Brené Brown | 7 Super Tips

hey it's number one best-selling author and motivational speaker Eric quam in most you know me as equal man I'm super excited for today's thought leader it's brené Brown and I love how she talks about vulnerability and shame and again what we're doing with these seven super tips is we're highlighting people that have either inspired me or I've been blessed to share the stage with and have gotten to know and so they've got some great thoughts that I think all of you need to know and we've distilled them down to seven super tips in today's tips all come from Rene Brown if we're going to find our way back to each other we have to understand and know empathy because empathy is the antidote to shame if you put shame in a petri dish it needs three things to grow exponentially secrecy silence and judgment if you put the same amount of shame in a petri dish and douse it with empathy it can't survive the two most powerful words when we're in struggle me too and so I'll leave you with this thought if we're going to find our way back to each other vulnerability is going to be that path and I know it's seductive to stand outside the arena because I think I did it my whole life and thanks to myself I'm going to go in there and kick some ass when I'm bulletproof and when I'm perfect and that is seductive but the truth is that never happens and even if you got as perfect as you could and as bulletproof as you could possibly muster and you got in there that's not what we want to see we want you to go in we want to be with you and across from you and we just want for ourselves some of the people we care about and the people we work with - dear greatly so thank y'all very much I really appreciate it and so what I want to talk about today is the perspiration that no one talks about very often and that's not the perspiration from the hard work and the laborious part of creating it's the perspiration from fear from the cold sweat the stuff that pops up on our eyebrows when it's not supposed to be there because we're presenting an idea are talking about something that we care about and then we're begging our body not to sweat like when they said we're filming you against black could you wear something else I'm like no that 99% perspiration thing I'm down with that I got that I won't be where I'll be wearing I guess my option will be Navy so I know about sweaty creatives so I want to tell you about something that changed my life as a creative person and it's a quote from Theodore Roosevelt and it is completely I mean I know it sounds cheesy and cliche to think a quote can change your lives but sometimes when you hear something when you need to hear it and you're ready to hear it something shifts inside of you and so my story is that I am a researcher and I never thought I would have a big public career and so I did a TED talk that went very viral and in the wake of that I was kind of everywhere for a couple of months on every cnn.com in PR it was everywhere and something I wasn't used to and the marching orders from my therapist and my husband were do not read the comments online so I read all the comments online it's a one morning I woke up and there were two or three new articles out and I started reading the comments and they were devastating they weren't about my work they were about me they were super personal and they were the thing that created people play in their mind and then give up doing what they really want to do like if I asked every single one of you you would try what would you try if you knew people would never say this about you what would that what would this be it was those were the comments that morning of course she embraces imperfection what choice does she have with which look at how she looks I feel sorry for her kids less research more Botox just mean personal attacks the things that really up until that moment had inspired me to stay very small in my life in my career just so I could avoid this thing so that mornings even the kids leave I stay home I get on the couch and I watch eight hours of Downton Abbey and when it's over I don't want to turn off Downton Abbey because I didn't could be the minute you turn off Downton Abbey's and it's like soccer practice and dinner and back to the mean people and maybe should I get no talks and maybe you know maybe if I stand still when I talk so I get my laptop and I do a search for who was president in the United States during the Downton Abbey era have you ever done that like you're numbing with TV or movie and so when it's over you just like stay in that space by like learning more about the actors and what's going on I've been doing this long enough to know this is like you're laughing with me not happening so I put it in and see adore Roosevelt comes up and a quote comes up and I read it and this is what it says it's a quote from a speech that he gave and the early nineteen hundred's of the Sorbonne and a lot of people call the man in the arena speech and this is the passage that changed changes my life it's not the critic who counts it's not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of Deeds could have done it better the credit belongs to the person who's actually in the arena whose face is marred with blood and sweat and dust who at the best in the end knows the triumph of high achievement and who at worst if he fails he fails daring greatly so the moment that I read that I closed my laptop and this is what shifted in me three huge things first I spent the last twelve years studying vulnerability and that quote was everything I know about vulnerability it is not about winning it's not about losing it's about showing up and being seen the second thing this is who I want to be I want to create I want to make things that didn't exist before I touch them I want to show up and be seen in my work and in my life and if you're going to show up and be seen there is only one guarantee and that is you will get your ass kicked that is a guarantee that's the only certainty you have if you're going to go in the arena and spend any time in there whatsoever especially if you've committed to creating in your life you will get your ass kicked so you have to decide at that moment I think for all of us if courage is a value that we hold this is a consequence you can't avoid it the third thing which really set me free and I think Steve my husband would argue has made me somewhat dangerous it's kind of a new philosophy about criticism which is this if you're not in the arena also getting your ass kicked I'm not interested in your feedback carry this no I I you know if you have constructive information feedback to give me I want it and yeah I'm an academic I'm hardwired for wrestling around with stuff like that so hey you forgot all this literature hey you should have done this or you terrible sentence construction over here like let's go do it I love that but if you're in the cheap seats not putting yourself on the line and just talking about how I could do it better I'm in no way interested in your feedback so I know about the sweaty creative and so what I want to do today is I want to talk very specifically about the arena this is where this is where we sweat how many of you knows is stealing by just looking at the picture the app show of hands how many of you know this feeling so this is what we do down here like I don't know what you didn't do down here but what I stood up camp down here I like string that twinkle eyes I order takeout food I live down here sometimes just dreaming about the day that I come up and how awesome is going to be like that I stay down here a lot and here's what we do what the ring that's right there you can see it lives there and the fear is this I'm scared a lot of self-doubt comparison anxiety uncertainty and so what do most people do when they're walking into the arena and those things are going to greet them at up top what do you do you armor up right this is where I would imagine the old days that they got all their stuff on but God has stuff is heavy and that stuff is suffocating and the problem is when you honor up against vulnerability you shut yourself off and I've said this to audiences before but I have never said it's an audience where it is more true than today the second when you armor up you armor up in this hallway you shut yourself off from everything that you do and that you love because vulnerability is certainly a part of fear and self-doubt and grief and uncertainty and shame but it's also the birthplace of these it's the birthplace of love a belonging of joy trust empathy creativity and innovation without vulnerability you cannot create so what I think you're asked to do as a creator on a daily basis is walk through this hall get to the top of the stairs and get naked of course get naked get really real put yourself out there and walk out there so people can see you and see what you've made and see what you're doing so when we walk out this is what we see lots of seats lots of people but we focus in and we focus on this the critics I used to think the best way to put your work out into the world is to make sure the critics are not in the arena but you have no control over who's in the arena and the best way I have found is to know that they're there and to know exactly what they're going to say to you because each of you knows the three seats that will always be taken when you walk into the arena when you share your work with someone the three seats that will always be taken are shame scarcity in comparison shame completely universal human emotion we all have it it's that gremlin that whispers you're not you're not enough or if you're feeling pretty confident I guess I went to just like innocent when Scott was talking I went back and forth from like like a ping-pong table with gremlins back from oh my god I'm not enough I'm not an ass - I can do this I can totally - oh who do you think you are that's the other gremlin that's how it works like look at you you big for your britches I clearly have Texas room ones I don't know that everyone says too big for their britches but that's what migrant ones say so shame always has a seat the other seat that's always taken is scarcity what am i doing that everyone what am i doing its original everyone else is doing this 150 people are doing that who are better trained than I'm trekker than I am what am i contributing did this really matter the third seat always comparison how many of you ever struggle with comparison oh my god comparison is it nightmare you know I made a pact not to talk to anyone in the green room because what I was afraid that I would end up doing is say so what are you talking about that's interesting because I'm going first and so if it sounds super good and I think I suck comparatively I may say that and then I'm catching a flight to Dallas comparison is always there the fourth seat I left open for you you got it who's in the fourth seat is it a teacher is it a parent is it a shitty ex-coworker my they only once ever had one of those the thing is I don't care what people think I don't worry about the critics in the arena sends a huge red flag up for me we're hardwired for connection when we stop caring what people think we lose our capacity for connection when we've become defined by what people think we lose our capacity to be vulnerable not caring what people think is its own kind of hustle trust me so rather than locking these folks out from the arena what I'm going to invite you to do this way maybe is reserve seats for them which doesn't seem like a good thing to do but I have 13,000 pieces of data and I've done this work for 12 years and what I have found and what I have learned from these folks and then try to apply it my own life that has changed my life is to reserve a seat to take the critics to lunch and to simply say when I'm trying to do something new and hard and original I'm trying to be creative and I'm trying to innovate to say I see you I hear you but I'm going to show up and do this anyway and I've got a seat for you and you're welcome to come but I'm not interested in your feedback the other piece that's tough is to me if you're going to spend your life in the arena if you're going to spend your life showing up really showing up there's a couple things that you need the first is the clarity of values you have it like I know like when I came out here I knew I could screw this completely up I could get booed offstage bad things could happen but I don't have a choice because if courage is my value I have to do this whether it's successful or not as irrelevant so a real clarity of values is important the other thing is you got to have at least one person in your life who's willing to pick you up and dust you off and look at you when you fail which hopefully you will because if you're not failing you're really not showing up but who was willing to look at you when you fail and say man that sucked yeah it was totally as bad as you thought but you were brave and let's get you cleaned up and because you're gonna go back in and this is someone who loves you not despite your imperfections and vulnerabilities but because of them and they should have great seats in the arena like I forgot for five ten years for a decade I forgot to invite these people into my arena because you know it's the old I always want to say Karl Marx but it's Groucho Marx different I'm a social worker we read a lot more Karl and Groucho um I didn't want to belong to a club that would let me in I forgot to invite people because I thought if you're if you're my fan if you're here supporting me how important could you be like I'm trying to win over the people who hate me you simply love me you simply hold my hair back when I'm puking you pay bills with me and raise kids with me how important could you be I'm looking for the stranger in the mall that's who I'm trying to win over yes or no okay the last part is so I guess the real specific how to's are this the world keeps going whether you know it or not the critics are in the arena whether you identify them and think about the messages that keep us small they're there whether you do that or not what I have found in my life and what I found in my research which fueled what I did in my life is it the people who have the most courage who are willing to show them be the most vulnerable are the ones who are very clear about who the critics are the ones who reserved seats for them and say I hear you I get it I know where the messaging is coming from I'm not I'm not an I'm not buying it anymore so to get very clear the last thing which I think is the hardest is this one of these seats needs to be reserved for you one of these seats needs to be reserved for me I need when we look up and we're putting an idea our piece of art our design forward who do you think the biggest critic in the arena normally is yourself and so definitely me like I have never watched either of those TED Talks because it's not in service of the work for me and I try to do things there only in service of my work because what would what would it serve for me to watch it I would sit and go oh my god suck in your stomach oh my god that's not what you were going to say you know we're so self-critical and one of the things that I think happens and I think this happens a lot it happens in different professions but I think I see it a lot with creatives is there is an ideal of what you're supposed to be and what a lot of us end up doing is we orphan the parts of ourselves that don't fit with that ideal is supposed to be and what it leads when we open all those parts of us is it just leaves the critic and so reserved in this seed is this where we came from how we started our families that's maybe oldest of course the lost years the years where I was so lost and confused and hurt and disillusioned that I thought the only path to freedom was a flock of seagulls haircut the higher the hair the closer to God we say in Texas the people who love us the moments that make us who we are and in that sheer should be this person the person who believes in what we're doing and why we're doing it and the person who says yeah it's so scary to show up it feels dangerous to be seen it's terrifying but it is not as scary dangerous or terrifying as getting to the end of our lives and thinking what if I would have shown up what would have been different but here's what I can tell you that it boils down to and this may be one of the most important things that I've ever learned in the decade of doing this research my 1 year is turned into six years thousands of stories hundreds of long interviews focus groups at one point people were sending me journal pages and sending me their stories thousands of pieces of data and six years and I kind of got a handle on it I kind of understood this is what shame is this is how it works I wrote a book I published a theory but something was not okay and what it was is that if i roughly took the people I interviewed and divided them into people who really have a sense of worthiness that's what this comes down to a sense of worthiness they have a strong sense of love and belonging and folks who struggle for it and folks who are always wondering if they're good enough there was only one variable that separated the people who have a strong sense of love and belonging and the people who really struggle for it and that was the people who have a strong sense of love and belonging believe they're worthy of love and belonging sit they believe they're worthy and to me the hard part of the one thing that keeps us out of connection is our fear that we're not worthy of connection was something that personally and professionally I felt like I needed to understand better so what I did is I took all of the interviews where I saw worthiness where I saw people living that way and just looked at those what do these people have in common and I have I have a flight office supply addiction but it's another talk so I had a manila note an in manila folder and I had a sharpie and I was like what am I going to call this research in the first words that came to my mind were wholehearted these are kind of wholehearted people living from this deep sense of worthiness so I wrote the top of the manila folder and I started looking at the data in fact I did it first and it's very full in afford a very intensive data analysis where I went back pulled these interviews pulled the stories told the incidents what's what's the theme what's the pattern my husband left town with the kids because I always go into the kind of Jackson Pollock crazy thing where I'm just like writing and going and kind of just in my researcher mode and so here's what I found what they had in common was a sense of courage and I want to separate courage and bravery for you for a minute courage the original definition of courage when it first came into the English language it's from the Latin word cur meaning heart and the original definition was to tell the story of who you are with your whole heart and so these folks had very simply the courage to be imperfect they had the compassion to be kind to themselves first and then to others because as it turns out we can't practice compassion with other people if we can't treat ourselves kindly and the last was they had connection and this was a hard part as a result of authenticity they were willing to let go of who they thought they should be in order to be who they were which is you have to absolutely do that for connection the other thing that they had in common was this they fully embrace vulnerability they believed that what made them vulnerable made them beautiful they didn't talk about vulnerability being comfortable nor did they really talked about it being excruciating as I had heard earlier in the shame interviewing they just talked about it being necessary they talked about the willingness to say I love you first the willingness to do something where there are no guarantees the willingness to breathe through waiting for the doctor to call after your mammogram they're willing to invest in a relationship that may or may not work out they thought this was fundamental I personally thought it was betrayal I could not believe I had pledged allegiance to research where our job you know the definition of research is to control control and predict a study phenomenon for the reason for the explicit reason to control and predict and now my very you know my mission to control and predict had turned up the answer that the way to live is with vulnerability and to stop controlling and predicting this led to a little breakdown which actually looked more like this and it did it led to a I call to break down my therapist call to the spiritual awakening spiritual lightning sounds better than breakdowns but I assure you it was a breakdown and I had to put my data away and go find a therapist let me tell you something you know who you are when you call your friends and say I think I need to see somebody who do you have any recommendations because about five my friends like whew I wouldn't want to be here there I was like what does that mean and they're like I'm just saying you know like don't bring your measuring stick uh okay so I found a therapist my first meeting with her Dianna I brought in my list of the way the wholehearted lived and I sat down and she said you know how are you and I said I'm great you know I'm okay and she said what's going on and I said and this is a therapist who sees therapists because we have to go to those because they're BS meters or good and so I said here's the thing I'm struggling and she said what's the struggle and I said well I have a vulnerability issue and you know and I know that vulnerability is kind of the core of shame and fear and our struggle for worthiness but it appears that it's also the birthplace of joy of creativity a belonging of love and I think I have a problem and I just I need some help and I said but here's the thing no family stuff no childhood [ __ ] I just I just need some strategies [Music] thank you so she goes like this then I said it's bad right she said it's neither good nor bad it just is what it is and I said oh my god this is going to suck and it did and it didn't and it took about a year and you know how there are people that like when they realize that vulnerability and tenderness are important that they kind of surrender and walk into it eh that's not me and B I don't even hang out with people like that for me it was a year-long street fight it was a slugfest vulnerability pushed I push back I lost the fight but probably won my life back and so then I went back into the research and spent the next couple of years really trying to understand what they the wholehearted what the choices they were making and what what is what what are we doing with vulnerability why do we struggle with it so much am I alone and struggling with vulnerability No so this is what I learned we numb vulnerability when we're waiting for the call it was funny I sent something out on Twitter and on Facebook that said how would you define vulnerability what makes you feel vulnerable and within an hour and a half I had 150 responses because I wanted to know you know what what's out there having to ask my husband for help because I'm sick and we're newly married initiating sex with my husband initiating sex with my wife being turned down asking someone out waiting for the doctor to call back getting laid off laying off people this is the world we live in we live in a vulnerable world and one of the ways we deal with it is we numb vulnerability and I think there's evidence it's not the only reason this evidence exists but I think that there is a huge cause we are the most in debt obese addicted and medicated adult cohort in US history the problem is and I learned this from the research that you cannot selectively numb emotion you can't say here's the bad stuff here's vulnerability here's grief here's shame here's fear here's disappointment I don't want to feel these I'm going to have a couple of beers in a Banana Nut muffin I don't want to feel these and I know that I know that's knowing laughter I hack into your lives for a living I know that ah ha ha God you can't numb those hard feelings without numbing the other effects or emotion 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 in a Banana Nut muffin and it becomes this dangerous cycle one day my daughter Ellen came home from school she was in third grade and the minute we closed the front door she literally just started sobbing and slid down the door until she was just kind of a heap of crying on the floor and of course I was it scared me and I said invite What's Wrong Ellen what happened what happened and she pulled herself together enough to say I something really hard happened to me today at school and I shared it with a couple of my friends during recess and by the time we got back into the classroom everyone in my class knew what had happened and they were laughing and pointing at me and calling me names and it was so bad and the kids were being so disruptive that her teacher even had to take marbles out of this marble jar and the marble jar in the classroom is a jar where if the kids are making great you know great choices together the teacher adds marbles if they're making not great choices the teacher takes out marbles and if the jar gets filled up there's a celebration about for the class and so she said it was one of the worst moments of my life they were laughing and pointing and missbach and my teacher kept saying I'm going to take marbles out you know and she didn't know what was happening and she looked at me and she's just with this face that is just seared into my mind and said I will never trust anyone again and my first reaction to be really honest with you was damn straight you don't tell anybody anything but your mama Yeah right that's it I mean that was my that was like you just tell me and when you grow up and you go off to school mama will go to I'll get a little apartment and the other thing I was thinking to be quite honest with you is I will find out who those kids were and while I'm not going to beat up a nine-year-old I know their mamas uh I bet you that's the place you go to and I'm like how am I going to explain trust to this third grader in front of me so I took a deep breath and I said Ellen Trust is like a marble jar she said what do you mean and I said you share those hard stories and those hard things that are happening to you with friends who over time you filled up their marble jar they've done thing after thing after thing where you're like I know I can share this with this person does that make sense that's what Ellen said yes that makes sense and I said do you have any marble to our friends and she said oh yeah I totally Hannah and Lorna or marble to our friends and I said and then this is where things got interesting I said tell me what you mean how how did they earn marbles for you and she's like well Lorna if there's not a seat for me at the lunch cafeteria she'll scoot over and give me half a heinie seat and I'm like she was like yeah she'll just sit she'll just sit that like that and so I can sit with her and I said that's a big deal this is not what I was expecting to hear and I said did she say and you know Hannah on Sunday at my soccer game and I was waiting for this story where she said I got hit by a ball and I was laying on the field and Hannah picked me up and ran me to first aid and I was like yeah and she said Hannah looked over and she saw OMA and OPA my parents my her grandparents and she said look your omen apart here and I was and I was like boy she got a marble for that and she goes well you know not all my friends have eight grandparents because my parents are divorced remarried my husband's parents are divorced and remarried and she said and it was so nice to me that she remembered their names and I was like hmm and she said do you have marble jaw friends and I said yeah I do have a couple of marbles are friends and she said what kind of things did they do to get marbles and this feeling came over me and I thought the first thing I could think of because we were talking about the soccer game was that same game my good friend Eileen walked up to my parents and said Deann David good to see you and I remember what that felt like for me and I was like certainly trust cannot be built by these small insignificant moments in our lives it's got to be a grander gesture than that so as a researcher I start looking into the data I gather up the doctoral students who have worked with me we start looking and it is crystal clear Trust is built in very small moments and when we started looking at examples of when people talked about trust in the research they said things like yeah I really trust my boss she even asked me how my mom's chemotherapy was going I trust my neighbor because if something is going on with my kid it doesn't matter what she's doing she'll come over and help me figure it out you know one of the number one things emerged around trust in small things people who attend funerals this is someone who showed up at my sister's funeral another huge marble jar moment for people I trust him because he'll ask for help when he needs it how many of you are better at giving help than asking for help right so asking for help is one of those moments so one of the ways I work as a grounded theory research is I look at the data first then I go in and see what other researchers are talking about insane because we believe the best theories are not built on other existing theories but on our own lived experiences so after I have looked at this I said let me see what the research says and I went to John Gottman who's been studying relationship for 30 years he has amazing work on trust in betrayal and the first thing I read Trust is built in the smallest of moments and he calls them sliding door moments sliding doors is a movie with Gwyneth Paltrow from the 90s have y'all seen this movie so it's a really tough movies because what happened is it follows through life to this seemingly unimportant moment where she's trying to get on a train and she makes the Train but the movie stops and splits into two parts where she makes the Train and she doesn't make the Train and it follows them two radically different endings and he would argue that Trust is a sliding door moment and the example that he gives is so powerful he said he was lying in bed one night he had ten pages left of his murder mystery and he had a feeling he knew who the killer was but he was dying to finish this book so he said I don't even want I want to get up brush my teeth go to the bathroom and get back in and not have to get up I just want you know that feeling when you just want to get all situated and read the end of your book so he gets up and he goes he walks past his wife in the bathroom he's brushing her hair and he looks really sad and he said my first thought was just keep walking just keep walking and how many of you have had that moment where you do you walk past someone and you're like oh god they look avert your eyes all right or that you look at caller ID or your cell phone and you're like oh yeah I know she's in a big mess right now I don't have time to pick up the phone right yes or no this looks like guilty laughter to me so she said that's a sliding to her moment and here's what struck me about his story because he said there is the opportunity to build trust and there is the opportunity to betray as small as the moments of trust can be those are the moments of betrayal as well to choose to not connect when the opportunity is there is it betrayal so he took the brush out of her hand and started brushing her hair and said what's going on with you right now babe that's a moment of trust right so fast-forward five years and I'm clear about trust and I and I talk about trust as the marble jar we got to really share our stories and our hard stuff with people whose jars are full people who over time really done those small things that have helped us believe that they're worth our story reliability I can only trust you if you do what you say you're going to do and not once reliability let me tell you what reliability is in research terms we're always looking for things that are valid and reliable any researchers here or research kind of geeks there's ten of us okay so we would say a scale but you weigh yourself on is valid if you get on it and it's an accurate weight 120 okay so that would be a very valid scale I would pay a lot of money for that scale so that isn't that's actually not a valid scale but we'll pretend for the sake of this that's a valid scale a reliable scale is a scale that if I got on it a hundred times it's going to say the same thing every time so what reliability is is you do what you say you're going to do over and over and over again you cannot gain and earn my trust if you're reliable once because that's not the definition of reliability in our working lives reliability means that we have to be very clear on our limitations so we don't take on so much that we come up short and don't deliver on our commitments in our personal life it means the same thing so when we say to someone oh god it was so great seeing you I'm going to give you a call we can have lunch yes or no no it was really great seeing you moment of discomfort goodbye right but honest honest so hard I thought doing this research I thought going into it you're authentic people and inauthentic people mm-hmm I had I did not find any evidence of that at all what I found is authenticity to practice and you choose it every day sometimes every hour of every day and it's a practice it's not I just like up in Hamlet entik it's that when you walk into a meeting you have to make the choice am I going to show up and let myself be seen am I going to if I could raise my hand say wow y'all look super excited I don't know what in the hell you're talking about you know that's a choice yes uh-huh right and when to be make that authentic choice you gotta let go of the faker faker ooh I said yeah call it's a fait group but you know what I have found I mean I consider myself to be an authentic person but when I am inauthentic is when I've allowed myself to be around people who were not and then I have to fake it to be with them it's contagious yes so they're faking it yeah then and you know you're in that situation when you do that haha that kind of huh you're laughing at jokes that aren't funny you're pretending to be comfortable when you're not and lose your own authenticity yeah I do it first day I know yeah minun so let me bat let me tell story okay okay I love your professional I love theirs yes a story okay so chase and I leave this interview and we walk out I'm talking to Kate and like thanks so much for having me chase me good and I'm like so I get in my car and I'm going back to my hotel and I'm like oh my god what is that I sucked I must have screwed it up and that's have said something wrong what did I think I never liked chase you know what I didn't know I did this like all of a sudden yes yes or no yes or no my words to pretend it is why because when something hard happens we are neurobiologically water for one thing and that survival so when something hard happens when you show someone a piece of your work or something or you get a dirty look or someone makes a comment the first thing our brain does is scramble to make sense of it and the brain recognizes the narrative structure of a story beginning middle and end so the brain wants a story that says here's what's happening but the story has no can have no uncertainty or ambiguity chases maybe being a jerk he doesn't like you he didn't think you were very alert on the show I know let me tell you a real story wait y'all are no real story yeah I don't like the painful part of that I know let me tell you this let me tell you this real story this just happened I spoke at HubSpot last week okay 13,000 people in this Boston Convention Center it's like ten minutes before I go on and I'm making that I look at Twitter and I'm this person since his tweet out that says why is Brunei at HubSpot why is at brené Brown at HubSpot 2015 and he just waited like love Seth Godin love Amy Schumer all these people but why is burn a brown I'm like oh my god why am i have spot what am I doing here and then I'm like I start sweating and it's like anyone to convention centers like bukas you lady you know like oh my god what am i doing on the opening keynote and I'm like and then he tweets it again and I'm like oh my god and so like these are marketing people I don't know anything so I start googling in my phone marketing terms 2015 and right the first time that comes up is incentivized and I've got to work to I've got to work to word incentivize into this this keynote I'm like what does that mean exactly I don't know but I'm gonna say we're going to incentivize I'm like what is happening and I have a total crisis of confidence like could you know shame drives to tapes not good enough and who do you think you are and like who am i right that's terrible and so then all of a sudden I'm like who is it because what happens when you get backed into a corner my brain is making up the story you don't belong here I'm like that story's not going to work if I'm going on in five seconds I'm like so I'm like okay the best-case scenario attack attack attack this guy maybe attack them from the stage maybe use that as my opening maybe say like John Doe asks what I'm doing here well let me tell you out you know and then I click on the tweet to figure out what his name is and I accidentally hit the link in his tweet and it goes to this page that says what is brené Brown doing or how to spot she's talking about without vulnerability and that's so important here's her TED talk here her book could you imagine if I were to go out there and been like a crate here yes totally no and that's a true story it just happened this is going to go back to me now it was oh you were just telling a story a fake story about me and it wasn't really that you were mad at me no okay good yeah no but we need to understand sir we need to understand just Dorian you're missing pieces okay yes because what happens is when something hard happens and we're captured by something difficult our emotions get the first crack at making sense of something bad look a hard phone call a disagreement at work we think that we're rational beings we think that cognition is going to carry us through and make sense of it but it doesn't you know emotions driving thought and behavior are not even in the front seat riding shotgun they're not even the back seat and behavior and the trunk going hey and emotions driving so the first thing we do is we tell ourselves a story that reduces ambiguity about what happened so oh I'm not supposed to be here I'm not good enough to be here Oh in my fake story about you I did something that pissed him off I said something wrong I didn't do something right men and women who have the greatest capacity for rising strong in the moment something happens they hack into that neurobiological process of making up a story they stop and say wait a minute what's actually going on here what is what am I feeling what do I know for sure because what is you know what is a story there's a name and research for a story that has one or two limited data points and we fill in the rest with fear Wow it's called a conspiracy a conspiracy is a story with limited data points so here's what I know I know a guy sent a tweet I know I'm getting ready to talk that's all I know so now that I'm ready to ruin his career and use him as a whipping person you know as I talk what is going on why because I'm making Epis to minimize how many of you have ever gotten a conflict at work and you walk out of the conflict with a whole story made up about what's happening put your hands up yo yeah not not rhetorical yeah yeah right or your partner says something like see the other day was like no I don't think I I have nothing to wear your party night I mean I just I'm so stressed out I just got them on this book tour and he's like maybe we'll stay home I'm like do you think I'm not to like you the party like are you worried that I'm not going to be rockin out of the party I looked at the fire brigade party's like no I'm just trying to be helpful like do you not want to go - no look if you work here by the body but you want take somebody else to the party he's like okay what happening right how many have you ever been in that before guys looking like is that is that look at me yeah so how do we in the moment of hard things happening a fall and a fall can be anything let me tell you for sure a fall can be heartbreak a fall can be failure at work a fall can be a slight a disappointment but the minute something happens emotion gets the first crack at it and so we have to stop in that moment and instead of conspiring or confabulating which is where my favorite words from the book what is it agree what's the confabulation a confabulation is a lie told honestly and so as a social worker we study confabulation when we talk about traumatic brain injury or we talk about dementia so a confabulation would be Steve's like why don't we just stay home tonight I know you're exhausted you just flew in and I'm like you know what dude whatever and then I go into my room I call Kate and I'm like you're gonna believe she doesn't want to me the party cuz he thinks I look bad in my dress is that a lie yeah or is it a confabulate old honestly it's what I believe I know that's painful Frank it is like it's a lot right I see how it gets crazy okay what if I were that's right you go to a high miles an hour hide your mouth all up transported there instantly right okay said that's the trick you're a hundred miles an hour so here was what I almost did it have a spot I almost looked at at the person coordinating the event and almost sad before I went onstage you know really and truly if you're going to have me at these events or you don't have speakers at this event you should really make sure that people who work for you around the country are not being hurtful yeah do you imagine I would have liked oh and you're this close right I'm not close I got a whole speech because what who are you when you get hurt like if something let's talk about you two oh no I was afraid this is you know okay so something something hard happened someone makes a really really hard criticism of something you're doing with your work sure what is the first thing that you do what is your go-to response when something hot happens is to decide if that's valid and I read the thing and I'm like and I generally I've trained myself to not but is a response to my human the cellular level says I'm going to apply that filter to reality and or they apply that statement using my filter to reality and my default is that this person probably knows something I don't know and so I actually my human response is to read it and to take it personally and I have trained myself through reading YouTube comments because done that lately it's not pleasant that's not that's not the autism but I have trained myself my response now is I go back to the arena I go back to my little list yeah she told me to make a little list which is here the people who give a [ __ ] or you give a [ __ ] about yeah yeah so good scout under bag so and I'm like okay this person's not on the list of people that I love and I've done this professionally for a long time if you do any great work you're going to have you're going to create naysayers but the part that I'm sad at and the part that I'm sharing here is that it does kick off a little there's a little conversation that happens even if I'm at the end like okay cool you're still you you got this but I hate that I burn the cycles thinking about it okay so Tate let's do this is therapy here folks no this is really been this really helpful because I can tell you I can tell you right now when something emotional happens to me you know some of us some of us want to hide and some of us come out swinging and some of us come out people-pleasing unless I come out swinging got it I would say so what I have a motive as gay a B or C it would be like processing and no I'm still good I got this but let me show you for sure so I'm a swinger okay and it's like I don't even know you fool like yeah so and then I would try and compensate by doing something more awesome but right improving even more because this is a terrible thing it is a trivial thing as it's exhausting then you're like what am i what am i doing you know now I'm on the stage making fun of somebody putting them down I'm probably getting them fired and for what because because what because of a tweet and it sweet though is actually incredibly compliment your workers yeah oh yeah so that thing that you do and I know you do this if we talk about for the thing where you pause and you ask hard questions is exactly what men and women do you rise strong alright yeah no yeah no you they do in those moments they reckon with the motion so the first step of the first step of rising strong is recognize you've been snagged by emotion and get curious about it that's it but how many of you were raised in families were you encouraged to get curious about your emotions and talk about them and explore those right sources how many of you were raised in families where you were taught hey suck it up yep push through and get it done so the first thing is really reckoning with emotion what am I feeling and and what do I need to know more about that is a huge and so that thing that you say like if this is something that someone knows something that I don't know do they have information I don't have that's a huge part of the reckoning we just don't do it so in that minute in the backstage when I was hot on my phone I could have just said whoa burn a your like heart is racing your where your teeth are clenched and you're going in for the kill here what do you know about this yeah thing you know nothing and what did you do everything who cares it gives a [ __ ] you know there are 13,000 people you're going to an hour targeting one guy you don't know and 12999 are going to walk out of there with their mouths wide open like what just happen to me that was incredible but have you ever watched it have you ever watched someone take down someone because they were hurt Oh what does that feel like this it's gross it's so pain yeah so painful look I'm getting sweaty just talking about how to box really let me tell you when you when you're getting ready go on you look at your phone and it says oh why is she here oh you're like so the first part is to reckon but what do most of us do with emotion instead of reckoning most of us offload emotion we push it down we numb it we rage we are much better at inflicting pain than feeling pain much better causing hurt then handling hurt so the first thing is we have to really reckon with emotion we asked hundreds and hundreds of people and we don't know a lot about emotion we asked hundreds and hundreds of people list every emotion you've ever felt that you're that you know about that you understand you know what the average number was less than ten has yes five three three did you study before you came here no the average person acknowledges that they're familiar with or know or red can recognize three emotions or aspects of themselves happy sad and pissed off Wow so how can we reckon with emotion and recognize it if we don't even know what emotion is we weren't raised with an emotional lexicon you know we weren't raised to understand Wow something is going on so true right yeah so we're to take it back to 30,000 feet per second if you're just joining us from somewhere out in the world I'm Chase Jarvis I'm sitting here with brené Brown and we're talking about her new book rising strong we're taking questions in just a couple minutes and hashtag Fiji live on the Facebook's and the Twitter's you focus on the in studio audience if you I know there's a lot of people taking notes and writing questions alright we'll get there yeah we yeah we will get to you in just a second but to frame the conversation again right now you're talking about sort of one of the steps towards process of the process of rising strong okay so reckon sit what was it the reckoning with depression a reckoning with emotion yeah we just start with the basic premise if you love somebody anybody in your life you're going to get your heart broken if you're engaged enough in your work in your life you're going to get disappointed and if you're creative enough and innovative not you're going to fail so we start from the premise that you're going to fall the question is getting back up first thing reckon with emotion I'm snagged something's going on and what do you what can I ask them yeah nothing so how do you know when you've been snagged by emotion think about it a look or someone gives you a look or you read a comment or someone says something or how do you know you're an emotion Anisha what's your answer to that question hey Nisha that's my wife Kay you guys should know each other's Teresa - and so I know I'm snagged by emotion yeah when I'm unable to see any other perspective or there's like a motion that's crashing around a sari I so worried that's crashing around the emotion so they're not like the purity of sensation it's like all the sensation and oh my gosh I'm horrible oh my god they're going to see me at he's an [ __ ] you know whatever the story is that's contracted around the story's crashing around you and I have offered perspective okay that's perfect that's exactly right what else whatever just think about just get really what is a response yeah yeah have you crazy and it's a physical experience that is different it's a rapid change to a different physical experience than where I was before that emotion okay heart beating heart racing yeah well or or happy I mean it can be it doesn't necessarily have to be that that got clenched on the air emotions are right it can can be just like the world looks shinier I feel lighter inside just as much as it can be I feel tighter so there's a physical shift yeah okay so I think what you're describing and what you're describing points to everything we know in the data which is there is a physiological response to emotion so what you're describing some people will break down and say I get tunnel vision I can see only what's happening in front of me I have no you know so we have a physiological response so men and women who have the best capacity for rising strong know the physiology of emotion so they get tunnel vision something shifts in them you end up in the pantry and you don't know how you got there but you're forging for carbohydrates you know right you want to punch a wall you your heart's racing your ears are burning my armpits tingle um there's a physiological response to emotion so then all you need to do is get curious about it you don't have to be like oh okay shame is washing over me I smell it feels small and terrible you just say okay man something's going on what is it that's the whole first step if you can intervene there you can change the course of your story the second part is that first story we make up we have to Rumble with that first story so with the HubSpot example what am I doing here I don't belong here I'm not smart enough I don't even understand what you know I don't belong here I'm not good enough if you so here's let's go past this example okay you and I walk out I say thanks for the interview and you go up and immediately I make up a story kind of screwed up that interview I must have said something bad something must have happened so let me tell you how that ends the story I make up is that I'm not I did something bad Chase is mad at me maybe I'm gonna like chase well yeah we're not friends that it's over that's okay that's alright okay we're done seventy percent of the men and women who rise the strongest will all of them recognize that first story seventy percent of them write it down Wow they write down the story why why would you write down the story I have a thing on my phone called sfd I call these stories the shitty first draft yeah cuz Anne Lamott has this great book about writing and bird by bird and she said all good writers start with the shooting first draft don't all good photographer start with sunshine and take a picture you look the back of your camera yeah yeah right right so that first story that we make up is super important it tells us everything that we don't know and everything were afraid of so if you own that story and you put a handle on it by writing it down and look at it then you can ask the three biggest questions of rising strong what story are you making up what's true and what do you really need to know more about so how I would handle this today I think five years ago I would have gone off and said you don't like me I did something wrong I'm not enough and it could have even turned into a really big [ __ ] show because and then I could have started talking to people we both know I'm saying right do you think he's a jerk like I you know get I mean you know yellow how that goes right in a split second before I know it Oprah thinks I'm a jerk no not possible not possible but what I would do now is I would probably sit in my car or I would sit in the dressing room and I would be like what story am i telling what is going on I'd text it myself or write it down and then I would circle back with you and say hey t have a sock so let's just well but you have a second yeah sure hey when we were walking on the interview yesterday I said everything and you kind of shrug your shoulders and like rolled your eyes at me and I'm making up that you're pissed off about something is there anything we need to clean up oh my gosh just that you thought I was mad at you for even a second I'm not mad at all I just remembered that I left my phone in my car like we did not practice that but he knows that's the answer because that's the answer 90% of the time like I almost fired somebody I was so frustrated with this person because like two or three means in a row we'd walk out and they'd be like and I was like man if you're you know like this is not working for you we can arrange something else you know and then finally I just said hang to talk to you we've been doing out of meetings for the last two weeks and every time you're like huffing and puffing and roll in your eyes and I'm making up that you're unhappy something's going on you're feeling like she just oh my god I started Zumba a couple weeks ago and when I sit down now for more than 30 seconds I'm not even kidding you it's like my hip walks from Zumba like immediately I'm transferred you're like I want to zoom back but in that minute how many of you would have more respect for someone who said hey something weird happened yesterday and I'm making up that there's something going on can we clean it up is there something I need how many would you respect a person it's awesome I mean here's a great story I'm in a meeting with my leadership team and it's like a three-hour huge meeting and we're under a lot of stress we're growing something big and new it's hard and I look down there's three agenda items left and we have like 15 minutes or something and we're already an hour three people are just like oh so Mike let's just take all this stuff off except for this one thing that's tactical and in the weeds we got to get to stuff answer today so let's just do it so we start talking and then like five minutes later my CFO looks at me and says I'm sorry I got to interrupt I was like what's up and he said I'm really frustrated the story I'm making up right now is you took this off the agenda because it's not important anymore which is fine except for the fact that I'm spending 90% time and resources as is my team on this issue right here so it's not important anymore I'd like to know about it and I'm like man thank you for having the balls to do that out of those because do you really want someone on your team sitting there in resentment and not listening I said no I'm pulling it out because it's the most important thing on the agenda and I will not cram it into 20 minutes we will have another meeting where we spend an hour dedicated to justice a week he's like thanks awesome but I mean how many times do we just sit with these stories we make up why don't we given these tools early in life like that's the part that kills me is that I'm you know too old to be not knowing these things and yet I find and I think one of the reason your work is so spectacularly popular is because we don't have these tools imagine a world and what we're given these tools is young people thank you for joining us for today's 7 super tips episode with the one and only brené Brown it's all about embracing your shame and vulnerability so again reminder 7 super tip series all about us talking and finding the best thought leaders and giving you their top 7 super tips that will help unlock unleash your inner superpower in the meantime keep watching and remember it's not what we take from this world it's what we leave behind thank you for joining us for today's 7:00 soup for today's up to she just said Brianne Brown that's your cool stage name for like a singer like Beyonce is kind of next thing Oh ready okay your shame invulnerability eight Falkner ability I don't know what that was so I got I got I got it I've got out of control

Channel: equalman

Views: 1,043,495

Rating: 4.8106031 out of 5

Keywords: Brene Brown, Brené Brown, Chase Jarvis, Humilty, Shame, Vunerability, 7 Super Tips, Equalman, Erik Qualman, Digital Leader, Digital Leadership, Motivation, Motivational Speaker, Keynote Speaker, Entrepreneur, Entrepreneurship, Evan Carmichael, Tips, Tricks, Life Hacks, Business, Inspiration, Motivational Video, Be Inspired, SMG, TED, Success, successful, empower, Tedx, Talks, speech, self empowerment, Inspiring, innovative, innovation, disruptive, speaker, innovative speaker, leadership

Id: hEUXUHAkC5A

Length: 67min 40sec (4060 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 08 2017