When we spend our lives waiting until we’re perfect or bulletproof before we walk into the arena, we ultimately sacrifice relationships and opportunities that may not be recoverable, we squander our precious time, and we turn our backs on our gifts, those unique contributions that only we can make. Perfect and bulletproof are seductive, but they don’t exist in the human experience. We must walk into the arena, whatever it may be—a new relationship, an important meeting, our creative process, or a difficult family conversation—with courage and the willingness to engage. Rather than sitting on the sidelines and hurling judgment and advice, we must dare to show up and let ourselves be seen. This is vulnerability. This is daring greatly. Join me as we explore the answers to these questions:

What drives our fear of being vulnerable?

How are we protecting ourselves from vulnerability?

What price are we paying when we shut down and disengage?

How do we own and engage with vulnerability so we can start transforming the way we live, love, parent, and lead?

Understanding shame is only one variable that contributes to Wholeheartedness, a way of engaging with the world from a place of worthiness. In The Gifts of Imperfection, I defined ten “guideposts” for Wholehearted living that point to what the Wholehearted work to cultivate and what they work to let go of:

1. Cultivating Authenticity: Letting Go of What People Think
2. Cultivating Self-Compassion: Letting Go of Perfectionism
3. Cultivating a Resilient Spirit: Letting Go of Numbing and Powerlessness
4. Cultivating Gratitude and Joy: Letting Go of Scarcity and Fear of the Dark
5. Cultivating Intuition and Trusting Faith: Letting Go of the Need for Certainty
6. Cultivating Creativity: Letting Go of Comparison
7. Cultivating Play and Rest: Letting Go of Exhaustion as a Status Symbol and Productivity as Self-Worth
8. Cultivating Calm and Stillness: Letting Go of Anxiety as a Lifestyle
9. Cultivating Meaningful Work: Letting Go of Self-Doubt and “Supposed To”
10. Cultivating Laughter, Song, and Dance: Letting Go of Being Cool and “Always in Control”

 

• “To put our art, our writing, our photography, our ideas out into the world with no assurance of acceptance or appreciation—that’s also vulnerability. To let ourselves sink into the joyful moments of our lives even though we know that they are fleeting, even though the world tells us not to be too happy lest we invite disaster—that’s an intense form of vulnerability.”
• “In the song “Hallelujah,” Leonard Cohen writes, “Love is not a victory march, it’s a cold and it’s a broken hallelujah.” Love is a form of vulnerability and if you replace the word love with vulnerability in that line, it’s just as true. From calling a friend who’s experienced a terrible tragedy to starting your own business, from feeling terrified to experiencing liberation, vulnerability is life’s great dare. It’s life asking, “Are you all in? Can you value your own vulnerability as much as you value it in others?” Answering yes to these questions is not weakness: It’s courage beyond measure. It’s daring greatly. And often the result of daring greatly isn’t a victory march as much as it is a quiet sense of freedom mixed with a little battle fatigue.”
• “We all have shame. We all have good and bad, dark and light, inside of us. But if we don’t come to terms with our shame, our struggles, we start believing that there’s something wrong with us—that we’re bad, flawed, not good enough—and even worse, we start acting on those beliefs. If we want to be fully engaged, to be connected, we have to be vulnerable. In order to be vulnerable, we need to develop resilience to shame.”
• “If you’re wondering what happens if you attach your self-worth to your art or your product and people love it, let me answer that from personal and professional experience. You’re in even deeper trouble. Everything shame needs to hijack and control your life is in place. You’ve handed over your self-worth to what people think. You’re officially a prisoner of “pleasing, performing, and perfecting.” With an awareness of shame and strong shame resilience skills, this scenario is completely different. You still want folks to like what you’ve created, but your self-worth is not on the table. You know that you are far more than a painting or a high Amazon.com ranking. Yes, it will be disappointing and difficult if your friends or colleagues don’t share your enthusiasm, or if things don’t go well, but this effort is about what you do, not who you are. Regardless of the outcome, you’ve already dared greatly, and that’s totally aligned with your values; with who you want to be. When our self-worth isn’t on the line, we are far more willing to be courageous and risk sharing our raw talents and gifts. From my research with families, schools, and organizations, it’s clear that shame-resilient cultures nurture folks who are much more open to soliciting, accepting, and incorporating feedback. These cultures also nurture engaged, tenacious people who expect to have to try and try again to get it right—people who are much more willing to get innovative and creative in their efforts. A sense of worthiness inspires us to be vulnerable, share openly, and persevere. Shame keeps us small, resentful, and afraid. In shame-prone cultures, where parents, leaders, and administrators consciously or unconsciously encourage people to connect their self-worth to what they produce, I see disengagement, blame, gossip, stagnation, favoritism, and a total dearth of creativity and innovation.”
• “Understanding our shame tapes or gremlins is critical to overcoming shame because we can’t always point to a certain moment or a specific put-down at the hands of another person. Sometimes shame is the result of us playing the old recordings that were programmed when we were children or simply absorbed from the culture. My good friend and colleague Robert Hilliker says, “Shame started as a two-person experience, but as I got older I learned how to do shame all by myself.” Sometimes when we dare to walk into the arena the greatest critic we face is ourselves. Shame derives its power from being unspeakable. That’s why it loves perfectionists—it’s so easy to keep us quiet. If we cultivate enough awareness about shame to name it and speak to it, we’ve basically cut it off at the knees. Shame hates having words wrapped around it. If we speak shame, it begins to wither. Just the way exposure to light was deadly for the gremlins, language and story bring light to shame and destroy it. Just like Roosevelt advised, when we dare greatly we will err and we will come up short again and again. There will be failures and mistakes and criticism. If we want to be able to move through the difficult disappointments, the hurt feelings, and the heartbreaks that are inevitable in a fully lived life, we can’t equate defeat with being unworthy of love, belonging, and joy.”
• “In fact, as we work to understand shame, one of the simpler reasons that shame is so difficult to talk about is vocabulary. We often use the terms embarrassment, guilt, humiliation, and shame interchangeably. It might seem overly picky to stress the importance of using the appropriate term to describe an experience or emotion; however, it is much more than semantics. How we experience these different emotions comes down to self-talk. How do we talk to ourselves about what’s happening? The best place to start examining self-talk and untangling these four distinct emotions is with shame and guilt. The majority of shame researchers and clinicians agree that the difference between shame and guilt is best understood as the difference between “I am bad” and “I did something bad.” Guilt=I did something bad. Shame=I am bad. For example, let’s say that you forgot that you made plans to meet a friend at noon for lunch. At 12:15 P.M., your friend calls from the restaurant to make sure you’re okay. If your self-talk is “I’m such an idiot. I’m a terrible friend and a total loser”—that’s shame. If, on the other hand, your self-talk is “I can’t believe I did that. What a crappy thing to do”—that’s guilt. Here’s what’s interesting—especially for those who automatically think, You should feel like a terrible friend! or A little shame will help you keep your act together next time. When we feel shame, we are most likely to protect ourselves by blaming something or someone, rationalizing our lapse, offering a disingenuous apology, or hiding out. Rather than apologizing, we blame our friend and rationalize forgetting: “I told you I was really busy. This wasn’t a good day for me.””
• “The ability to practice authenticity when we experience shame, to move through the experience without sacrificing our values, and to come out on the other side of the shame experience with more courage, compassion, and connection than we had going into it. Shame resilience is about moving from shame to empathy—the real antidote to shame. If we can share our story with someone who responds with empathy and understanding, shame can’t survive. Self-compassion is also critically important, but because shame is a social concept—it happens between people—it also heals best between people. A social wound needs a social balm, and empathy is that balm. Self-compassion is key because when we’re able to be gentle with ourselves in the midst of shame, we’re more likely to reach out, connect, and experience empathy. To get to empathy, we have to first know what we’re dealing with. Here are the four elements of shame resilience—the steps don’t always happen in this order, but they always ultimately lead us to empathy and healing:Recognizing Shame and Understanding Its Triggers. Shame is biology and biography. Can you physically recognize when you’re in the grips of shame, feel your way through it, and figure out what messages and expectations triggered it?Practicing Critical Awareness. Can you reality-check the messages and expectations that are driving your shame? Are they realistic? Attainable? Are they what you want to be or what you think others need/want from you?
  Reaching Out. Are you owning and sharing your story? We can’t experience empathy if we’re not connecting. Speaking Shame. Are you talking about how you feel and asking for what you need when you feel shame?”
• “According to Dr. Hartling, in order to deal with shame, some of us move away by withdrawing, hiding, silencing ourselves, and keeping secrets. Some of us move toward by seeking to appease and please. And some of us move against by trying to gain power over others, by being aggressive, and by using shame to fight shame (like sending really mean e-mails). Most of us use all of these—at different times with different folks for different reasons. Yet all of these strategies move us away from connection—they are strategies for disconnecting from the pain of shame.”
• “Empathy is connecting with the emotion that someone is experiencing, not the event or the circumstance.”
• “Empathy is a strange and powerful thing. There is no script. There is no right way or wrong way to do it. It’s simply listening, holding space, withholding judgment, emotionally connecting, and communicating that incredibly healing message of “You’re not alone.””
• “The research team found that the act of not discussing a traumatic event or confiding it to another person could be more damaging than the actual event. Conversely, when people shared their stories and experiences, their physical health improved, their doctor’s visits decreased, and they showed significant decreases in their stress hormones.”
• “I think we can all agree that feeling shame is an incredibly painful experience. What we often don’t realize is that perpetrating shame is equally as painful, and no one does that with the precision of a partner or a parent. These are the people who know us the best and who bear witness to our vulnerabilities and fears. Thankfully, we can apologize for shaming someone we love, but the truth is that those shaming comments leave marks. And shaming someone we love around vulnerability is the most serious of all security breaches. Even if we apologize, we’ve done serious damage because we’ve demonstrated our willingness to use sacred information as a weapon.”
• “We cultivate love when we allow our most vulnerable and powerful selves to be deeply seen and known, and when we honor the spiritual connection that grows from that offering with trust, respect, kindness, and affection. Love is not something we give or get; it is something that we nurture and grow, a connection that can only be cultivated between two people when it exists within each one of them—we can only love others as much as we love ourselves. Shame, blame, disrespect, betrayal, and the withholding of affection damage the roots from which love grows. Love can only survive these injuries if they are acknowledged, healed, and rare.”
• “Personally, I fought the data with everything I have. Over and over, I heard the idea of self-love as a prerequisite to loving others, and I hated it. Sometimes it’s so much easier to love Steve and the kids than it is to love myself. It’s so much easier to accept their quirks and eccentricities than it is to practice self-love around what I see as my deep flaws. But in practicing self-love over the past couple of years, I can say that it has immeasurably deepened my relationships with the people I love. It’s given me the courage to show up and be vulnerable in new ways, and that’s what love is all about. As we think about shame and love, the most pressing question is this: Are we practicing love? Yes, most of us are really good at professing it—sometimes ten times a day. But are we walking the talk? Are we being our most vulnerable selves? Are we showing trust, kindness, affection, and respect to our partners? It’s not the lack of professing that gets us in trouble in our relationships; it’s failing to practice love that leads to hurt.”
• “It doesn’t matter if the group is a church or a gang or a sewing circle or masculinity itself, asking members to dislike, disown, or distance themselves from another group of people as a condition of “belonging” is always about control and power. I think we have to question the intentions of any group that insists on disdain toward other people as a membership requirement. It may be disguised as belonging, but real belonging doesn’t necessitate disdain. When I look at those eleven attributes of masculinity, that’s not the kind of man I want to spend my life with and that’s not how I want to raise my son. The word that comes to my mind when I think about a life built around those qualities is lonely. The picture in my mind goes back to the Wizard of Oz. He’s not a real person with human needs, but a “great and powerful” projection of what a man is supposed to be. Lonely, exhausting, and soul-sucking”
• “As children we found ways to protect ourselves from vulnerability, from being hurt, diminished, and disappointed. We put on armor; we used our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors as weapons; and we learned how to make ourselves scarce, even to disappear. Now as adults we realize that to live with courage, purpose, and connection—to be the person whom we long to be—we must again be vulnerable. We must take off the armor, put down the weapons, show up, and let ourselves be seen.”
• “And nothing has been a greater gift to me than the three lessons I learned about joy and light from people who have spent time in sorrow and darkness: Joy comes to us in moments—ordinary moments. We risk missing out on joy when we get too busy chasing down the extraordinary. Scarcity culture may keep us afraid of living small, ordinary lives, but when you talk to people who have survived great losses, it is clear that joy is not a constant. Without exception, all the participants who spoke to me about their losses, and what they missed the most, spoke about ordinary moments. “If I could come downstairs and see my husband sitting at the table and cursing at the newspaper…” “If I could hear my son giggling in the backyard…” “My mom sent me the craziest texts—she never knew how to work her phone. I’d give anything to get one of those texts right now.” Be grateful for what you have. When I asked people who had survived tragedy how we can cultivate and show more compassion for people who are suffering, the answer was always the same: Don’t shrink away from the joy of your child because I’ve lost mine. Don’t take what you have for granted—celebrate it. Don’t apologize for what you have. Be grateful for it and share your gratitude with others. Are your parents healthy? Be thrilled. Let them know how much they mean to you. When you honor what you have, you’re honoring what I’ve lost. Don’t squander joy. We can’t prepare for tragedy and loss. When we turn every opportunity to feel joy into a test drive for despair, we actually diminish our resilience. Yes, softening into joy is uncomfortable. Yes, it’s scary. Yes, it’s vulnerable. But every time we allow ourselves to lean into joy and give in to those moments, we build resilience and we cultivate hope. The joy becomes part of who we are, and when bad things happen—and they do happen—we are stronger.”
• “Perfectionism is not the same thing as striving for excellence. Perfectionism is not about healthy achievement and growth. Perfectionism is a defensive move. It’s the belief that if we do things perfectly and look perfect, we can minimize or avoid the pain of blame, judgment, and shame. Perfectionism is a twenty-ton shield that we lug around, thinking it will protect us, when in fact it’s the thing that’s really preventing us from being seen. Perfectionism is not self-improvement. Perfectionism is, at its core, about trying to earn approval. Most perfectionists grew up being praised for achievement and performance (grades, manners, rule following, people pleasing, appearance, sports). Somewhere along the way, they adopted this dangerous and debilitating belief system: “I am what I accomplish and how well I accomplish it. Please. Perform. Perfect.” Healthy striving is self- focused: How can I improve? Perfectionism is other-focused: What will they think? Perfectionism is a hustle.”
• “Perfectionism is a self-destructive and addictive belief system that fuels this primary thought: If I look perfect and do everything perfectly, I can avoid or minimize the painful feelings of shame, judgment, and blame. Perfectionism is self-destructive simply because perfection doesn’t exist. It’s an unattainable goal. Perfectionism is more about perception than internal motivation, and there is no way to control perception, no matter how much time and energy we spend trying. Perfectionism is addictive, because when we invariably do experience shame, judgment, and blame, we often believe it’s because we weren’t perfect enough. Rather than questioning the faulty logic of perfectionism, we become even more entrenched in our quest to look and do everything just right. Perfectionism actually sets us up to feel shame, judgment, and blame, which then leads to even more shame and self-blame: “It’s my fault. I’m feeling this way because I’m not good enough.””
• “self-compassion has three elements: self-kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness.
  Self-kindness: Being warm and understanding toward ourselves when we suffer, fail, or feel inadequate, rather than ignoring our pain or flagellating ourselves with self-criticism.
  Common humanity: Common humanity recognizes that suffering and feelings of personal inadequacy are part of the shared human experience—something we all go through rather than something that happens to “me” alone.
  Mindfulness: Taking a balanced approach to negative emotions so that feelings are neither suppressed nor exaggerated. We cannot ignore our pain and feel compassion for it at the same time. Mindfulness requires that we not “overidentify” with thoughts and feelings, so that we are caught up and swept away by negativity.”
• “I always felt that someone, a long time ago, organized the affairs of the world into areas that made sense—categories of stuff that is perfectible, things that fit neatly in perfect bundles. The world of business, for example, is this way—line items, spreadsheets, things that add up, that can be perfected. The legal system—not always perfect, but nonetheless a mind-numbing effort to actually write down all kinds of laws and instructions that cover all aspects of being human, a kind of umbrella code of conduct we should all follow. Perfection is crucial in building an aircraft, a bridge, or a high-speed train. The code and mathematics residing just below the surface of the Internet is also this way. Things are either perfectly right or they will not work. So much of the world we work and live in is based upon being correct, being perfect. But after this someone got through organizing everything just perfectly, he (or probably a she) was left with a bunch of stuff that didn’t fit anywhere—things in a shoe box that had to go somewhere. So in desperation this person threw up her arms and said, “OK! Fine. All the rest of this stuff that isn’t perfectible, that doesn’t seem to fit anywhere else, will just have to be piled into this last, rather large, tattered box that we can sort of push behind the couch. Maybe later we can come back and figure where it all is supposed to fit in. Let’s label the box ART.” The problem was thankfully never fixed, and in time the box overflowed as more and more art piled up. I think the dilemma exists because art, among all the other tidy categories, most closely resembles what it is like to be human. To be alive. It is our nature to be imperfect. To have uncategorized feelings and emotions. To make or do things that don’t sometimes necessarily make sense. Art is all just perfectly imperfect.”
• “one of the most universal numbing strategies is what I call crazy-busy. I often say that when they start having twelve-step meetings for busy-aholics, they’ll need to rent out football stadiums. We are a culture of people who’ve bought into the idea that if we stay busy enough, the truth of our lives won’t catch up with us. Second, statistics dictate that there are very few people who haven’t been affected by addiction. I believe we all numb our feelings. We may not do it compulsively and chronically, which is addiction, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t numb our sense of vulnerability. And numbing vulnerability is especially debilitating because it doesn’t just deaden the pain of our difficult experiences; numbing vulnerability also dulls our experiences of love, joy, belonging, creativity, and empathy. We can’t selectively numb emotion.”
• “We may have a couple of hundred friends on Facebook, plus a slew of colleagues, real-life friends, and neighbors, but we feel alone and unseen. Because we are hardwired for connection, disconnection always creates pain. Feeling disconnected can be a normal part of life and relationships, but when coupled with the shame of believing that we’re disconnected because we’re not worthy of connection, it creates a pain that we want to numb.”
• “As I conducted my interviews, I realized that only one thing separated the men and women who felt a deep sense of love and belonging from the people who seemed to be struggling for it. That one thing was the belief in their worthiness. It’s as simple and complicated as this: If we want to fully experience love and belonging, we must believe that we are worthy of love and belonging.”
• “Connection: Connection is the energy that is created between people when they feel seen, heard, and valued; when they can give and receive without judgment. Belonging: Belonging is the innate human desire to be part of something larger than us. Because this yearning is so primal, we often try to acquire it by fitting in and by seeking approval, which are not only hollow substitutes for belonging, but often barriers to it. Because true belonging only happens when we present our authentic, imperfect selves to the world, our sense of belonging can never be greater than our level of self-acceptance. These definitions are crucial to understanding how we become disconnected in our lives and how to change. Living a connected life ultimately is about setting boundaries, spending less time and energy hustling and winning over people who don’t matter, and seeing the value of working on cultivating connection with family and close friends. Before I undertook this research, my question was “What’s the quickest way to make these feelings go away?” Today my question is “What are these feelings and where did they come from?” Invariably, the answers are that I’m not feeling connected enough to Steve or the kids, and that this comes from (take your pick) not sleeping enough, not playing enough, working too much, or trying to run from vulnerability. What has changed for me is that I know now that I can address these answers.”
• “I found that what emerged from the data was exactly what Louden points out: “It’s not what you do; it’s why you do it that makes the difference.” The invitation is to think about the intention behind our choices and, if helpful, to discuss these issues with family, close friends, or a helping professional. There aren’t any checklists or norms to help you identify shadow comforts or other destructive numbing behavior. This requires self-examination and reflection. Additionally, I would recommend listening with great care if the people you love say that they are concerned about you engaging in these types of behaviors. But ultimately these are questions that transcend what we know and how we feel—they’re about our spirit. Are my choices comforting and nourishing my spirit, or are they temporary reprieves from vulnerability and difficult emotions ultimately diminishing my spirit? Are my choices leading to my Wholeheartedness, or do they leave me feeling empty and searching?”
• “Everyone wants to know why customer service has gone to hell in a handbasket. I want to know why customer behavior has gone to hell in a handbasket. When we treat people as objects, we dehumanize them. We do something really terrible to their souls and to our own. Martin Buber, an Austrian-born philosopher, wrote about the differences between an I-it relationship and an I-you relationship. An I-it relationship is basically what we create when we are in transactions with people whom we treat like objects—people who are simply there to serve us or complete a task. I-you relationships are characterized by human connection and empathy. Buber wrote, “When two people relate to each other authentically and humanly, God is the electricity that surges between them.””
• “Craig Bryan, a University of Texas psychologist and suicide expert who recently left the air force, told Time magazine that the military finds itself in a catch-22: “We train our warriors to use controlled violence and aggression, to suppress strong emotional reactions in the face of adversity, to tolerate physical and emotional pain, and to overcome the fear of injury and death. These qualities are also associated with increased risk for suicide.” Bryan then explained that the military can’t decrease the intensity of that conditioning “without negatively affecting the fighting capability of our military.” And he gave chilling expression to the inherent danger of looking at the world through the Viking-or-Victim lens for those in the military when he noted, “Service members are, simply put, more capable of killing themselves by sheer consequence of their professional training.””
• “The Viking or Victim armor doesn’t just perpetuate behaviors such as dominance, control, and power over folks who see themselves as Vikings, it can also perpetuate a sense of ongoing victimhood for people who constantly struggle with the idea that they’re being targeted or unfairly treated. With this lens, there are only two possible positions that people can occupy—power over or powerless. In the interviews I heard many participants sound resigned to Victim simply because they didn’t want to become the only alternative in their opinion—Vikings.”
• “As far as connection and the military is concerned, I’m not advocating for a kinder, gentler fighting force—I understand the realities faced by nations and the soldiers who protect them. What I am advocating is a kinder, gentler public, one willing to embrace, support, and reach out to the men and women we pay to be invulnerable on our behalf. Are we willing to reach out and connect? A great example of how connection can heal and transform is the work being done by Team Red, White and Blue (TeamRWB.org). According to their mission statement, they believe the most effective way to impact a veteran’s life is through a meaningful relationship with someone in their community. Their program pairs wounded veterans with local volunteers. Together, they share meals, attend the veteran’s medical appointments, go to local sporting events, and engage in other social activities. This interaction allows veterans to grow in their community, meet supportive people, and find new passions in life.”
• “When we share vulnerability, especially shame stories, with someone with whom there is no connectivity, their emotional (and sometimes physical) response is often to wince, as if we have shone a floodlight in their eyes. Instead of a strand of delicate lights, our shared vulnerability is blinding, harsh, and unbearable. If we are on the receiving end, our hands fly up and cover our faces, we squeeze our entire faces (not just our eyes) shut, and we look away. When it’s over, we feel depleted, confused, and sometimes even manipulated. Not exactly the empathic response that those telling the story were hoping for. Even for those of us who study empathy and teach empathy skills, it’s rare that we’re able to stay attuned when someone’s oversharing has stretched us past our connectivity with them.”
• “sometimes people ask me how I decide what to share and how to share it when it comes to my own work. I share a lot of myself in my work, after all, and I certainly haven’t cultivated trusting relationships with all of you or all of the people in the audiences where I speak. It’s an important question, and the answer is that I don’t tell stories or share vulnerabilities with the public until I’ve worked through them with the people I love. I have my own boundaries around what I share and what I don’t share and I stay mindful of my intentions.”
• “When I asked other people who share their stories through blogs, books, and public speaking about this, it turns out that they are very similar in their approaches and intentions.Why am I sharing this? What outcome am I hoping for? What emotions am I experiencing? Do my intentions align with my values?Is there an outcome, response, or lack of a response that will hurt my feelings? Is this sharing in the service of connection? Am I genuinely asking the people in my life for what I need?”
• “When we stop caring about what people think, we lose our capacity for connection. When we become defined by what people think, we lose our willingness to be vulnerable. If we dismiss all the criticism, we lose out on important feedback, but if we subject ourselves to the hatefulness, our spirits get crushed. It’s a tightrope, shame resilience is the balance bar, and the safety net below is the one or two people in our lives who can help us reality-check the criticism and cynicism.”
• “In addition to walking the tightrope, practicing shame resilience, and cultivating a safety-net community that supports me when I’m feeling attacked or hurt, I’ve implemented two additional strategies. The first is simple: I only accept and pay attention to feedback from people who are also in the arena.”
• “The second strategy is also simple. I carry a small sheet of paper in my wallet that has written on it the names of people whose opinions of me matter. To be on that list, you have to love me for my strengths and struggles. You have to know that I’m trying to be Wholehearted, but I still cuss too much, flip people off under the steering wheel, and have both Lawrence Welk and Metallica on my iPod. You have to know and respect that I’m totally uncool. There’s a great quote from the movie Almost Famous that says, “The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you’re uncool.” To be on my list, you have to be what I call a “stretch-mark friend”—our connection has been stretched and pulled so much that it’s become part of who we are, a second skin, and there are a few scars to prove it. We’re totally uncool with each other. I don’t think anyone has more than one or two people who qualify for that list. The important thing is not to discount the stretch-mark friends to gain the approval of the strangers who are being mean and nasty or are too cool. Nothing serves as a better reminder of that than the immortal words of my friend Scott Stratten, author of UnMarketing: “Don’t try to win over the haters; you’re not the jackass whisperer.”
• “In addition to walking the tightrope, practicing shame resilience, and cultivating a safety-net community that supports me when I’m feeling attacked or hurt, I’ve implemented two additional strategies. The first is simple: I only accept and pay attention to feedback from people who are also in the arena. If you’re occasionally getting your butt kicked as you respond, and if you’re also figuring out how to stay open to feedback without getting pummeled by insults, I’m more likely to pay attention to your thoughts about my work. If, on the other hand, you’re not helping, contributing, or wrestling with your own gremlins, I’m not at all interested in your commentary. The second strategy is also simple. I carry a small sheet of paper in my wallet that has written on it the names of people whose opinions of me matter. To be on that list, you have to love me for my strengths and struggles. You have to know that I’m trying to be Wholehearted, but I still cuss too much, flip people off under the steering wheel, and have both Lawrence Welk and Metallica on my iPod. You have to know and respect that I’m totally uncool.”
• “I think of strategy as “the game plan,” or the detailed answer to the question “What do we want to achieve and how are we going to get there?” We all—families, religious groups, project teams, teachers from the kindergarten cluster—have game plans. And we all think about the goals we want to accomplish and the steps we need to take to be successful. Culture, on the other hand, is less about what we want to achieve and more about who we are.”
• “I can tell a lot about the culture and values of a group, family, or organization by asking these ten questions:
  What behaviors are rewarded? Punished? Where and how are people actually spending their resources (time, money, attention)? What rules and expectations are followed, enforced, and ignored? Do people feel safe and supported talking about how they feel and asking for what they need? What are the sacred cows? Who is most likely to tip them? Who stands the cows back up? What stories are legend and what values do they convey? What happens when someone fails, disappoints, or makes a mistake? How is vulnerability (uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure) perceived? How prevalent are shame and blame and how are they showing up? What’s the collective tolerance for discomfort? Is the discomfort of learning, trying new things, and giving and receiving feedback normalized, or is there a high premium put on comfort (and how does that look)?”
• “We don’t intentionally create cultures in our families, schools, communities, and organizations that fuel disengagement and disconnection, so how does it happen? Where’s the gap? The gap starts here: We can’t give people what we don’t have. Who we are matters immeasurably more than what we know or who we want to be. The space between our practiced values (what we’re actually doing, thinking, and feeling) and our aspirational values (what we want to do, think, and feel) is the value gap, or what I call “the disengagement divide.” It’s where we lose our employees, our clients, our students, our teachers, our congregations, and even our own children.
  Let’s take a look at some common issues that arise in the context of families. I’m using family examples because we’re all part of families. Even if we don’t have children, we were raised by adults. In each case a significant gap has grown between the practiced.1. Aspirational values: Honesty and Integrity
  Practiced values: Rationalizing and letting things slide
  Mom is always telling her kids that honesty and integrity are important, and that stealing and cheating in school won’t be tolerated. As they pile into the car after a long grocery shop, Mom realizes that the cashier didn’t charge her for the sodas in the bottom of the cart. Rather than going back into the store, she shrugs and says, “Wasn’t my fault. They’re making a mint anyway.”
  2. Aspirational values: Respect and Accountability
  Practiced value: Fast and easy is more important Dad is always driving home the importance of respect and accountability, but when Bobby intentionally breaks Sammy’s new Transformer, Dad is too busy on his BlackBerry to sit down with the brothers and talk about how they should treat each other’s toys. Instead of insisting that Bobby needs to apologize and make amends, he shrugs his shoulders, thinking, Boys will be boys, and tells them both to go to their rooms.
  3. Aspirational values: Gratitude and Respect
  Practiced values: Teasing, taking for granted, disrespect”
  Parents feel underappreciated and disrespected by kids, yet they have never modeled in themselves the behavior they want to see in their kids. They never say thank-you to each-other, they yell at each other and members of the family use put-downs with one another openly.
  4. Aspirational value: Setting limits
  Practiced Value: Rebellion and cool are important.
  mom and dad get mad at a kid for smoking and have zero tolerance for drinking, yet the daughter finds it hypocritical that parents are doing that when they had shown their kids before pictures of them partying and drinking.

My Engaged Feedback Checklist:

I know I’m ready to give feedback when: 

• I’m ready to sit next to you rather than across from you; 
• I’m willing to put the problem in front of us rather than between us (or sliding it toward you); 
• I’m ready to listen, ask questions, and accept that I may not fully understand the issue;
• I want to acknowledge what you do well instead of picking apart your mistakes
• I recognize your strengths and how you can use them to address your challenges 
• I can hold you accountable without shaming or blaming you; I’m willing to own my part
• I can genuinely thank you for your efforts rather than criticize you for your failings
• I can talk about how resolving these challenges will lead to your growth and opportunity
• and I can model the vulnerability and openness that I expect to see from you.

So to Berne, the solution for dealing with the difficulty of giving feedback is not to avoid giving difficult feedback, giving only good feedback or prevent feedback from being given. It is about having each one of us take off our armor – be open to feedback, focus on helping the person rather than pointing out faults, show empathy – sit next to them, ask questions be curious and recognize that you may not have the full picture. 

Rene gives an example of how to practice vulnerability when a salesperson is asked a question that they don’t know the answer for. She was asked about that by a salesperson “so to practise vulnerability in a sales situation when I’m asked a question I don’t know the answer for, should I say: I don’t know?” Brene answered that by saying yes and no. “I will find out that for you as I want to make sure that I have the correct information.” The worst case is that when we try to cover our lack of knowledge by making excuses, dodging the question or bullshitting. These are detrimental to building relationships. 

Success in entrepreneurship requires relying on a strong support network and have mentors willing to share with you their knowledge. You need to filter out the noise and be in touch with how you feel and think, and the rest is hardwork. That is the key for success. 

Take another example from the corporate world, the CEO of Lululemon. She created the space for individuals at the organization to be themselves and perform. Failing was not punished, the individual who failed had to clean up after themselves. Christine always thought prior that a CEO’s job was to come up with the best idea. Instead, she learned that leadership was about enabling others to be their best selves. You want to let them come to the idea in a purpose-led way. 

Examples of statements showing vulnerability:
I don’t know
I’d like help
It’s important to me
I’d love to make this happen
I am feeling challenged
This was tough
Let’s discuss this. I’d like to hear you point of view.
This means a lot to me. 

Leadership is about embracing discomfort. It is about embracing discomfort when standing up and talking to a crowd. It is about embracing the comfort that comes with challenging the status quo. If you’re not failing in your leadership domain, you’re not trying hard enough. 

The daring greatly manifesto:
Humans are wired for connections, curiousity and engagement.
We crave purpose and we have a deep desire to create and learn.
We want to take risks, embrace vulnerabilities, and be courageous.
When learning and working are dehumanized, we lose the opportunity to ask questions, be curious and take our capacity to grow to the next level.
Feedback is a function of respect, when we don’t get that feedback we question our level of contribution and your commitment.
When it comes to parenting, the question to ask is “are you the adult that you want your child to grow up to be?” rather than “what do you know about parenting”. 

Our idea of our self worth and feeling that we’re enough begins with our first family – during childhood. This either sets the stage for us to work very hard during our adult life on correcting issues that we have during our childhoold or to have the courage and resilience needed to go through life. 

When it comes to our sense of love, belonging and worthiness we are most influenced by our family of origin: what they tell us about ourselves and how we see our parents interact with each other. 

It is hard for parents to make radical changes to personality and temperment, but parents can help kids how to leverage their traits to navigate a never-enough world. Parenting provides the most fertible ground for building connection, love and meaning. 

We want to raise kids who live and love life with their whole hearts.
If the goal is to ingrain wholeheartedness in our children, this means that we raise children who are: 

• Accept their imperfections
• Feel a deep sense of love for themselves and others. 
• Have a sense of self-worth. They know that they are enough.
• Willing to work hard and invest effort to achieve their goals. 
• Don’t feel ashamed if they are imperfect or are struggling or are different. 
• Realize that love, connection is what gives meaning to life. 

It all starts from within: having an outlook on life focused on shame and blame means that our children will inherit that from us. After all, in order for us to teach our children how to live a wholehearted life, we need to experience that ourselves too. 

If we want our children to accept and love who they are, we must learn to love and accept who we are. 

The other thing about wholeheartedness is that it is not something that parents need to have figured out already and pass along- it is about going through the journey together and be willing to accept it.

People who are lovable, who experience love believe that they are worthy of love and belonging.

The important thing about worthiness is to remember that it has no prerequesite. Most of us have an implicit or explicit list of prerequisites in order for us to feel that we’re worthy. These requirements fall in the list of accomplishments, acquisitions and external acceptance. Many of us feel that we will be worthy when: 

• Lose weight
• Have someone ask us out
• Buy a house in a neighborhood
• No one finds out

The goal with parenting is to avoid sending messages to kids – knowingly and unknowingly, that our love to them is conditional upon certain actions/changes. Instead, we can focus on getting them to change while making it clear that our love to them is unconditional. 

There is a difference between perfectionism and between encouraging ourselves and kids to be the best of themselves. Brene’s daughter Ellen came home crying when she get her first “late to school” notice. She felt a sense of shame and that she upset her principal. Parents assured her that it was okay, and threw a “late” party that week. 

Many times, messages of perfection and worthiness are passed in subtle ways to children. How do you react when your child first enters the room? Do you look at whether their hair has been combed properly? Whether they have shoes matching their clothes?
When they come outside from playing with dirty hands, what is your first reaction? Do you focus on yelling and making sure that they don’t litter the house? Or do you flash a smile first because you know that you’re just happy for who they are? 

Parenting is also important in helping cultivate in kids a sense of worthiness by helping them differentiate between guilt and shame: The former has to do with putting a “good” or “bad” value to an action that a child committed while the latter questions the child themselves “they are bad, they are messy, they are not punctual” the latter makes the child questions if they are loved. This is not semantics, it can inhibit children’s willingness to explore and be creative. 

If a child tells a lie, there’s a potential to change that behavior. If she is a liar, where is the potential for change? 

Cultivating a sense of difference between guilt and shame requires having an open discussion with children about it. You can talk to children about shame and guilt when they are 4-5 years old. 

Shaming is something that we will all inevitably experience at some point in our lives. It is rampant in our culture. As parents, our job is not to prevent children from being ashamed, but instead to talk about it and discuss how to deal with it and how it shows up in our lives.
Parents need to differentiate shame from guilt. A mom who’s 75 years old and who admits to her 55-year-old daughter that she meant to correct the daughter’s actions rather than shaming her will benefit from apologizing to her daughter for inadvertently shaming her.
A good way to think of shaming is to think of life as a photo album. Each page in the photo album will have an 8*10 photo. If shame is present as large photos in these pages, you can conclude that shame has been a major theme of that life. However, if the large photos of the album are characterized by vulnerability, successes, failures, connections, and there are small photos here and there of shame experiences, shame won’t define the experience.
Normalizing is one of the most powerful ways we can help kids deal with struggles. Kids need to know that it is normal to fail, to feel unsure about changes in their bodies, to feel left out, and wanting to be brave but feeling scared. There is nothing more powerful than a parent telling their kid a “me too” story that shows that they share the same struggle and shame experiences they did.

Parents are confronted with controversial topics that they need to take a position on: circumcision, vaccination, feeding, co-sleeping. Parents are faced with difficult choices on such issues.
If we truly care about the welfare of our children, we need to stop judging the choices that parents make raising their kids. In cases where parents are abusing their kids, the police should be called. Barring that, there is no value to label parents as good or bad. As a parent, you could get both labels on the same day.
It is never too late to teach kids shame-resilience, or sharing with them that as parents we did not intend on shaming them, but instead, we may not have liked their actions. It helps promote healing and changes the way our children will deal with people and with their own kids.

We can talk all we want for our children about shame resilience. If we do not practise it in our own lives, our talk with them will not have credibility or the impact hoped. Our children need to see us trying new things, fail, pick up and try again without becoming self-critical.
Normalization: telling your kids that “me too”. Telling them that you have lived their experiences: the body image issues, the shaming experiences, failures, feeling left out and wanting to be brave but feeling left out.  There is something sacred when the kids hears “me too!” from a parent.

We can’t claim to care about the welfare of our children yet talk down other parents for the choices that they’re making.
If we really care about the wellbeing of our children, our job would be to raise them in congruence with our values while supporting other parents and the decisions they make raising their children.
Our job is also to value our own worthiness. When we feel good about the choices that we are making and engage with the world from a place of self-worth, we’ll feel no need to judge and attack.

The question of parenting values is about engagement: are we thinking through our choices? are we talking openly? do we make sure not to judge people? curious and willing to ask questions? willing to try and make mistakes?

We should remember that when parents make parenting choices that contradict ours, it does not mean that they look down on our choices. Instead, we should think of parenting as having multiple paths to arrive at the same goal.

Parents experience the most vulnerability when raising wholehearted children when they let their children experience adversity and struggle.

It’s not that our children can’t handle the adversity and struggle, it is that we as parents cannot stand the uncertainty and emotions and have trust that our children can deal with the situation effectively.

Helicopter parenting and intervening as a parent based on impulse is not helpful for children. it is also dangerous. that is because struggle is associated with hope. And aside from love and belonging, you should be wanting nothing more for children than to be hopeful.

Hope is not a fuzzy, and warm emotion. instead, it is a thought process – emotions play a supporting role in it, and a strategy that is based on the following:

you can set realistic goals ( you know where you want to be)

you are not deterred by obstacles and will be flexible when obstacles arise.

you believe in yourself

Children learn hopefulness from their parents.

parents who always shield their kids, protecting them in the arena, and always ensuring their victory will have children who would never experienced what it is like to dare greatly.

Brene tells the story of her daughter who got asked by her swim coach to swim at the meet. Eileen did not swim fast and suspected that she’ll finish after everyone else has and while the other group would be waiting for her to finish. She showed up to her mom crying and explained the situation to her. She told her mom that she did not want to participate because of her fears. Brene resisted the urge to comfort her by telling her that she doesn’t have to swim in any event she’s not comfortable with, and said that she’ll talk with her dad.

After talking to her dad, Brene informed her daughter that both parents decided that she should take it up with the coach. Daughter was disappointed, especially when the coach insisted on her participation.

Brene helped her daughter think about the situation differently. What if the goal becomes to just get wet rather than show up and finish or win? Brene recalled how many situations she’s encountered when she thought she needed to be prepared before doing something and how that prevented her from doing things she wanted to do.

Daughter finished last. next batch of swimmers were waiting for her. She left the pool after talking to her coach with a tear in her eyes, but she told her mom “I got wet”

The Wholehearted Parenting Manifesto:

Above all else, I want you to know that you are loved and lovable.

You will learn this from my words and actions: the lessons on love are in how I treat you and how I treat myself.

You will learn that you are worth of love and joy by seeing my practice self-compassion and embrace my own perfections.

We will practice courage in our family by showing up, sharing stories of struggle and strength. there will always be room in home for both.

I want you to engage with the world from a place of worthiness.

We will teach you compassion by precasting compassion with ourselves first, then with each other.

Together we will experience fear and loss. We will cry together.

i am not perfect but I will not hesitate being myself with you, and I want you to be yourself with me. We should never be afraid to share our vulnerabilities.

Play and joy will be values that we will cherish and practice in our family.

i want  you know to feel joy, and that is why I want you to experience vulnerability.

I want you to know joy, and that is why I want to share with you how to experience gratitude.
We will always have permission to be ourselves with each other. No matter what, you will always belong here.

I will share with you what I know by being a role model, by doing, by holding the values in the actions that I take.