Be Whole Hearted and Vulnerable - Brene Brown

There are two groups of people – those that have a strong sense of love and belonging and those that struggle for it – and the one variable which separates them is that those who have it, believe that they are worthy of being loved and belonging.

These are what Brene Brown described as whole hearted people who had the courage to accept who they are with a whole heart. They had the courage to be imperfect, the compassion to be kind to themselves first and then to others because we can’t be compassionate to others if we can’t treat ourselves kindly and they had connection because they were willing to let go of who they should be in order to be who they were.

They fully embraced vulnerability and believed that what made them vulnerable made them beautiful. It wasnt comfortable or excruciating in a shameful way but it was necessary. The willingness to say I love you first and to do something where there are no guarantees, the willingness to invest in a relationship when you didnt know whether it would work out

Vulnerability is the core of shame and fear and our struggle for worthiness but it seems to also be the birthplace of joy, creativity, belonging, love.

So often, we numb vulnerability to deal with difficult situations in life and that’s why America currently has the most in debt, obese, addicted adult cohort in its history because you cannot selectively numb emotion. We don’t want to feel bad feelings but by numbing all of those, we also numb joy and love and happiness and gratitude, which makes us are miserable and looking for purpose so we start eating and drinking too much.

We make everything thats uncertain certain. Religion – a belief in faith and mystery to certainty becomes I’m right, you’re wrong, shut up – we need it to be certain.

The more afraid we are, the more vulnerable we are and so the more afraid we are.

In Politics today, there is no discourse or conversation just blame, which is a way to discharge pain and discomfort.

We perfect – kids are hardwired to struggle when they get here. It’s not our job to keep them perfect. We should be enforcing that they’re imperfect and need to struggle but that we love them anyway because they are worthy of love if we want them to grow up into emotionally whole hearted individuals.

And we need to accept that what we do does affect other people. In our personal lives or corporate lives – we need to be able to say we’re sorry and we’ll fix it.

We need to:

• let ourselves be seen – deeply seen – vulnerably seen;
• love with our whole hearts even when there’s no guarantee;
• practise gratitude and joy and enjoy what we have because to feel so vulnerable means that you’re alive;
• believe that you’re enough;
• stop screaming and start listening
• be kinder to the people around us and to ourselves.

But, more than anything, we need to be able to look at ourselves and say