Brené Brown: Why Your Critics Aren't The Ones Who Count

okay so this past weekend a really good friend of mine who lives in New York called and said how are you feeling about the ninety nine conference and my answer was what do you think is the least invasive way to extract eyeball juice from a first grader and his response was Oh God are you in that place and I said no really this is here's the idea there is a total pinkeye epidemic in my son's class and if I could get some of the juice I could give myself pinkeye which would be a legitimate excuse not to go and I can even like you know do a selfie with like a big eye and then it would be legit and he said I thought you were excited and I said I was excited but as I was working on my keynote I realized that I had kind of tricked myself into believing that this was my tribe and then I realized like my obsession with fonts doesn't really make me one of you and he said well why did you know what was going on when you thought you were one of them and I said I don't know I'm gonna have to think about it and he said you're a researcher it doesn't necessarily mean that you're not you know a creative and I said no these are the creatives these are the people that no one sat with in high school and then everybody wants to be when they grow up I'm a researcher no one set with us in high school no one still sits with us so I thought about it I thought okay so I'm a researcher I studied connection I study vulnerability I study love and then I realized why I thought you and my tribe I think it's because design is a function of connection there is nothing more vulnerable than creativity and what is art if it's not love so it made sense to me to be here and then I thought okay 99% perspiration they said don't talk about inspirational stuff talk about the how to's so you know my name sometimes I name my keynote presentations things that will make me feel better about being here so this one's called sweaty creatives because I know what it means to be a sweaty creative because I create all the time when I write the way I translate my research when I talk and I know what the perspiration feels like 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 can 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 worried oh yeah it's 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 the Eudora Roosevelt and it is completely I mean I know it sounds cheesy and cliche I think a quote can change your life 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 NPR 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 things that creative 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 would those were the comments that morning of course she embraces imperfection what choice does she have look what look at how she looks I feel sorry for her kids less research more Botox just mean personal attacks the things that we up until that moment had inspired me to stay very small in my life in my career just so I could avoid those things so that morning Stephen 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 then because the minute you turn off Downton Abbey then it's like soccer practice and dinner and back to the mean people and maybe even I get Botox 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 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 so I put it in and Theodore 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 in the early nineteen hundred's of this were born and a lot of people called them 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 12 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 the guarantee that's the only certainty you have if you're gonna 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 I know if you have constructive information feedback to give me I want it yeah I'm gonna hack it down like I'm hardwired for wrestling around with stuff like that you say hey you forgot all this literature hey you should have done this or you terrible sentence construction over here like let's go let's 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 know this feeling by just looking at the picture yeah show of hands how many of you know that feeling so this is what we do down here like I don't know what you didn't do down here but what I set up camp down here I like stringing up twinkle lights i order takeout food I live down here sometimes just dreaming about the day that I come up and how awesome it's gonna be like but I stay down here a lot and here's what we do what the ring is right there you can see it the lights 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 that stuff is heavy and that stuff is suffocating and the problem is when you arm her up against vulnerability you shut yourself off and I've said this to audiences before but I have never said it to 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 creative 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 know 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 like this I went to just like in it's that 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 enough - I can do this I can totally do 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 form ones I don't know that everyone says too big for their britches but that's what migrant wouldn't 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 that's original everyone else is doing this 150 people are doing that who are better trained than on trend than I am what am i contributing does this really matter the third seat always comparison how many of you ever struggle with comparison 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 it 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 gotta know who's in the fourth seat is it a teacher is it a parent is it a shitty ex-coworker am I the only one that's 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 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 reserved 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 in 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 and 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 gonna spend your life in the arena if you're gonna spend your life showing up really showing up there's a couple things that you need the first is a clarity of values you have to 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 is 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 5/10 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 difference I'm a social worker we read a lot more Carl than Groucho 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 choose or 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've found in my research which fueled what I did in my life is that the people who have the most courage who are willing to show and 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 in 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 that are only in service of my work because what would what would it serve for me to watch it I would sit there and go oh my god suck in your stomach oh my god that's not what you were gonna say you know we're so self-critical and one of the things that I think happens and I think that 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 what that ideal is supposed to be and what it leaves when we orphan 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 me the 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 cheer 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 so here's just what he creatives thank y'all for having me here today [Applause] 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Channel: 99U

Views: 3,028,768

Rating: 4.9087014 out of 5

Keywords: Making Ideas Happen, 99U, 99U conference, 99 percent conference, 99% conference, entrepreneurship, Behance, design

Id: 8-JXOnFOXQk

Length: 22min 40sec (1360 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 04 2013