous storm.”
Brené Brown
The Gifts of Imperfection
“If we want people to fully show up, to bring their whole selves including their unarmored, whole hearts—so that we can innovate, solve problems, and serve people—we have to be vigilant about creating a culture in which people feel safe, seen, heard, and respected.”
Brené Brown
Dare to Lead
“If we want to cultivate hopefulness, we have to be willing to be flexible and demonstrate perseverance. Not every goal will look and feel the same. Tolerance for disappointment, determination, and a belief in self are the heart of hope.”
Brené Brown
The Gifts of Imperfection
“If we want to live a Wholehearted life, we have to become intentional about cultivating sleep and play, and about letting go of exhaustion as a status symbol and productivity as self-worth.”
Brené Brown
The Gifts of Imperfection
“If you have more than three priorities, you have no priorities”
Brené Brown
Dare to Lead
“If you want to make a difference, the next time you see someone being cruel to another human being, take it personally. Take it personally because it is personal!”
Brené Brown
I Thought It Was Just Me
“In either case, if you come across an explanation of vulnerability that doesn’t include setting boundaries or being clear on intentions, proceed with caution. Vulnerability for vulnerability’s sake is not effective, useful, or smart.” (Brené Brown Quotes)
Brené Brown
Dare to Lead
“In the end, the cure for numbing is developing tools and practices that allow you to lean into discomfort and renew your spirit.”
Brené Brown
Dare to Lead
“Integrity is choosing courage over comfort; choosing what is right over what is fun, fast, or easy; and choosing to practice our values rather than simply professing them.”
Brené Brown
Rising Strong
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again…who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.”
Brené Brown
Dare to Lead
“It takes real courage to allow ourselves to feel pain. When we’re suffering, many of us are better at causing pain than feeling it. We spread hurt rather than let it inside.”
Brené Brown
Braving the Wilderness
“It turns out that trust is in fact earned in the smallest of moments. It is earned not through heroic deeds, or even highly visible actions, but through paying attention, listening, and gestures of genuine care and connection.”
Brené Brown
Dare to Lead
“It’s always helpful to remember that when perfectionism is driving, shame is riding shotgun.”
Brené Brown
Rising Strong
“It’s helpful to keep in mind Alberto Brandolini’s Bullshit Asymmetry Principle or what’s sometimes known as Brandolini’s law: “The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.”
Brené Brown
Braving the Wilderness
“Joy is probably the most vulnerable emotion we experience in our lives.”
Brené Brown
Braving the Wilderness
“Judging has become such a part of our thinking patterns that we are rarely even aware of why and how we do it. It takes a great deal of conscious thinking or mindfulness to even bring the habit of judging into our awareness.”
Brené Brown
I Thought It Was Just Me
“Just because someone isn’t willing or able to love us, it doesn’t mean that we are unlovable.”
Brené Brown
Rising Strong
“Knowledge is only rumor until it lives in the bones”
Brené Brown
Dare to Lead
“Knowledge is power and power is never diminished by sharing it—it is only increased.”
Brené Brown
I Thought It Was Just Me
“Living a connected life ultimately is about setting boundaries, spending less time and energy hustling and winning over people who don’t matter, and seeing the value of working on cultivating connection with family and close friends.”
Brené Brown
Daring Greatly
“Living with air pollution increases your odds of dying early by 5 percent. Living with obesity, 20 percent. Excessive drinking, 30 percent. And living with loneliness? It increases our odds of dying early by 45 percent.”
Brené Brown
Braving the Wilderness
“Love is not something we give or get; it is something that we nurture and grow, a connection that can only be cultivated between two people when it exists within each one of them – we can only love others as much as we love ourselves.”
Brené Brown
The Gifts of Imperfection
“Shame, blame, disrespect, betrayal, and the withholding of affection damage the roots from which love grows. Love can only survive these injuries if they are acknowledged, healed and rare.”
Brené Brown
The Gifts of Imperfection
“My job is to help my children believe in and belong to themselves.”
Brené Brown
Braving the Wilderness
“My scientist friends have come up with things like ‘ principles of uncertainty’ and dark holes. They’re willing to live inside imagined hypothesis and theories. But many religious folks insist on answers that are always true. We love closure, resolution and clarity, while thinking we are people of ‘faith’! How strange that the very word ‘faith’ has come to mean its exact opposite”
Brené Brown
The Gifts of Imperfect Parenting
“No one reaches out to you for compassion or empathy so you can teach them how to behave better. They reach out to us because they believe in our capacity to know our darkness well enough to sit in the dark with them.”
Brené Brown
The Power of Vulnerability
“Nothing silences us more effectively than shame.”
Brené Brown
I Thought It Was Just Me
“Numb the dark and you numb the light.”
Brené Brown
Daring Greatly
“Of all the things trauma takes away from us, the worst is our willingness, or even our ability, to be vulnerable. There’s a reclaiming that has to happen.”
Brené Brown
Rising Strong
“One of the greatest barriers to going back is related to empathy. If our goal is perfection rather than growth, it is unlikely that we are willing to go back, because it requires a level of self-empathy—the ability to look at our own actions with understanding and compassion; to understand our experiences in the context in which they happened and to do all this without judgment.”
Brené Brown
I Thought It Was Just Me
“One of the greatest challenges of becoming myself has been acknowledging that I’m not who I thought I was supposed to be or who I always pictured myself being.”
Brené Brown
Rising Strong
“Only when diverse perspectives are included, respected, and valued can we start to get a full picture of the world.”
Brené Brown
Dare to Lead
“Only when we’re brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light.”
Brené Brown
Daring Greatly
“Ordinary courage is about putting our vulnerability on the line. In today’s world, that’s pretty extraordinary.”
Brené Brown
The Gifts of Imperfection
“Our ability to be daring leaders will never be greater than our capacity for vulnerability”
Brené Brown
Dare to Lead
“Our work is to get to the place where we like ourselves and are concerned when we judge ourselves too harshly or allow others to silence us. The wilderness demands this level of self-love and self-respect.”
Brené Brown
Braving the Wilderness
“Owning our story and loving ourselves through that process is the bravest thing we’ll ever do.”
Brené Brown
Rising Strong
“Pain is unrelenting. It will get our attention. Despite our attempts to drown it in addiction, to physically beat it out of one another, to suffocate it with success and material trappings, or to strangle it with our hate, pain will find a way to make itself known.”
Brené Brown
Braving the Wilderness
“People are hard to hate close up. Move in. Speak truth to bullshit. Be civil. Hold hands. With strangers. Strong back. Soft front. Wild heart.”
Brené Brown
Braving the Wilderness
“People are opting out of vital conversations about diversity and inclusivity because they fear looking wrong, saying something wrong, or being wrong. Choosing our own comfort over hard conversations is the epitome of privilege, and it corrodes trust and moves us away from meaningful and lasting change.”
Brené Brown
Dare to Lead
“People who wade into discomfort and vulnerability and tell the truth about their stories are the real badasses.”
Brené Brown
Rising Strong
“Perfectionism is a self destructive and addictive belief system that fuels this primary thought: If I look perfect, and do everything perfectly, I can avoid or minimize the painful feelings of shame, judgment, and blame.”
Brené Brown
The Gifts of Imperfection
“Perfectionism is not the same thing has striving to be your best. Perfectionism is the belief that if we live perfect, look perfect, and act perfect, we can minimize or avoid the pain of blame, judgement, and shame. It’s a shield. It’s a twenty-ton shield that we lug around thinking it will protect us when, in fact, it’s the thing that’s really preventing us from flight.”
Brené Brown
The Gifts of Imperfection
“Perfectionism is self destructive simply because there’s no such thing as perfect. Perfection is an unattainable goal.”
Brené Brown
The Gifts of Imperfection
“Personally, I have learned that when I’m experiencing shame, I often act out in ways that are inconsistent with whom I want to be.”
Brené Brown
I Thought It Was Just Me
“Power within is defined by an ability to recognize differences and respect others, grounded in a strong foundation of self-worth and self-knowledge. When we operate from a place of power within, we feel comfortable challenging assumptions and long-held beliefs, pushing against the status quo, and asking if there aren’t other ways to achieve the highest common good.”
Brené Brown
Dare to Lead
“Rather than spending a reasonable amount of time proactively acknowledging and addressing the fears and feelings that show up during change and upheaval, we spend an unreasonable amount of time managing problematic behaviors.”
Brené Brown
Dare to Lead
“Shame corrodes the very part of us that believes we are capable of change.”
Brené Brown
I Thought It Was Just Me
“Shame derives its power from being unspeakable.”
Brené Brown
Daring Greatly
“Shame is much more likely to be the cause of destructive behavior than the cure. Guilt and empathy are the emotions that lead us to question how our actions affect other people, and both of these are severely diminished by the presence of shame.”
Brené Brown
Rising Strong
“Shame is the birthplace of perfectionism.”
Brené Brown
Men, Women, and Worthiness
“Shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing we are flawed and therefore unworthy of acceptance and belonging.”
Brené Brown
I Thought It Was Just Me
“Shame resilience is the ability to say, “This hurts. This is disappointing, maybe even devastating. But success and recognition and approval are not the values that drive me. My value is courage and I was just courageous. You can move on, shame.” (Brené Brown Quotes)
Brené Brown
Daring Greatly
“Show up for people in pain and don’t look away.”
Brené Brown
Dare to Lead
“Silence is not brave leadership, and silence is not a component of brave cultures.”
Brené Brown
Dare to Lead
“Sometimes the bravest and most important thing you can do is just show up.”
Brené Brown
Daring Greatly
“Spiritual connection and engagement is not built on compliance, it’s the product of love, belonging, and vulnerability.”
Brené Brown
Daring Greatly
“Spirituality is recognizing and celebrating that we are all inextricably connected to each other by a power greater than all of us, and that our connection to that power and to one another is grounded in love and compassion. Practicing spirituality brings a sense of perspective, meaning, and purpose to our lives.”
Brené Brown
The Gifts of Imperfection
“Staying vulnerable is a risk we have to take if we want to experience connection.”
Brené Brown
The Gifts of Imperfection
“Sufficiency isn’t two steps up from poverty or one step short of abundance. It isn’t a measure of barely enough or more than enough. Sufficiency isn’t an amount at all. It is an experience, a context we generate, a declaration, a knowing that there is enough, and that we are enough.”
Brené Brown
The Gifts of Imperfection
“Talk to yourself the way you’d talk to someone you love. Most of us shame, belittle, and criticize ourselves in ways we’d never think of doing to others.”
Brené Brown
Dare to Lead
“Terrorism is time-released fear. The ultimate goal of both global and domestic terrorism is to conduct strikes that embed fear so deeply in the heart of a community that fear becomes a way of life.”
Brené Brown
Braving the Wilderness
“The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.”
Brené Brown
Dare to Lead
“The courage to be vulnerable is not about winning or losing, it’s about the courage to show up when you can’t predict or control the outcome.”
Brené Brown
Dare to Lead
“The culture of shame is driven by fear, blame and disconnection, and it is often a powerful incubator for issues like perfectionism, stereotyping, gossiping and addiction.”
Brené Brown
I Thought It Was Just Me
“The dark does not destroy the light; it defines it. It’s our fear of the dark that casts our joy into the shadows.”
Brené Brown
The Gifts of Imperfection
“The goal is to learn to recognize when we are experiencing shame quickly enough to prevent ourselves from lashing out at those around us.”
Brené Brown
I Thought It Was Just Me
“The heart of compassion is really acceptance. The better we are at accepting ourselves and others, the more compassionate we become. Well, it’s difficult to accept people when they are hurting us or taking advantage of us or walking all over us. This research has taught me that if we really want to practice compassion, we have to start by setting boundaries and holding people accountable.”
Brené Brown
The Gifts of Imperfection
“The imperfect book that gets published is better than the perfect book that never leaves my computer.”
Brené Brown
Daring Greatly
“The less we talk about shame, the more control it has over our lives.”
Brené Brown
Dare to Lead
“The mark of a wild heart is living out the paradox of love in our lives. It’s the ability to be tough and tender, excited and scared, brave and afraid—all in the same moment. It’s showing up in our vulnerability and our courage, being both fierce and kind.”
Brené Brown
Braving the Wilderness
“The most dangerous stories we make up are the narratives that diminish our inherent worthiness.”
Brené Brown
Rising Strong
“The only thing I know for sure after all of this research is that if you’re going to dare greatly, you’re going to get your ass kicked at some point. If you choose courage, you will absolutely know failure, disappointment, setback, even heartbreak. That’s why we call it courage. That’s why it’s so rare.”
Brené Brown
Dare to Lead
“The origin of the word “courage” comes from the word “cour”, which mean heart, and it means to completely share your story with your whole heart.”
Brené Brown
The Power of Vulnerability
“The people who have a strong sense of love and belonging, BELIEVE they are worthy of love and belonging.”
Brené Brown
The Power of Vulnerability
“The power of owning our stories, even the difficult ones, is that we get to write the ending.”
Brené Brown
Daring Greatly
“The problem is that when we don’t care at all what people think and we’re immune to hurt, we’re also ineffective at connecting. Courage is telling our story, not being immune to criticism. Staying vulnerable is a risk we have to take if we want to experience connection.”
Brené Brown
The Gifts of Imperfection
“The special courage it takes to experience true belonging is not just about braving the wilderness, it’s about becoming the wilderness. It’s about breaking down the walls, abandoning our ideological bunkers and living from our wild heart rather than our weary hurt. We’re going to need to intentionally be with people who are different from us. We’re going to have to sign up, join and take a seat at the table. We’re going to have to learn how to listen, have hard conversations, look for joy, share pain and be more curious than defensive, all while seeking moments of togetherness.”
Brené Brown
Braving the Wilderness
“The universe is not short on wake-up calls. We’re just quick to hit the snooze button.”
Brené Brown
The Gifts of Imperfection
“The willingness to show up changes us, It makes us a little braver each time.”
Brené Brown
Daring Greatly
“The world feels high lonesome and heartbroken to me right now. We’ve sorted ourselves into factions based on our politics and ideology. We’ve turned away from one another and toward blame and rage. We’re lonely and untethered. And scared. So damn scared.”
Brené Brown
Braving the Wilderness
“There are days when I love everything about social media, from the swift and powerful justice they can deliver to the endless stream of pictures of cupcakes decorated to look like succulents. Then there are days when I’m sure that Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram exist solely to piss me off, hurt my feelings, remind me of my inadequacies, and give dangerous people a platform.”
Brené Brown
Braving the Wilderness
“There are too many people today who instead of feeling hurt are acting out their hurt; instead of acknowledging pain, they’re inflicting pain on others. Rather than risking feeling disappointed, they’re choosing to live disappointed. Emotional stoicism is not badassery. Blustery posturing is not badassery. Swagger is not badassery. Perfection is about the furthest thing in the world from badassery.”
Brené Brown
Rising Strong
“There is an incredibly important, uncomfortable, and brave discussion that every single leader and every organization in the world should be having about privilege.”
Brené Brown
Dare to Lead
“There’s a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”
Brené Brown
Daring Greatly
“This idea that we ask men to show up and to be vulnerable, to let themselves be seen, but that we really can’t tolerate it, was probably one of the most significant patterns that emerged from my work with men. When I went back and talked to women about this, or I did interviews with both men and women, the response was, ‘it’s true. I ask him to be vulnerable, I ask him to show up, I ask him to show me the fear, but when he does it I am terrified and my response is shut that down immediately, I don’t want to see that’.”
Brené Brown
Men, Women, and Worthiness
“To know shame is to be human. And to have the capacity for empathy is also to be human.”
Brené Brown
Men, Women, and Worthiness
“To love ourselves and support each other in the process of becoming real is perhaps the greatest single act of daring greatly.”
Brené Brown
Daring Greatly
“To practice courage, compassion, and connection is to look at life and the people around us, and say, “I’m all in.”
Brené Brown
The Gifts of Imperfection
“True belonging is not passive. It’s not the belonging that comes with just joining a group. It’s not fitting in or pretending or selling out because it’s safer. It’s a practice that requires us to be vulnerable, get uncomfortable, and learn how to be present with people without sacrificing who we are.”
Brené Brown
Braving the Wilderness
“True belonging is the spiritual practice of believing in and belonging to yourself so deeply that you can share your most authentic self with the world and find sacredness in both being a part of something and standing alone in the wilderness.”
Brené Brown
Braving the Wilderness
“Trust is the stacking and layering of small moments and reciprocal vulnerability over time. Trust and vulnerability grow together, and to betray one is to destroy both.”
Brené Brown
Dare to Lead
“Trying to escape media influences in today’s culture is as feasible as trying to protect ourselves from air pollution by not breathing.”
Brené Brown
I Thought It Was Just Me
“Understanding the difference between healthy striving and perfectionism is critical to laying down the shield and picking up your life. Research shows that perfectionism hampers success. In fact, it’s often the path to depression, anxiety, addiction, and life paralysis.”
Brené Brown
The Gifts of Imperfection
“Until both men and women are allowed to be who we are rather than who we are supposed to be, it will be impossible to achieve freedom and equality.”
Brené Brown
I Thought It Was Just Me
“Until we can receive with an open heart, we’re never really giving with an open heart. When we attach judgment to receiving help, we knowingly or unknowingly attach judgment to giving help.”
Brené Brown
The Gifts of Imperfection
“Vulnerability is not winning or losing; it’s having the courage to show up and be seen when we have no control over the outcome. Vulnerability is not weakness; it’s our greatest measure of courage.” (Brené Brown Quotes)
Brené Brown
Rising Strong
“Vulnerability is the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, courage, empathy, and creativity. It is the source of hope, empathy, accountability, and authenticity. If we want greater clarity in our purpose or deeper and more meaningful spiritual lives, vulnerability is the path.”
Brené Brown
Daring Greatly
“Vulnerability sounds like truth and feels like courage. Truth and courage aren’t always comfortable, but they’re never weakness.”
Brené Brown
Daring Greatly
“We all need to be seen and honored in the same way that we all need to breathe.”
Brené Brown
Braving the Wilderness
“We also have to invest time attending to our own fears, feelings, and history or we’ll find ourselves managing our own unproductive behaviors. As daring leaders, we have to stay curious about our own blind spots and how to pull those issues into view, and we need to commit to helping the people we serve find their blind spots in a way that’s safe and supportive.”
Brené Brown
Dare to Lead
“We are not here to fit in, be well balanced, or provide exempla for others. We are here to be eccentric, different, perhaps strange, perhaps merely to add our small piece, our little clunky, chunky selves, to the great mosaic of being. As the gods intended, we are here to become more and more ourselves.”
Brené Brown
Dare to Lead
“We are wired for connection. But the key is that, in any given moment of it, it has to be real.”
Brené Brown
Braving the Wilderness
“We can choose courage or we can choose comfort, but we can’t have both. Not at the same time.”
Brené Brown
Rising Strong
“We can only love others as much as we love ourselves”
Brené Brown
The Gifts of Imperfection
“We can spend our entire life betraying ourself and choosing fitting in over standing alone. But once we’ve stood up for ourself and our beliefs, the bar is higher. A wild heart fights fitting in and grieves betrayal.”
Brené Brown
Braving the Wilderness
“We can talk about courage and love and compassion until we sound like a greeting card store, but unless we’re willing to have an honest conversation about what gets in the way of putting these into practice in our daily lives, we will never change. Never, ever.”
Brené Brown
The Gifts of Imperfection
“We cannot grow when we are in shame, and we can’t use shame to change ourselves or others.”
Brené Brown
I Thought It Was Just Me
“We cannot selectively numb emotions, when we numb the painful emotions, we also numb the positive emotions.”
Brené Brown
The Gifts of Imperfection
“We cultivate love when we allow our most vulnerable and powerful selves to be deeply seen and known, and when we honor the spiritual connection that grows from that offering with trust, respect, kindness and affection.”
Brené Brown
The Gifts of Imperfection
“We desperately need more leaders who are committed to courageous, wholehearted leadership and who are self-aware enough to lead from their hearts, rather than unevolved leaders who lead from hurt and fear.”
Brené Brown
Dare to Lead
“We don’t have to do all of it alone. We were never meant to.”
Brené Brown
Rising Strong
“We fail the minute we let someone else define success for us.”
Brené Brown
Dare to Lead
“We have to be able to take feedback—regardless of how it’s delivered—and apply it productively. We have to do this for a simple reason: Mastery requires feedback. I don’t care what we’re trying to master—and whether we’re trying to develop greatness or proficiency—it always requires feedback.”
Brené Brown
Dare to Lead
“We have to find our way back to one another or fear wins.”
Brené Brown
Braving the Wilderness
“We judge in areas where we’re most susceptible to shame, and we judge people who are doing worse than we are in those areas.”
Brené Brown
Dare to Lead
“We put so much of our time and energy into making sure that we meet everyone’s expectations and into caring about what other people think of us, that we are often left feeling angry, resentful and fearful.”
Brené Brown
I Thought It Was Just Me
“We risk missing out on joy when we get too busy chasing down the extraordinary.”
Brené Brown
Daring Greatly
“We run from grief because loss scares us, yet our hearts reach toward grief because the broken parts want to mend. C. S. Lewis wrote, “No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.” We can’t rise strong when we’re on the run.”
Brené Brown
Rising Strong
“We silence our voices and keep our secrets out of the fear of disconnection. When we hear others talk about their shame, we often blame them as a way to protect ourselves from feeling uncomfortable. Hearing someone talk about a shaming experience can sometimes be as painful as actually experiencing it for ourselves.”
Brené Brown
I Thought It Was Just Me
“We want to be part of something, but we need it to be real – not conditional or fake or constantly up for negotiation.”
Brené Brown
Braving the Wilderness
“We’re all grateful for people who write and speak in ways that help us remember that we’re not alone.”
Brené Brown
Daring Greatly
“What nobility of feeling! To sacrifice your own pleasure to preserve the comfort of others! It is a thing, I confess, that would never occur to me.”
Brené Brown
Daring Greatly
“What we know matters but who we are matters more.”
Brené Brown
Daring Greatly
“When a group or community doesn’t tolerate dissent and disagreement, it forgoes any experience of inextricable connection. There is no true belonging, only an unspoken treaty to hate the same people. This fuels our spiritual crisis of disconnection.”
Brené Brown
Braving the Wilderness
“When I let go of trying to be everything to everyone, I had much more time, attention, love, and connection for the important people in my life.”
Brené Brown
The Gifts of Imperfection
“When I look at narcissism through the vulnerability lens, I see the shame-based fear of being ordinary. I see the fear of never feeling extraordinary enough to be noticed, to be lovable, to belong, or to cultivate a sense of purpose.”
Brené Brown
Daring Greatly
“When the culture of any organization mandates that it is more important to protect the reputation of a system and those in power than it is to protect the basic human dignity of the individuals who serve that system or who are served by that system, you can be certain that the shame is systemic, the money is driving ethics, and the accountability is all but dead.” (Brené Brown Quotes)
Brené Brown
Braving the Wilderness
“When two people relate to each other authentically and humanly, God is the electricity that surges between them.”
Brené Brown
Daring Greatly
“When we are in pain and fear, anger and hate are our go-to emotions.”
Brené Brown
Braving the Wilderness
“When we fail to set boundaries and hold people accountable, we feel used and mistreated. This is why we sometimes attack who they are, which is far more hurtful than addressing a behavior or a choice.”
Brené Brown
The Gifts of Imperfection
“When we lose our tolerance for vulnerability, joy becomes foreboding.”
Brené Brown
The Power of Vulnerability
“When we own our stories, we avoid being trapped as characters in stories someone else is telling.”
Brené Brown
Rising Strong
“When we pretend that we can avoid vulnerability we engage in behaviors that are often inconsistent with whom we want to be.”
Brené Brown
Daring Greatly
“When we stop caring what people think, we lose our capacity for connection. But when we are defined by what people think, we lose the courage to be vulnerable.”
Brené Brown
Rising Strong
“When we’re anxious, disconnected, vulnerable, alone, and feeling helpless, the booze and food and work and endless hours online feel like comfort, but in reality they’re only casting their long shadows over our lives.”
Brené Brown
Daring Greatly
“When we’re kind to ourselves, we create a reservoir of compassion that we can extend to others. Our children learn how to be self-compassionate by watching us, and the people around us feel free to be authentic and connected.”
Brené Brown
The Gifts of Imperfection
“When we’re suffering, many of us are better at causing pain than feeling it. We spread hurt rather than let it inside.”
Brené Brown
Braving the Wilderness
“When you are grateful for what you have, I know you understand the magnitude of what I have lost.”
Brené Brown
Braving the Wilderness
“When you judge yourself for needing help, you judge those you are helping. When you attach value to giving help, you attach value to needing help.”
Brené Brown
Rising Strong
“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.”
Brené Brown
Daring Greatly
“Worrying about scarcity is our culture’s version of post-traumatic stress. It happens when we’ve been through too much, and rather than coming together to heal (which requires vulnerability) we’re angry and scared and at each other’s throats.”
Brené Brown
Daring Greatly
“You are responsible for the energy you bring into this room.”
Brené Brown
The Power of Vulnerability
“You can’t numb those hard feelings without numbing the other affects, our emotions. You cannot selectively numb. So when we numb those, we numb joy, we numb gratitude, we numb happiness. And then we are miserable, and we are looking for purpose and meaning, and then we feel vulnerable, so then we have a couple of beers and a banana nut muffin. And it becomes this dangerous cycle.”
Brené Brown
The Power of Vulnerability
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