Top 100 Brene Brown Quotes
#1. Normally, when someone we love is turning away from a struggle, we self-protect by also turning away. That's definitely my first response. I think change is more likely to happen if both partners have common language and a shared lens to see problems.
Brene Brown
#2. Cruelty is cheap, easy, and rampant. It's also chicken-shit. Especially when you attack and criticize anonymously - like technology allows so many people to do these days.
Brene Brown
#3. Powerlessness is dangerous. For most of us, the inability to affect change is a desperate feeling. We need resilience and hope and a spirit that can carry us through the doubt and fear. We need to believe that we can effect change if we want to live and love with our whole hearts.
Brene Brown
#4. When we spend our lives (knowingly or unknowingly) pushing away vulnerability, we can't hold space open for the uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure of joy.
Brene Brown
#5. Judging has become such a part of our thinking patterns that we are rarely even aware of why and how we do it. It takes a great deal of conscious thinking or mindfulness to even bring the habit of judging into our awareness.
Brene Brown
#6. Those who have a strong sense of love and belonging have the courage to be imperfect.
Brene Brown
#7. 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.
Brene Brown
#8. Wholeheartedness. There are many tenets of Wholeheartedness, but at its very core is vulnerability and worthiness; facing uncertainty, exposure, and emotional risks, and knowing that I am enough.
Brene Brown
#9. Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change.
Brene Brown
#10. Neuroeconomist Paul Zak has found that hearing a story - a narrative with a beginning, middle, and end - causes our brains to release cortisol and oxytocin. These chemicals trigger the uniquely human abilities to connect, empathize, and make meaning.
Brene Brown
#11. Every time we choose courage we make everyone around us a little better and the world a little braver. And our world could stand to be a little braver and a little kinder.
Brene Brown
#12. We're wired for story. In a culture of scarcity and perfectionism, there's a surprisingly simple reason we want to own, integrate, and share our stories of struggle. We do this because we feel the most alive when we're connecting with others and being brave with our stories - it's in our biology.
Brene Brown
#13. Until we teach our children that they need to be concerned with how they look and with what other people think, they dance.
Brene Brown
#14. Just because someone isn't willing or able to love us, it doesn't mean that we are unlovable.
Brene Brown
#15. I realize that definitions spark controversy and disagreement, but I'm okay with that. I'd rather we debate the meaning of words that are important to us than not discuss them at all.
Brene Brown
#16. Know how to chameleon our way through the day.
Brene Brown
#17. We believe growth and learning are uncomfortable so it's going to happen here - you're going to feel that way. We want you to know that it's normal and it's an expectation here. You're not alone and we ask that you stay open and lean into it.
Brene Brown
#18. Yes, I am imperfect and vulnerable and sometimes afraid, but that doesn't change the truth that I am also brave and worthy of love and belonging.
Brene Brown
#19. Dance like no one is watching. Sing like no one is listening. Love like you've never been hurt and live like it's heaven on Earth.
Brene Brown
#21. Staying real" is one of the most courageous battles that we'll ever fight.
Brene Brown
#22. If you want to make a difference, the next time you see someone being cruel to another human being, take it personally. Take it personally because it is personal!
Brene Brown
#23. For me, the opposite of scarcity is not abundance. It's enough. I'm enough. My kids are enough.
Brene Brown
#24. It's always helpful to remember that when perfectionism is driving, shame is riding shotgun.
Brene Brown
#25. A study published in the October 22, 2014, issue of the journal Neuron suggests that the brain's chemistry changes when we become curious, helping us better learn and retain information. But curiosity is uncomfortable because it involves uncertainty and vulnerability.
Brene Brown
#26. 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.
Brene Brown
#27. Trust is a product of vulnerability that grows over time and requires work, attention, and full engagement.
Brene Brown
#28. I see the fear of never feeling extraordinary enough to be noticed, to be lovable, to belong, or to cultivate a sense of purpose. Sometimes the simple act of humanizing problems sheds an important light on them, a light that often goes out the minute a stigmatizing label is applied.
Brene Brown
#29. Worthiness doesn't have prerequisites.
Brene Brown
#30. Today, I'm going to believe that showing up is enough.
Brene Brown
#31. Vulnerability pushed, I pushed back. I lost the fight, but probably won my life back.
Brene Brown
#32. Courage has a ripple effect. Every time we choose courage, we make everyone around us a little better and the world a little braver. And our world could stand to be a little kinder and braver.
Brene Brown
#33. Feeling vulnerable, imperfect, and afraid is human. It's when we lose our capacity to hold space for these struggles that we become dangerous.
Brene Brown
#34. You can't ever do anything brave if you're wearing the straitjacket of 'What will people think?!
Brene Brown
#35. Yes, there can be no innovation, learning, or creativity without failure. But failing is painful. It fuels the "shouldas and couldas," which means judgment and shame are often lying in wait
Brene Brown
#36. We can have courage or we can have comfort, but we cannot have both.
Brene Brown
#37. As a vulnerability researcher, the greatest barrier I see is our low tolerance for vulnerability. We're almost afraid to be happy. We feel like it's inviting disaster.
Brene Brown
#38. Creativity is the way I share my soul with the world.
Brene Brown
#39. I'd love to skip over the hard stuff, but it just doesn't work. We don't change, we don't grow, and we don't move forward without the work.
Brene Brown
#40. We also need to consider letting go of the myth of self-sufficiency. One of the greatest barriers to connection is the cultural importance we place on "going it alone." Somehow we've come to equate success with not needing anyone.
Brene Brown
#41. Because we are compelled to make stories, we are often compelled to take incomplete stories and run with them.
Brene Brown
#42. When perfectionism is driving us, shame is riding shotgun and fear is that annoying backseat driver!
Brene Brown
#43. Authenticity is a collection of choices that we have to make every day. It's about the choice to show up and be real. The choice to be honest. The choice to let our true selves be seen.
Brene Brown
#44. Staying vulnerable is a risk we have to take if we want to experience connection.
Brene Brown
#45. The culture of shame is driven by fear, blame and disconnection, and it is often a powerful incubator for issues like perfectionism, stereotyping, gossiping and addiction.
Brene Brown
#46. I don't trust a theologian who dismisses the beauty of science or a scientist who doesn't believe in the power of mystery.
Brene Brown
#47. Our need for certainty in an endeavor as uncertain as raising children makes explicit 'how-to-parent' strategies both seductive and dangerous.
Brene Brown
#48. Requiring accountability while also extending your compassion is not the easiest course of action, but it is the most humane, and, ultimately, the safest for the community.
Brene Brown
#49. hope is a combination of setting goals, having the tenacity and perseverance to pursue them, and believing in our own abilities.
Brene Brown
#50. Finding someone to put down, judge, or criticize becomes a way to get out of the web or call attention away from our box. If you're doing worse than I am at something, I think, my chances of surviving are better.
Brene Brown
#51. every time we allow ourselves to lean into joy and give in to those moments, we build resilience and we cultivate hope.
Brene Brown
#52. How can we expect people to put value on our work when we don't value ourselves enough to set and hold uncomfortable boundaries?
Brene Brown
#53. Music always makes me feel less alone in the mess.
Brene Brown
#54. Shame corrodes the very part of us that believes we are capable of change.
Brene Brown
#55. But for many of us, there is no form of self-expression that makes us feel more vulnerable than dancing. It is full body vulnerability".
Brene Brown
#56. Vulnerability is like being naked onstage and hoping for applause rather than laughter.
Brene Brown
#57. Get Inspired: I'm continually inspired by Stuart Brown's work on play and Daniel Pink's book A Whole New Mind.4 If you want to learn more about the importance of play and rest, read these books.
Brene Brown
#58. Our rational, grown-up selves are good liars. The five-year-old tyrants within us are the ones who can tell it like it is.
Brene Brown
#59. The truth is: Belonging starts with self-acceptance. Your level of belonging, in fact, can never be greater than your level of self-acceptance, because believing that you're enough is what gives you the courage to be authentic, vulnerable and imperfect.
Brene Brown
#60. Group B: I've simply stopped sending unnecessary e-mails and asked my friends and colleagues to do the same. I've also started setting the expectation that it might take me a few days to respond. If it's important, call me. Don't text or e-mail. Call. Better yet, stop by my office.
Brene Brown
#61. Choosing to be curious is choosing to be vulnerable because it requires us to surrender to uncertainty.
Brene Brown
#62. If I feel good about my parenting, I have no interest in judging other people's choices. If I feel good about my body, I don't go around making fun of other people's weight or appearance. We're hard on each other because we're using each other as a launching pad out of our own perceived deficiency.
Brene Brown
#63. Women most often experience shame as a web of layered, conflicting, and competing social-community expectations. The expectations dictate who we should be, what we should be, how we should be.
Brene Brown
#64. Shame: We all have it. It's that gremlin that says 'I'm not enough.' Or, if you're feeling pretty confident, ... 'ooh, who do you think you are?' Shame always has a seat.
Brene Brown
#65. we are the kind of people who "don't do vulnerability," there's nothing that makes us feel more threatened and more incited to attack and shame people than to see someone daring greatly.
Brene Brown
#66. Through my research, I found that vulnerability is the glue that holds relationships together. It's the magic sauce.
Brene Brown
#67. Integrity is choosing courage over comfort; choosing what is right over what is fun, fast, or easy; and choosing to practice our values rather than simply professing them.
Brene Brown
#68. How often we all try to solve problems by doing more of what's not working - just doing it harder, grinding it out longer. We'll do anything to avoid the lowest of the low - self-examination.
Brene Brown
#70. I wasn't really testing it on myself as much as I was learning from other people about what it meant to live and love with your whole heart, and then thinking, oh my god, I'm not doing that.
Brene Brown
#71. The one thing that keeps us out of connection is our fear that we're not worthy of connection.
Brene Brown
#72. 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.
Brene Brown
#73. When they teach [doctors] how to suture, they also teach them how to stitch their self-worth to being all-powerful.
Brene Brown
#74. We're hardwired for connection. There's no arguing with the bioscience. But we can want it so badly we're trying to hot-wire it.
Brene Brown
#76. I became Vulnerability TED, like an action figure - like Ninja Barbie, but I'm Vulnerability TED.
Brene Brown
#77. Anger becomes an acceptable substitute for fear, which is forbidden.
Brene Brown
#78. For experiences and information to be integrated into our lives as true awareness, they have to be received with open hands, inquisitive minds, and wondering hearts.
Brene Brown
#79. Perfectionism didn't lead to results. It led to peanut butter.
Brene Brown
#81. Can I get to exquisite without having to feel really vulnerable in the process?" "No." "Well, shit. That's just awesome.
Brene Brown
#82. On a cultural level, I think the absence of honest conversation about the hard work that takes us from lying facedown in the arena to rising strong has led to two dangerous outcomes: the propensity to gold-plate grit and a badassery deficit.
Brene Brown
#83. If you can't say it to me in front of my kids, don't say it.
Brene Brown
#84. I'm learning that recognizing and leaning into the discomfort of vulnerability teaches us how to live with joy, gratitude, and grace. I'm also learning that the uncomfortable and scary leaning requires both spirit and resilience.
Brene Brown
#85. I'm not a parenting expert. In fact, I'm not sure that I even believe in the idea of 'parenting experts.' I'm an engaged, imperfect parent and a passionate researcher. I'm an experienced mapmaker and a stumbling traveler. Like many of you, parenting is by far my boldest and most daring adventure.
Brene Brown
#86. I'd say the one thing we have in common is that we're sick of feeling afraid.
Brene Brown
#87. You're a very good person who bad things have happened to. Besides, the world isn't split into good people and Death Eaters. We've all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is the part we choose to act on. That's who we really are.
Brene Brown
#88. I'm not perfect and I'm not always right, but I'm here, open, paying attention, loving you, and fully engaged.
Brene Brown
#89. Ironically, parenting is a shame and judgment minefield precisely because most of us are wading through uncertainty and self-doubt when it comes to raising our children.
Brene Brown
#90. would feel if we just had a really great guest room or a better kitchen, or if I got to speak here or write an article for that popular magazine.
Brene Brown
#91. Are you the adult that you want your child to grow up to be?
Brene Brown
#92. Loving and accepting ourselves are the ultimate acts of courage. In a society that says, "Put yourself last," self-love and self-acceptance are almost revolutionary.
Brene Brown
#93. Shame is the feeling you get when you believe that you're not worthy of anyone caring about you or loving you. That you're such a bad person that you can't even blame other people for not caring about you.
Brene Brown
#94. Knowledge is important, but only if we're being kind and gentle with ourselves as we work to discover who we are.
Brene Brown
#95. It's about showing up. And sometimes I don't do it. I almost always regret it, but sometimes I don't do it. Sometimes I walk into a situation where I'm intimidated and I want to be liked and I want to fit in, and I don't choose authenticity. And it's always pretty miserable.
Brene Brown
#96. Compassion and connection - the very things that give purpose and meaning to our lives - can only be learned if they are experienced. And our families are our first opportunities to experience these things.
Brene Brown
#97. The simple and honest process of letting people know that discomfort is normal, it's going to happen, why it happens, and why it's important, reduces anxiety, fear, and shame. Periods
Brene Brown
#98. Depression and anxiety are two of the body's first reactions to stockpiles of hurt. Of course, there are organic and biochemical reasons we experience clinical depression and debilitating anxiety - causes over which we have no control - but unrecognized pain and unprocessed hurt can also lead there.
Brene Brown
#99. Until both men and women are allowed to be who we are rather than who we are supposed to be, it will be impossible to achieve freedom and equality.
Brene Brown
#100. If we can share our story with someone who responds with empathy and understanding, shame can't survive.
Brene Brown
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