Dr. Brené Brown: The Can’t Miss-Interview On Shame, Self Worth Empathy & Living a Courageous Life

[Applause] welcome to the science of success introducing your host Matt botner welcome to the science of success the number one evidence-based growth podcast on the internet with more than three million downloads and listeners in over a hundred countries in this episode we welcome legendary researcher dr. Brene brown to the science of success we discuss vulnerability and learn that vulnerability is not weakness it's not over sharing and it's not soft we learned that even brave and courageous people are scared all of the time we discussed the incredible power of learning to get back up when you've been knocked down how you can stop caring about what other people think about you and much much more in this in-depth interview I'm gonna tell you why you've been missing out on some incredibly cool stuff if you haven't signed up for our email list yet all you have to do to sign up is to go to success podcast.com and sign up right on the home page on top of tons of subscriber only content exclusive access and live Q&A s with previous guests monthly giveaways and much more I also created an epic free video course just for you it's called how to create time for what matters most even when you're really busy email subscribers have been raving about this guide you can get all of that and much more by going to success podcast.com and signing up right on the home page or by texting the word smarter to the number four four two two two on your phone if you like what I do on science of success my email list is the number one way to engage with me and go deeper on what I discuss on the show including free guides actionable takeaways exclusive content and much much more sign up for my email list today by going to success podcast.com and right on the homepage or if you're on the go if you're on your phone right now it's even easier just text the word smarter that's Smar ter to the number four four two two two I can't wait to show you all the exciting things you'll get when you sign up and join the email list in our previous episode we discussed how to hack your brain to finally create the results you want in life we took a hard look at what really drives results and the reality that knowledge and skill aren't what make you successful the subconscious drives your behavior that's it you don't need any more tools to achieve your goals you just need to change your beliefs and your subconscious set points for success happiness and achievement action is the ultimate arbiter of your success we asked are you taking enough of it and how can you take more we discussed all this and much more with our previous guest John Assaraf if you need a breakthrough to finally get where you want to be listen to our previous episode now for our interview with Brene please note this episode contains profanity today we have another legendary guest on the show dr. Brene brown Rene is a research professor at the University of Houston where she holds the Huffington foundation brené Brown endowed chair at the Graduate School of Social Work she's the author of five number one New York Times bestsellers the gift of imperfection daring greatly rising strong braving the wilderness and her latest book dare to lead which is the culmination of a seven-year study on courage and leadership Bernays TED talk the power of vulnerability is one of the top five most viewed TED talks in the world with over 35 million views and she's also the first researcher do have a filmed Netflix talk called the call to courage which debuted in April 2019 Renea welcome to the science of success thank you I'm excited to talk to you well we're super excited to have you on the show today we're we're huge huge fans of you and your work and we can't wait to really dig into it to start out I just wanted to say I love that you reprised and brought back the Teddy Roosevelt arena quote in the introduction to dare to lead because it's such a great quote so simply encapsulates your message and this notion that this this powerful idea that it's at the root of a vulnerability it's not about whether you're winning or losing but it's whether you're showing up and whether you're in the game yeah it was I wish I could take back every single instance where I said something that was like hyperbole so that when I said this people knew it was really serious but that quote can't do his might you changed my life it was my life before that quote than my life after that quote literally in a five-minute span because I was you know I guess the teacher appears when you're ready right but I think I was so desperate it was right after the TED talk had gone kind of viral and I was so desperate for some kind of filing system to understand the vulnerability the fear what do I do with the support which was great and overwhelming but what do I do with that 5% or 3% of criticism that's so painful like I just I needed it so bad and so when I came across it that day I just was like oh this is a complete framework for how I want to live and it's such a great way to encapsulate a lot of your work because at the core it shows what so many people struggle with and I want to dig into this because you know so much about it much more than we do but about why people are afraid to to show up to take action to get out there in the world and do things because it's so easy to be criticized to be shamed to be you know to have people say negative things about you and it stops a lot of people from from ever really showing up and starting to really be themselves and to live their lives yeah me just the first two stanzas you know it's not the critic accounts it's not this the man who points out how the strong person stumbles or where the doer of Deeds could have done them better the credit belongs to the person who's actually in the arena whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood who strives valiantly who airs who comes up short again and again and again like just those stanzas to me our life like they are it's about the willingness to show up and put yourself out there and be all-in when you can't control the outcome and that is everything from work to love to sports to parenting I mean to innovation and creativity it's the whole it's not the critic who counts it's so easy to spin our lives in the cheap sheets cheap seats in like you know hurl criticism and and shame and judgment at people who are trying and falling and failing and it's so much you know it's so funny that one thing that has been so clear to me in the last ten years the kind of feedback you get from people who are in the arena in their lives is very different than the kind of feedback you get from people who have made a full-time career out of cheap seating what is the difference in that feedback not all of us who are trying to live a brave life or skilled feedback givers so I don't want to give that impression but when I see someone who's kind of skinned up you know bruised knee stretch marks on the heart telling me hey I think you really screwed this up did you think about this I listen because I see it as the as a person who's also trying but the cheap seat stuff is often delivered with paying no attention to how hard it is to put yourself out there today and I just can't I can't do the sideline coaching and just it's not I'm not open to it I do I really am NOT and I love feedback because you know one of the big parts of my work as I believe feedback is required for mastery of anything and you know I've developed in the organization that I run here in Houston a really vulnerable honest courageous feedback culture we give feedback all the time right away on the spot in a kind respectful way but we are very much a feedback culture so I am a big believer in feedback but I do believe you have to be very thoughtful about who you accept it from I totally agree and coming back to the people the perspective of the people who are in the arena versus the people who are in as you put it the cheap seats it's funny because I have so many young people who are listeners of the show and I have nieces and nephews who are in high school in college and they're so scared sometimes to just take the first step they're so scared as you put it to show up why are people so afraid I think there'll I think there are a lot of reasons and I think some of them are democratic I think some of them are informed by race and class and gender I mean I think it's complex but here's what I would say when you think about young people this is my 22 years of teaching graduate students we don't teach people how to get back up after they fall and because we don't teach people how to rise they never take the leap like can you imagine if you didn't know how like if you if you physically fell and you didn't know how to get back up you'd spend your whole life tiptoeing around you'd spend your whole life like bracing your palms on the hood of a car when you step off the curb then you would follow the car with your hand until you open the door then you'd hold on to the oh handle as you try to you know get into the seat like you would never let go of everything and just walk because your death fear would be if I fall I don't know how to get back up the same thing is true in our socio-emotional world if we don't know how to get back up after failure disappointment or setback we will spend an enormous amount of energy making sure we never have to get back up and so for me I have a lot of bounce like I have a lot of bounce and so I'm willing to take chances because I'm very secure in my ability to get back up because I you know and I think it's even if you think about going back really to young young folks even if you think about letting kids experience adversity and so one of the conversations my husband I had very early on when we were brand-new parents is we both come from like you know divorced parents a lot of really hard hard stuff that we would never want to subject our kids to and at the same time we both really respect our own and each other's resilience so and he died you say he was a pediatrician he's a pediatrician so we have a lot of parenting conversations and so the big finding we came to was we need to let there's a line between adversity and trauma and we need to let our kids experience adversity not so much trauma that kind of sets us back so I think having experiences with adversity and knowing how to get back up makes people braver because they're willing to take a chance such a powerful analogy and really shines light on this notion I love the example of walking around with the fear of never being able to get back up because it so clearly highlights the the idea that the truly important skill set is not whether you're perfect at walking but it's just learning how to get up over and over again I mean that's it it's you know I don't even know who said the quote but someone has a great quote that says the most important number is not the number of times that you fall but the number of times you fall plus you know the time the number of times you get back up like that is so I know it's like you know cheesy like cue the rocky music or whatever but it's just true and so what we know I mean this is for me to be asked Matt if I think about all of my work over the last 20-something years I don't think that I'm more proud of anything than the work that we the research that we did on courage and the fact that courage is teachable observable and measurable it's four skill sets but one of the key four skill sets is learning how to get back up you know the idea the first big skill set is the ability to be vulnerable we call it rumbling with vulnerability the second one is really knowing what your values are and how to live into them because people who are not super clear and you know just very Greek clear about their values and what those behaviors look like are not as brave they don't risk the fall the next one is braving trust learning how to trust yourself and other people appropriately and then the last one is learning to get back up so we can teach these things but I gotta tell you is I step back and think about the way that we parent today not everybody but a growing part of parenting I think unfortunately the way schools are set up we're not teaching courage skills I couldn't agree more and in many ways that the root of that idea is what underpins our entire project with the science of success as well I want to dig into all of these different ideas so let's start at a high level with with courage what is courage when you say that when you talk about it how do you how do you think about how we define courage it's interesting because I don't have a definition for courage that's any different than definition data-driven definition for vulnerability and we define vulnerability as the willingness to show up and be seen when you can't control the outcome and the definition of vulnerability is a construct itself is it's the emotion we experience during times of uncertainty risk and emotional exposure and I spent like probably I don't know maybe five years like because I spend 90% of my time in organizations big you know fortune ten big Silicon Valley companies teaching courageous leadership skills and so I spent so many years trying to convince people of a relationship between courage and vulnerability and then it became it got very clear to me one day when I was at Fort Bragg working with special forces and I asked a really simple question which was because everyone thinks vulnerability is weakness everyone thinks that it's over sharing everything's it's it's soft so I asked this question if vulnerability is uncertainty risk and emotional exposure give me a single example of courage in your life on the field off the field other troops you know your other soldiers give me a single example of courage that you've witnessed or experienced yourself that didn't involve vulnerability that didn't involve uncertainty risk and emotional exposure and there was just kind of just silence and you could see these troops they were just shifting and their seeds and uncomfortable and a couple of them started putting their heads and their hands and then finally one guy who stood up and said ma'am there is no courage without vulnerability three tours there is no courage without vulnerability and so I think any conversation that we start around what is courage is it's the willingness to put yourself out there when you can't control how it's going to go and if you're putting yourself out there and you can kind of control or predict the outcome you're not being that brave you're probably doing good stuff maybe but you're not being courageous I just got goose bumps when you said that such a powerful definition and it's something that's so important it's such a needed message in in today's world today's society I feel like so many people stick to their what's comfortable and what's safe and they're so afraid to step into uncertainty and to step into risk how do I mean it's the Special Forces soldier but it's also you know the guy sitting across from the person he loves and you know thinking man I want to say I love you should I wait to say it maybe I should wait for her to say it first okay you know what I'm gonna be brave I love you that's also courage and vulnerability yeah that's a great point it's not it spans the spectrum right it's these it's everyday moments of life and it goes all the way back out to these heroic achievements in the military and beyond yeah I mean it is it's the CEO the startup looking for funding and being turned down you know 50 times it's the 51st time that's brave like that's courageous that's vulnerable and so this mythology that vulnerability is weakness it's just there you know we just crossed the 400,000 pieces of data mark which was a big mark for us there is zero evidence zero that vulnerability is weakness it is by far our most accurate measure of courage and in fact we have a daring leader assessment we put together an assessment for courageous leadership and we worked with MBA and EMBA students at Wharton at UPenn Kellogg at Northwestern and the Jones School at Rice and we spent three years putting together this instrument making sure it's valid reliable and basically it's as simple as this I can tell you how brave you are by measuring your capacity for vulnerability it makes perfect sense because if you're afraid to be vulnerable by definition you're you're coming at that from a place of fear and scarcity yeah and I mean it's and it's I love the fact that you just said everyday scenarios everyday situations like I have to be yeah I didn't know how this podcast was gonna go I don't know but I'm gonna get on it and give it a shot and you know and if I screw it up it's gonna be out tons of people but it's saying something to your roommate like hey dude you can't keep leaving your everywhere it's not working like it's sitting down with your boss and saying hey I understand I messed that up but the way you're giving me feedback I can't hear what you're saying so I want to learn from you but like when you're yelling and screaming and pounding your fist that don't work one of my favorite quotes of yours and a paraphrasing this a little bit but it's this idea that vulnerability is not as hard or scary or dangerous as getting to the end of your life and asking yourself what if I had shown up for me and for the people I've interviewed that are late in life I cannot imagine a more terrifying thing I do not want to look back there's two things there's two things that are really important to me when I look back on my life in my career the first one is I do not want to look back and wonder what if what if I would have said yes what if I would have tried that what if I would have said I love you first and the other thing is I want to be able to look back and know without question that I contributed more than I criticized because criticism is so easy it's not vulnerable it's not brave contribution super brave and hard because everyone will have comments and thoughts about what it is and there's there's very minimal risk of failure in criticizing that's why you have the Teddy Roosevelt it's not the critic accounts just not it I'm not it's for me it's really not the critic accounts like so if you leave some kind of really shitty tweet you know and your avatar is an egg or like the little icon or Movistar and your handle isn't your real name useless to me block or mute forever whichever is easiest for me like but if you leave a really hard thing for me to hear but it's respectful and your name's there and your pictures there there's a 95% chance if I see it I'm gonna come back and say tell me more I'm curious why do you think that I'm interested can we dig in I might DM you and say this is a really interesting point I mean someone made a point about something that I said endearing and then break-in braving the wilderness I was talking about black lives matter and why I think it's important and I was talking about the dehumanization of people and a woman said you know there's something about the way you frame this sentence that felt privileged and tone-deaf to me and yeah at first I kind of recall them like oh my god I'm out here supporting this stuff that like I'm you know taking a lot of heat for and then yet I'm still tone deaf and it's you know and then I was but I was like tell me more we went we had this long conversation on our DMS on Twitter and I called my agent said Jim stop the presses is that a real thing that he did I need to change something I wrote something that was in a privileged blind spot for me I need to change it I can make it better and they stopped him and changed it Random House did so feedback even hard feedback constructive feedback difficult feedback is not the same as being a critic your whole life and never risking vulnerability it's just not brave so how do we start to step into vulnerability or as you called it rumble with vulnerability the answer is pretty counterintuitive because here's when I'd spent the last seven years studying leadership and I mean talking to everyone leaders from everyone from you know Pixar to Special Forces from oil and gas companies and you know Singapore to people who work for the White House like across the board talking to Fortune 10 cos really asking what is the future of leadership and so it was the first time I'd ever done a study where the answer saturated across there was not a single participant who said something different than oh my god the future of leadership is courageous leadership we've got to have braver people and brave our cultures we're facing too many geopolitical environmental just technology everything is shifting so fast that if we don't have courageous people leading we're not companies won't make it organizations won't make it governments won't make it and so what was interesting is my hypothesis was wrong so I I assumed that the greatest barrier to what I call daring leadership or creatively encouraged courageous leadership was fear so as we started you know moving into this what we call selective coating I went back to some of these leaders and said wow okay we're hearing it's brave leadership we hear the only people who will be standing in the next five years and really meaningful leadership capacities are courageous people building courageous cultures how do you stay out of fear and these people looked at me like I was crazy they were like what and I said well you're you know you're daring leader how do you stay brave all the time they're like I'm afraid all the time I don't know what you're talking about that's like what but you're a brave leader like what you didn't call me you put me on whatever list you want to but I'm scared all the time so as we started digging in and digging deeper into the data and interviewing more people about that what I learned was it's not fear that gets in the way of us being brave its armor armor gets in the way of us being brave armor gets in the way of us being vulnerable and so the difference is let's say you and I would say you and I are both leaders right and we're both on a scale from one to ten thought we're both scared five so you're a mass of five scared leader and I'm a I'm a five scared leader but as a daring leader Matt you're aware of your armor and you you choose to be vulnerable and show up and take it off even though it's really seductive to put it on I on the other hand am not aware about how I use armor to show up so I stay in my armor so the first thing we have to do is understand I mean you can't do any of this without self awareness so the first thing is understand what is your go-to armor how do you self protect when you're in uncertainty risk and feel emotionally exposed so for me it's perfectionism it's I get emotionally in tents and can talk over people this is not mine particularly but some people they use cynicism as Armour some people and this is not mine either but I mean trust me I have a ton of it but these just happened to not be mine a lot of people have to be the knower so when they're vulnerable and feel exposed they become the knower and it's more important for them to be right than get it right so we have to figure on the pleaser that's definitely mine and I know when I'm wearing my pleasing good girl make everyone around me happy armor because the armor weighs a hundred pounds but their resentment weighs a thousand pounds like I become a really resentful angry person and so where we start with learning how to rumble with vulnerability is examining what myths were we raised believing where we raised believing it's weakness where we raised believing that it's over sharing how are we raised and then the second question is what armor do I use to self protect am I the blustery posturing tough guy am I the knower am I the cynic it's all none of it matters what is our armor does that make sense that totally makes sense I love the little quip about how the armor weighs 100 pounds but the resentment weighs a thousand pounds I mean this is the thing even if you know if the people listening they're between 25 and 35 there's a difference between a 25 year old and a 35 year old and the difference is when you're 25 I have a 20 year old daughter and I'm like man if you can get this now I don't even know what you'll be able to accomplish the difference is when we're in our 20s and even our early 30s we are still convinced that the armor serves us we're still fresh off adolescence I mean they moved adolescence to like 24 now or something around brain development we still believe the armor serves us but by the time you get to 35 38 40 for sure then you're in kind of midlife and then that's when the universe is like mmm the armor it's killing you and the drinkin and the work in and the achieving and acquiring none of it will ever take away the pain that that armor causes you and so I think really if you look at none of the people that we're talking to you probably today this is such an opportunity in your life to figure out the armor and to really start using some loving-kindness and some self compassion to talk to yourself about how it's not serving you anymore [Music] hey I'm here real quick with confidence expert dr. Aziz Gaza para to share a lightning round insight with you dr. Aziz how do you become more confident and what do people get wrong about confidence I love this question so my life mission is to inform people this one thing that you can learn confidence because the biggest thing that that people don't realize is that confidence is a skill they think confidence is something that you're just born with that the people that look confident just somehow have some ability that you don't have and that's what I thought for many years until I discovered that actually this is something we can learn and so what most people get wrong about this other than thinking that they can't so they don't even try is they think it's gonna be this huge undertaking and it's scary and they try to just push through and do this thing that I hate the phrase but it's so common which is they can tell you make it and what they don't realize is that there's a much easier way a simpler way and ultimately a faster way at a gentler way and that is to treat it like any other skill like the guitar you want to learn how to play the guitar you want to break it down into its individual elements like notes chords progression scales and if you learn each individual thing all of a sudden you could play a beautiful song and confidence is absolutely no different than that and you can break confidence down into its little individual elements like body language starting a conversation how to be assertive all these things can be broken down in sub skills and if you just learn those sub skills one after another take action on what you learn and practice it just like an instrument all of a sudden in a pattern in a period of months you can be stuck for decades but in a period of months you can have more confidence than you've ever had in your entire life and that's what I'm dedicated to doing that's what I teach that's what I create all my programs around and that's really the message that I want to get out there to everyone listening and ever in the world do you want to be more confident and stop suffering from social anxiety and self-doubt check out success podcast.com slash confidence to hear more about dr. Aziz and his work and become more confident [Music] you touched on this a little bit but what does it look like when you start to take the armor off and let maybe in the and I think this might be a good place specifically to look at this because people-pleasing and that kind of stuff is also something that I that I really struggle and deal with as well and so is maybe since that's something we both struggle with how would you think about starting to take that armor off I think it's some self-exploration for sure and I think it's about always understanding especially when we were young and I would say young is like you know five or six - probably early 20s how did it serve us like how did the publicity we were both people pleaser so are we both used people-pleasing as armor I wouldn't tie it to my identity or your identity but I'd say it's it's armor for both of us as you tell me how did it serve us what did we gain by it how did it help us get what we want or need or think we deserved and what has been the cost of it like what what is the cost for that armor what is the cost of not saying what's really on our mind what's the cost of taking care of everyone around us at our own expense like I saw this quote in the feed we do a bunch of training for this a group of african-american therapists called black therapists Rock and they had this quote in their feed the other day which was like I could barely read it I'd sewed it to my sisters and we were all like oh because it said when you work so hard to make everyone comfortable and keep the peace on the outside you rage a war internally within yourself like and I just thought god that's so true like it's not my job to make sure everyone's getting along here it's not my job to make sure no one's disappointed with me like on my 50th birthday Oprah Oprah Winfrey gave me this incredible advice she said if you think you're going to do what you love and do work that makes a difference and never piss off or disappoint someone you don't understand and so I think for me taking the ah the armor off for me was about really getting to a place where I did not I do not calculate my value based on what other people think of me and my people pleasing is kind of the bright side of manipulation and I would much rather be not liked and respected and trusted to be truthful than I would to be liked it just doesn't serve me anymore so every time I make a decision still I have to think am I doing this because it's what I really and first of all I'd it's been five years figuring out what it was that I really wanted I didn't know like I wasn't even sure because I was so used to saying yes to make sure everyone was happy and thought I you know patted me on the head so I think the thing was what it is you know I think where you start is how has that been serving me what's the cost and what am I afraid of what what's my fear if I stop doing this yeah I think those are some great really really powerful questions and a really excellent framework to start to take that armor off I'm curious how did you come to a place because I think many people would like to feel or say or think that they don't calculate their value based on what others think of them but the reality is that that often times we do how do we how did you personally or how do we as me the audience etc move past that or move beyond that or break through that I mean I had a therapist and a big-ass breakdown like that would be the moving through plan it's not good I mean like if you think you can do this work on your own you don't understand the nature of the work like we were not neurobiologically hardwired to figure this stuff out by ourselves and so whether it's you know a therapist a group a men's group friends that you can talk to like you have to think through this stuff aloud around people you trust where there's a lot of psychological safety and you have to think through like you have to think through I mean it's really hard because I wrote an article on my website about I just celebrated 23 years of sobriety in May and I wrote about an exchange that I had with my therapist and you know we saw each other I think I saw her for a couple years maybe two years three years and I remember one day going into her and say man I need something for the anxiety I need something you know the people PLEASE names out of control beings I he's out of control I'd been sober at that point I think for 10 years I just given up flour and sugar so I was like I I gotta have something like I got no fall back here no beer no muffin no you know I'm trying not to you know work 60 hours a week like I got nothing and she's like what do you want me to give you I said something for anxiety or something and she said say more and I said you know I'm like a turtle I'm in a turtle without a shell I've taken off all the shells I'm vulnerable turtle but I'm in a briar patch everything hurts everywhere I move pokes me and hurts me and she's like maybe we should just talk about getting out of the briar patch instead of like trying to find a new shell and I was like yeah the briar patch that's your advice to me like that's all you got and she's and then I remember like that was such a important metaphor for me to share because I think no one wants to burn out but everyone's living like they're on fire no one wants to hurt or have to carry around a ton you know the armor or the shell but everyone's living in a briar patch like I think this process involves really reflecting on who who am i around like i always call that like the mirror perspective like look at who you're hanging out with do those people reflect your values who you want to be how you want to show up in the world are those people brave with their lives you got to reassess like who you're hanging out with you got to assess what it is you want from life are you clear about what you want are you and if you're not clear about what you want first of all if you're clear about what you want you're 25 that's weird to me and then I think the big thing that I tell even leaders again across the globe is you can replace the armor with something that helps you and that's curiosity you know the one thing that really deeply brave people share in common is insatiable curiosity they're curious about themselves they're curious about the world they live in they're curious around the people around them they're curious about how to be better and so curiosity so I think for the people listening it's curious about how am i showing up is it serving me and am i self-protecting in a way that's keeping me small I mean that's the thing about armor is it prevents you from growing into your gifts some really great points and one thing that you kind of casually tossed out that I thought was really important was even this notion that you're in your 20s if you're younger and you're not clear about what you want to do with your life how you want to define and live your life that's okay and yes I feel like there's so much pressure in our society today to have everything sorted out but the reality is that's not really the case and it's alright to to be figuring things out yes I finished my bachelor's degree when I was 29 no 29 and I spent the time until I was 29 doing a myriad of things from bartending and waiting tables for six years taking you know customer service calls in Spanish hitchhiking through Europe and I learned more about empathy and vulnerability and shame and the things I study in those periods of time as I did in doctoral classes studying you know multivariate analysis of social you know emotional variables like like nothing is wasted I told my daughter when she went to school I said if you already know what you want to be I'm not paying for college because what cuz we'll find some kind of vocational training or something and she's like oh my god mom you're killing me it's so cringe-worthy to not know what you want to be when you know it's too awkward everyone you know during freshman orientation knows what they want to be and I'm like what does every wannabe everyone wants like a doctor a lawyer an engineer I'm like yeah those are some of the most miserable 30 year olds I've ever interviewed in my life like I'm giving you the opportunity to study latina feminism in the middle you know whatever in the middle of whatever Middle Ages I don't know if there was such a thing but probably you know I'm giving you a chance to take stem classes and liberal arts classes and take classes that may make no sense because you know it's this Howard Thurman quote that I live by and Howard Thurman was like a civil rights activist a theologian and he said don't ask what the world needs ask what makes you come alive because what the world needs is more people who've come alive like nothing is wasted and it's the gifts that you can give us are an order of magnitude bigger if you are in your power doing what you love a great quote and and a really important message and something that the listeners sometimes I think need to hear because it's so easy to get caught up in the belief that everything has to be perfect and defined and we have to be on this trajectory especially in today's world at such a young age but I want to I want to change or really come back to something that we talked about at the very beginning because I want to get one or two concrete strategies for for the skill set as well which is the ability to get back up we talked about how important that is how that's a hundred times more important than learning how to walk what are some of the tools or strategies that you've uncovered for helping get back up when you fall down here there's a lot of raw material to getting back up but there's one piece of gold one piece that you could listen to you right now and it could change your life over five minutes and that is understanding the neurobiology of falling that when something hard happens when we experience setback disappointment heartache our brain is wired for one thing above all else and that's survival and when something hard happens the brain goes really limbic and it's like oh my god how do I protect you how do I protect you and it's not just like you know it's not like a bear is attacking you I mean like it's like you and I work together and I come out of a meeting and I get here my boss I'm like a good meeting that and you look at me like that sucked and you just keep walking in your office like that's going to trigger something in our mind to go into survival mode like oh my god my boss just said that sucked and shrugged his shoulders and walked into his office like so what happens is because the brain is wired that we know now that the brain completely reads story I mean like a like a computer reading an old punch card like the brain reads story it understands the narrative pattern a beginning middle and end and it craves the story to understand when something hard is happening what is happening I don't know how to protect you so if we give the brain a story we get a chemical reward a calm reward a okay I understand what's happening reward is it's very seductive and necessary and helpful for us the problem is that the brain rewards us for a story regardless of the accuracy of the story and the brain loves a story that if I said to myself I wonder what's wrong with Matt he looked pretty pissed off I guess maybe he's having a hard day or maybe I don't know the brains like that's a story you get nothing but if I'm like oh my god Matt hey I knew he hated me he's never trusted me he's never liked me I've done something that mean that pissed him off oh my god I'm in trouble oh my god I'm gonna get fired then the brains like got it we are Matt dangerous bad against us not safe so what the most resilient research participants found we that we found and have in common and the sentence that can change your life really is the story I'm telling myself that when we fall when we're hurt when we're pissed when we're when we you know lose something or we're disappointment disappointed we fail at something at work if we can challenge the narrative are the narratives that we make up and I can go to you and knock on your door and be like hey Matt you have a second yeah what's up hey I said have a good day and he looks really pissed and you were like that sucked the story I'm telling myself right now is something happened in that meeting that we you and I need to clean up that you're pissed off at me about something and you look at me you go no man no no no not at all I'm just like I cannot believe these nine o'clock meetings instead of being down at ten are over at eleven and twelve I mean it just sucks it's ridiculous like I have you know spin class every day at 10:30 I'm missing my spin class third time in a row I'm like oh what about the part where you hate me and are gonna fight yeah like the stories we tell ourselves are what keep us flat on the arena ground mired in blood and sweat and dust it's the narrative here's how that works you know I mean it's I use it every time Steve and I have a fight the story I'm telling myself I use it with the people at work all the time like I just had a conversation with our CFO recently where I was like oh my god I think these we were trying to negotiate this big partnership and I said I think they're gonna pull out of the deal and he's like what you hear and I said I didn't hear anything but that you know the story I'm making up as they'd had the red line now and they're not getting back to us with a contract red line and he's like it had the red line for 30 minutes it's 60 pages he's like why are you making up stories I'm like I got I don't know I guess I'm in some fear and scarcity about this and he's like okay we'll keep checking out the stories with me because that's a crazy ass story I was like okay got it Steve my husband look the story I'm making up right now is that you really do want to go you're just pissed off because you don't think I want to go I guess no to be honest with you I don't want to like here's a great thing hey but hey I've got a meeting at the hospital tonight it's a dinner and a CEU continuing education you can bring partners but you don't really have to go and then I would go like mmm fine I don't want to go he's like why are you being like that I'm just saying I know you've got a lot going on yeah no it's fine if you don't want me to go I'm not you know whatever now it's like hey there's a thing tonight and do you want to go partners are invited when you say you don't well you don't want to go I'm making up a story that you don't want me to go know I just know you're busy okay great like this is the stories we make up and our ability reality check them completely predict our level of balance and resilience are we even aware of them are we brave enough to check them out and can we find a narrative pattern like all of my stories that I make up always come back to I'm not enough and I'm disappointing people which is like you know my the bane of my existence that's who that's my work for this lifetime so if people could start thinking this story I'm telling myself it's the story I'm making up right now we would probably use it a hundred times a day in this office that's a great tool and something you can start implementing right away yes it's so powerful yeah that's amazing for listeners than you might have this this might actually be the answer to the question but but for listeners who've been listening this who want to start somewhere who want to begin implementing we talked about so many important themes and ideas in this conversation what would be one action item or step that they could take right away to start being more vulnerable or to start getting back up or to start implementing some of the themes that we've talked about today I mean I think you could go and the daring leadership assessments free online you could go to brené Brown comm it's in our dare to lead hub you could take that it gives you a pretty lengthy printout of the four skill sets of on of courage vulnerability rising skills trusty skills and value skills and kind of tells you where your strengths are where your opportunities for growth are it's a very quick kind of thing to do I think you know a lot of this work that I do is very psycho-educational the psychology part is you got to do some self-examination and some self work but the education piece is you've got to learn more you we don't I think one of the biggest compliments I get after I give a talk is I already knew everything you said but I didn't have any of the words for it and so I think educating ourselves on what is vulnerability what isn't vulnerability I think if you are if you're trying to get braver at work I think dare to lead is a really great a great place to start if it's about personal and work the first place I try to expose start to explore you know shame vulnerability and courage in both men and women is daring greatly so I think reading I mean when we go into place to do culture change work we always start with book reads or TED Talks are something that ground people in language that they can use to talk about what they're experiencing and shared language is the root of change and so if you're with your partner or a friend and you watch it you watch the TED talk or the Netflix special together and say I thought this was really good I thought this part was kind of here's some language that was really helpful I think that's how we see change happening but language is absolutely a prerequisite for change love the point about shared vocabulary it's so important to have a common framework of words and ideas that you can use because it really helps shape conversations for listeners who want to find out more about you the TED talk the Netflix special the books all of the amazing things that you're that you're working on what is the best place for them to do that online yeah I think the best place to find everything is brunei brown.com it's just BRE and ABR o wnd.com and one thing I will point out is after we finish the research for dare to lead we decided this is important let's give everything away so there's a dare to lead hub that has a downloadable free companion workbook the daring leader assessment a glossary cards that you can download for when you're giving and receiving hard feedback that just have five or six language tips to use and don't use a daring feedback checklist like we just made everything free and downloadable so have at it awesome will or make sure to include all those resources in the show notes at success podcast com Brene thank you so much for coming on the show you're truly an inspiration we are huge fans of you and your work and and this is a phenomenal conversation so many powerful ideas I laughed I got goosebumps it was it was awesome really really enjoyed having you on here thank you so much Matt on the big fan so I it was really fun to talk to you and have a do this in person or at least by computer thank you so much for listening to the science of success we created the show to help you our listeners master evidence-based growth I love hearing from listeners if you want to reach out share your story or just say hi shoot me an email my email is matt at success podcast.com that's ma TT at success podcast.com I'd love to hear from you and I read and respond to every single listener email I'm gonna give you three reasons why you should sign up for our email list today by going to success podcast.com signing up right on the home page there's some incredible stuff that's only available to those on the email list so be sure to sign up including an exclusive curated weekly email from us called mindset Monday which is short simple filled with articles stories things that we found interesting and fascinating in the world of evidence-based growth in the last week next you're getting an exclusive chance to shape the show including voting on guests submitting your own personal questions that will ask guests on-air and my more last you're gonna get a free guide we created based on listener demand our most popular guide which is called how to organize and remember everything you can get it completely for free along with another surprise bonus guide by signing up and joining the email us today again you can do that at success podcast.com sign up right at the home page or if you're on the go just text the words smarter Smar ter to the number four four two two two remember the greatest compliment you can give us is a referral to a friend either live or online if you enjoyed this episode please leave us an awesome review and subscribe on iTunes because that helps boost the algorithm that helps us move up the iTunes rankings and helps more people discover the science of success don't forget if you want to get all the incredible information we talked about in the show links transcripts everything we discussed and much more be sure to check out our show notes you can get those success podcast.com just at the show notes button right at the top thanks again and we'll see you on the next episode of the science of success [Music] you

Channel: The Science Of Success

Views: 211,278

Rating: 4.8258576 out of 5

Keywords: Brené Brown, Dr. Brené Brown, Shame, Self-Worth, Empathy, The Gifts of Imperfection, Daring Greatly, Rising Strong, Braving The Wilderness, Dare To Lead, motivation, mindset, psychology, Funny Brene Brown, success, personal development, inspiration, tools, Live Brene Brown, How To Overcome Shame, brene brown, dr. brene brown, brene brown shame, brene brown podcast, brene brown leadership

Id: y9EdK5Q3EyU

Length: 51min 5sec (3065 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 28 2019