Quotes from Brene Brown

Everyone has a story or a struggle that will break your heart. And, if we're really paying attention, most people have a story that will bring us to our knees.

The problem is that when we don't care at all what people think and we're immune to hurt, we're also ineffective at connecting. Courage is telling our story, not being immune to criticism. Staying vulnerable is a risk we have to take if we want to experience connection.

trust is in fact earned in the smallest of moments.

And if we all have shame, the good news is that we're all capable of developing shame resilience. Shame resilience is the ability to recognize shame, to move through it constructively while maintaining worthiness and authenticity, and to ultimately develop more courage, compassion, and connection as a result of our experience.

We have to be able to take feedback—regardless of how it's delivered—and apply it productively. We have to do this for a simple reason: Mastery requires feedback. I don't care what we're trying to master—and whether we're trying to develop greatness or proficiency—it always requires feedback.

Courage is contagious. My friend Katherine Center says, "You have to be brave with your life so that others can be brave with theirs.

It's dangerous to put your self-worth in other people's hands. Again, no matter what you do, you can't control other people's responses. These are recipes for disappointment and hurt.

But then, if it's the case that we can care about citizens and the police, shouldn't the rallying cry just be All Lives Matter? No. Because the humanity wasn't stripped from all lives the way it was stripped from the lives of black citizens. In order for slavery to work, in order for us to buy, sell, beat, and trade people like animals, Americans had to completely dehumanize slaves. And whether we directly participated in that or were

A deep sense of love and belonging is an irreducible need of all women, men, and children. We are biologically, cognitively, physically, and spiritually wired to love, to be loved,

I know that these examples are symptomatic of the cruelty culture that we live in today and that everyone is fair game, but think about how and what they chose to attack. They went after my appearance and my mothering—two kill shots taken straight from the list of feminine norms. They didn't go after my intellect or my arguments. That wouldn't hurt enough.

Once we belong thoroughly to ourselves and believe thoroughly in ourselves, true belonging is ours.

I believe that what we regret most are our failures of courage, whether it's the courage to be kinder, to show up, to say how we feel, to set boundaries, to be good to ourselves. For that reason, regret can be the birthplace of empathy.

Writer Mary Jo Putney says, "What one loves in childhood stays in the heart forever.

Choosing authenticity is not an easy choice. E. E. Cummings wrote, "To be nobody-but-yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody but yourself—means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight—and never stop fighting." "Staying real" is one of the most courageous battles that we'll ever fight.

Shame is all about fear. We're afraid that people won't like us if they know the truth about who we are, where we come from, what we believe, how much we're struggling, or, believe it or not, how wonderful we are when soaring

There is no vision without vulnerability.

It's not an accidental entanglement; it's an intentional knot. Love belongs with belonging.

Vulnerability is not weakness; it's our greatest measure of courage.

We have to find our way back to one another or fear wins.

who we are' is at least as important as 'what we want to achieve.

The goal is to learn to recognize when we are experiencing shame quickly enough to prevent ourselves from lashing out at those around us.

We're sick of being afraid and we're tired of hustling for our self-worth. We want to be brave, and deep inside we know that being brave requires us to be vulnerable.

1. What more do I need to learn and understand about the situation? 2. What more do I need to learn and understand about the other people in the story? 3. What more do I need to learn and understand about myself?

Laughter, song, and dance create emotional and spiritual connection; they remind us of the one thing that truly matters when we are searching for comfort, celebration, inspiration, or healing: We are not alone.