The Power of Vulnerability - Brene Brown

anyone who believes in indefinite growth on a physical finite panic is either mad or an economist we don't want to focus politics on the notion that involves the rejection of principles around which the large majority of our fellow citizens were organized they live we are not as endlessly manipulable and its predictable as you would think I want to start with two questions that I really want you to think about and the two questions are what should I be afraid of today and who's to blame what should scare me and whose fault is it to me these are the most profoundly dangerous questions that we Center our lives around and what they are indicators to me what they're indicators of is a culture of scarcity a culture of not enough and when you think about think about any milieu in your life think about education what are we supposed to be afraid of and who's to blame politics the economy social issues I guarantee you if you turn on the news or open to paper today the focus would be here's why you should be afraid and here's whose fault it is and it what's interesting to me about that is it's not just at a cultural level or community level that stuff happens in my house every week every week with my husband I talked to him about what we should what should be you know why we should be fearful and whose fault it is mostly it's his but you know if something doesn't go well at my daughter's school then I'm like oh my god this is this is going to have huge implications for our University and we should be terrified right now that she's not getting cursive I know she's four but this is still relevant it's indicative of scarcity so let's talk about what scarcity culture is and what it looks like scarcity culture I think is best understood with a simple question of never enough and you can fill in the blanks never good enough safe enough certain enough perfect enough relevant enough and perhaps I think one of the most dangerous and insidious messages today is never extraordinary enough somehow in the world we live in today an ordinary life has become synonymous with a meaningless life and it has huge I mean and I've watched it happen not only as a researcher I mean qualitative researcher so I sit across from people and look in their eyes and I have a good sense of what's going on in their lives but as a university professor who's been teaching for the last 17 years it's been very clear to me that extraordinary means relevant and the top one is is the big one for all of us personally never good enough yeah which is shame which we all have on occasion that sense that we're not smart enough good enough perfect amount of loved enough promoted enough we're not enough so what we do in response to scarcity culture I think all of us everyday is this we wake up in the morning and we armor up and we we put it on and we say I'm going to go out in the world I'm basically just going to kick some ass I'm not going to let anyone see Who I am and in doing so I can protect myself against the things that hurt the most judgment criticism fear blame ridicule I'm going to armor up and I'm going to be safe and we rationalize and we convinced ourselves that this armor is really smart and we use a lot of different things to armor to perfectionism intellectualizing but if you get really really clear about what we're doing every morning when we wake up and decide to armor it's this simple this is what we're protecting we're protecting being hurt for a very simple reason that no one really wants to talk about which is this love belonging irreducible needs of men women and children in the absence of love and belonging there is always suffering and so what we believe is that we can protect our sense of being lovable and being acceptable and being worth connection with armor here's the very worst news from my research the news that above all other I did not want to hear is simply this and I don't even want to say it cheeks I think it's mean to say it but it's so true and it's simply our capacity for wholeheartedness can never be greater than our willingness to be broken hearted which is a terrible thing but a truthful thing that we can only love and be loved as much as we are willing to have our heart broken and so when we move through the world like this and with our partners with our children with our friends in classrooms with the people who work for us with the people we work for there are tremendous casualties and in fact I think the troublesome of that thing about doing this is that it doesn't really safeguard us from pain but it does prevent us from accessing the things that vulnerability takes us to vulnerability is the path to love belonging joy intimacy trust innovation and creativity sympathy so what is empathy and why is it very different than sympathy how many of you think about empathy and sympathy is very different things a few people empathy fuels connection sympathy drives disconnection I'll tell you why empathy is feeling with people so if Tim called Tim I'm going to use you as an example is that okay Tim called and said I just finished my rewrites on this article I'm trying to think of something we have in common which is writing I just finished my rewrites on this article and they've sent it back again and I just have this overwhelming feeling that nothing's going to be nothing is going to please these folks so to respond empathically or empathetically you can say it either way I would need to try to understand his perspective stay out of judgment recognize what he's feeling and kind of communicate it back now when you're teaching graduate students who are new to counseling they like to go Oh Tim you must be feeling so sad I feel that with you which is not exactly what if if he looks like a painfully sometimes maybe but if if I if he said that to me and I went I hate that would you know I've been there I hate that or if I looked at him and sad or talked on the phone even and sad oh god there's nothing worse than just keep on sending it in and send it in that's sympathy empathy is I'm feeling with you sympathy I'm feeling for you and to me I always think of empathy as this kind of sacred space when someone's kind of in a deep hole and they shout out from the bottom and they say I'm stuck it's dark I'm overwhelmed and then we look and we say hey calm down I know what it's like down here and you're not alone sympathy is dark deep hole whoo it's bad huh I know you want a sandwich in Texas in the south in general in the US we have the worst saying ever that just smacks and reeks of sympathy which is if Tim called and said I keep sending it in and they keep pushing it back and I looked at you and said bless your heart how did that feel it makes you pretty mad because basically what I'm saying is that sucks but too bad and God is on my side I've decided I can make a million dollars in Texas by simply selling a t-shirt that says if you bless my heart I'll punch your face so sympathy is one of the things that really gets in the way of empathy and sympathy is also often how we respond when we don't want to be vulnerable to someone else's struggle does that make sense the next one I'm going to get hot talking about it um I just know I'm going to go into a little shame but then I'll pop right out natural if you're on the first row you're safe um blame how many of you are blamers how many of you when something goes wrong the first thing you want to know is whose fault it is I'm like hi my name is Brunei I am a blamer I need to tell you this quick story so this is a couple years ago when I first realized the magnitude to which I blame I'm in my house I have on white slacks and a pink sweater set and I'm getting ready to go teach and I'm drinking a cup of coffee in my kitchen it's a full cup of coffee I drop it on the tile floor it goes into a million pieces splashes up all over me and the first I mean the FIR to a millisecond after it hit the floor right out of my mouth is this damn you Steve who is my husband because let me tell you how fast this works for me so Steve plays water polo with a group of friends and the night before he went to go play water polo and I said hey make sure you come back at ten cuz you know I can never fall asleep into your home and he got back like at 10:30 chatting it up with his friends and so I went to that a little bit later than I thought ergo my second cup of coffee that I probably would not be having had he come home when we discussed at 10:00 therefore hey and let me just ask cuz I'm gonna assume that you're laughing with me not at me how many any women in here are thinking that makes absolute sense and how many men in here are thinking oh that's how it works right and so the rest of the story is I'm cleaning up the kitchen Steve calls caller ID and like hey he's like hey what's going on babe what's going on so I'll tell you exactly what's going on I'm cleaning up the coffee that spilled all do like dial tone because he knows you're not allowed to laugh you're hearing official capacity how many of you go to that place when something bad happens the first thing you want to know is whose fault is it even me even even I'd rather it be my fault than no one's fault because why why because it gives us some semblance of control it gives us some semblance of control but here if you enjoy blaming this is where you should stick your fingers in your ear and do the nuh-nuh-nuh-nothin because I'm getting ready to ruin it for you because here's what we know from the research blame is simply the discharging of discomfort and pain it has an inverse relationship with accountability meaning that people who blame a lot seldom have the tenacity and grit to actually hold people accountable because we expend all of our energy raging for 15 seconds and figuring out who's fault something is accountability by definition is a vulnerable process it means me calling you and saying hey my feelings were really hurt about this nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh and talking it doesn't it's not blaming blaming is simply a way that we discharge anger which is really hard and blaming is very corrosive in research in relationships and it's one of the reasons we miss our opportunities for empathy because when something happens and we're hearing a story we're not really listening we're in the place where I was making the connections as quickly as we can about whose fault something was the last one is interesting empathy is not scripted I can't say okay go forth and be empathic here's the decision tree you know if they say this do this empathy is about being present with someone and if you're present and engaged and you take the armor off you'll know what the person across from you needs but more importantly if you screw it up and you see in the eyes of the person that you're you know who's sharing with you that you screw it up you can go back and say no no time okay wait I'm just a hugger I'm here I'm with you keep telling me I want to know I want to be and what I want to be in this with you the reason why I think that exercise is so helpful is again we all need different things from empathy there are no hard and fast rules about what empathy looks like or sounds like but there is one that I will share with you from the research it is rarely if ever does an empathic response begin with at least I had a yeah and we do it all the time because you know what someone just shared something with us that's incredibly painful and we're trying to silver lining it I don't think that's a verb but I'm using it as one we're trying to put this a little lining around it so I had a miscarriage at least you know you can get pregnant I think my marriage is falling apart at least you have a marriage John's getting kicked out of school at least Sarah is an A student how does that feel off pues it awful awful awful but one of the things we do sometimes in the face of very difficult conversations is we try to make things better instead of leaning into if I share something with you that's very difficult I'd rather you say I don't even know what to say right now I'm just so glad you told me because the truth is rarely can a response make something better what makes something better is connection and so I want to close with this picture because how many of you when someone shares something with you do you worry about saying the right thing are being helpful for sure I think most of us so I love this photo and the reason I'm sharing it with you is because sometimes the most profound and eloquent examples of empathy happen without any words and sometimes not even with eye contact to me if I'm sitting next to you and I say wow I feel like everything's just the wheels are falling off right now and things are out of control and someone just puts their hand on top of my hand and squeezes that says with touch I think the two most important words in my work which are me - thank you all very much I really appreciate simply for people who are not familiar with your work I possibly online or wherever I think it's very important that you explain to people what the difference between shame and guilt is because I think a lot of people have those two concepts mixed up in their mind and and I think it's really key to your work that there is a big gap between those two concepts it's so funny because the people who really like I know like we've talked to you get the work in your bones you live the work but people who really know the work like I talked about a thousand different things but the people who really like have their head and hearts around it always come back to that question like it's such a so I think what happens is when I talk about shame people often say guilt because there's kind of shame guilt humiliation and embarrassment and they're they're all kind of what in research what we would call self conscious effects or emotion and in order to really move through this work and understand it you have to separate them out and the big two that we confuse is shame and guilt so shame is I am bad and guilt is I did something bad so shame is a focus on self guilt is a focus on behavior and it seems like semantics it seems like kind of an academic pet peeve thing but it's really not because the outcomes are hugely different so what we know from the research is that shame is highly highly correlated with addiction depression aggression violence suicide bullying and almost more importantly that guilt is inversely correlated with those outcomes meaning the more someone is able to separate themselves from the behaviors the less likely it is that they'll end up in that such in those situations or suffering from those struggles and so the implications are huge especially around I think you and I have talked about parenting you know as it turns out there is a tremendous difference between your bad girl and you're a great kid but that was a bad choice if you you say that doing something that you don't sure hadn't done is I the difference between I am bad or I did something bad if you do something bad over and over again isn't that then I am bad it isn't that in a way saying that is part of who I am and therefore is it not saying I mean I I've had this discussion many times through my own life so you know saying and I just did something bad yeah but you always do that you know and therefore that's who you are okay so I'm suggesting that maybe the gap between shame and guilt isn't quite as clear-cut as you post was so I've thought a lot about that question as it relates to parenting and as it relates to school and behaviors in school at work I'm going to come down on the side that I still think there's a huge difference between shame and guilt and here's why when we see people change behaviors make amends when we see positive behavioral change you can almost always track it back to guilt guilt is basically it's uncomfortable but I'm a fan of it because it's cognitive dissonance it's I've done something and I'm holding it up against my values and it doesn't feel right and so that can that's guilt and other researchers use different words for the effects but for most part shame researchers use that as guilt so it makes sense to me shame is shame corrodes the part of us that believes we can change so let's say you're my child and you lied at school and there's a big difference between lesson 10 in lines not okay and hey Tim you're a liar then the question becomes you lie again and you lie again and at what at what point is it not hey you lied but hey you're a liar from a parenting perspective to me it's the point at which I give up believing you can make different choices okay that carries on throughout life yeah because there's something very self fulfilling about when I may cheer or I'm a liar and it's Who I am how do I do something different yeah okay thank you very much that's fantastic you

Channel: RSA

Views: 412,703

Rating: 4.9237328 out of 5

Keywords: Vulnerability, Brene Brown, Education, RSA, The RSA, Tim Lott

Id: sXSjc-pbXk4

Length: 21min 47sec (1307 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 15 2013