It’s October, and I find myself already dreading the winter holidays. To counteract this dread, I have begun rereading Brené Brown, and thinking about the power of vulnerability. If you haven’t watched her TED talk on this topic, it is one of the most viewed TED talks ever, with over 20 million views, and with good reason. She talks about being who you are as opposed to who you think you are supposed to be. See Brené Brown on Vulnerability.
Dr. Brown started her career by researching shame, and whether men and women experience it differently. Men, she believes, experience shame if they feel they are perceived as weak; women experience shame if they can’t juggle everything and make meeting competing demands seem easy. Her first book, I Thought It Was Just Me (But It Isn’t): Making the Journey from “What Will People Think?” to “I Am Enough,” (2007) deals a lot with the pursuit of perfectionism, and how to let go of it. By the end of the book, the reader understands that imperfection is what makes us human and helps connect us to each other.
This led to her next book, The Gifts of Imperfection: Your Guide to a Whole-Hearted Life (2010) that includes the idea that setting boundaries is a way to have compassion for both ourselves and others. She talks about “digging deep” so that when feeling stuck, she gets deliberate, through prayer or meditation, being inspired to make different choices, and getting going or taking action. Her next book, Daring Greatly (2012) contains 10 guideposts for wholehearted living, all in my humble opinion, easier said than done. They are reproduced below.
- Cultivate authenticity: Let go of what other people think.
- Cultivate self-compassion: Let go of perfectionism.
- Cultivate a resilient spirit: Let go of numbing and powerlessness.
- Cultivate gratitude and joy: Let go of scarcity and fear of the dark.
- Cultivate intuition and faith: Let go of the need for certainty.
- Cultivate creativity: Let go of comparison.
- Cultivate play and rest: Let go of exhaustion as a status symbol and productivity as of self-worth.
- Cultivate calm and stillness: Let go of anxiety as a lifestyle.
- Cultivate meaningful work: Let go of self-doubt and “supposed to.”
- Cultivate laughter, song and dance: Let go of always being cool and in control.
In her latest book, Rising Strong (2015), Dr. Brown is tackling the issue of picking ourselves back up after failure. She notes that this stems in part from the unacknowledged judgments we make about allowing ourselves to receive help when we need it. I know this is an issue in my own family, with the values imbued from generation to generation about picking yourself up by the bootstraps and moving on. In my case, my sister came to my rescue when I was unable to do this for myself, and I will be eternally grateful to her as a result. It’s not that we won’t fail from time to time, but rather how we move on from it that matters.
Admitting to ourselves that we often hold ourselves up to impossible standards is a wonderful gift as the holiday season begins. Then having some compassion for our perfectionist selves, and courageously admitting that we really cannot do it all, nor do we have to, can go a long way toward making the holiday season more enjoyable for ourselves and all those around us.
Hillary, thank you, this speaks to me right where I am at the moment. I’ve been thinking recently of revisiting Brené Brown’s work, and now I know that’s exactly what I should do, sooner rather than later! (And I certainly agree with you that her guideposts for wholehearted living are much easier said than done…)