Brene Brown is well-known for her research and work on shame and vulnerability. She writes and talks about courage, fear, love and life. I recently re-watched one of her TED Talks when I was looking for the link to email to a friend. I watched it intently and tried to drink in her words like I was dying of thirst. Watching her and listening to her message is so cathartic for me because it rings so true for me in my own experience of life. I want to be on the ‘whole hearted’ list. I want to live an authentic, grateful and vulnerable life. I don’t want to numb out feeling the bad, because I don’t want to miss out on feeling the good. Brene Brown talks about being your whole true self regardless of what that looks like.
And that takes courage. She defines courage in the following way: “the original definition of courage, when it first came into the English language — it’s from the Latin word cor, meaning heart — and the original definition was to tell the story of who you are with your whole heart”.
And the goal for all that courage, as Brene Brown says it (and as I see it), is “to let ourselves be seen, deeply seen, vulnerably seen; to love with our whole hearts, even though there’s no guarantee…to practice gratitude and joy in those moments of terror, when we’re wondering, Can I love you this much? Can I believe in this passionately? Can I be this fierce about this?…”
And so with courage and gratitude I am working on letting myself be vulnerably seen by the world. I’m working on telling the story of who I am with my whole heart. Every day.
Grateful for path-pavers and poets like Brene Brown.
Grateful for a vulnerable life and the freedom that vulnerability creates.
*Check out more about Brene Brown at http://brenebrown.com/ and see her TED Talk at http://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability.
The Sweetness Is... 