Brene Quotes

#1. Something has to die for forgiveness to take place. (Maya Angelou or Brene Brown)

Kit Crumpton

#2. Author Brene Brown - her books inspire me to "dare greatly".

Megan Alexander

#3. Sometimes the bravest and most important thing you can do is just show up.

Brene Brown

#4. Guilt is just as powerful, but its influence is positive, while shame's is destructive. Shame erodes our courage and fuels disengagement.

Brene Brown

#5. 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

#6. 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

#7. In our technology-crazed world, we've confused being communicative with feeling connected.

Brene Brown

#8. Most people and most organizations can't stand the uncertainty and the risk of real innovation. Learning and creating are inherently vulnerable. There's never enough certainty. People want guarantees.

Brene Brown

#9. The most powerful teaching moments are the ones where you screw up.

Brene Brown

#10. Courage is a value. My faith is the organizing principle in my life and what underpins my faith is courage and love, and so I have to be in the arena if I'm going to live in alignment with my values.

Brene Brown

#11. 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

#12. 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

#13. Cool is the emotional straightjacket. It makes us less available for connection which makes us less equipped for leadership roles.

Brene Brown

#14. To be forgiven is to be loved

Brene Brown

#15. I think our capacity for wholeheartedness can never be greater than our willingness to be broken-hearted. It means engaging with the world from a place of vulnerability and worthiness.

Brene Brown

#16. We can talk about courage and love and compassion until we sound like a greeting card store, but unless we're willing to have an honest conversation about what gets in the way of putting these into practice in our daily lives, we will never change. Never, ever.

Brene Brown

#17. Cruelty is easy, cheap and rampant.

Brene Brown

#18. Nothing has transformed my life more than realizing that it's a waste of time to evaluate my worthiness by weighing the reaction of the people in the stands.

Brene Brown

#19. 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

#20. If we can find someone who has earned the right to hear our story, we need to tell it. Shame loses power when it is spoken. In this way, we need to cultivate our story to let go of shame, and we need to develop shame resilience in order to cultivate our story.

Brene Brown

#21. We need to change what we say and what we allow to be said in front of us.

Brene Brown

#22. Those who feel lovable, who love, and who experience belonging simply believe they are worthy of love and belonging. I often say that Wholeheartedness is like the North Star: We never really arrive, but we certainly know if we're headed in the right direction.

Brene Brown

#23. Hope is not an emotion; it's a way of thinking or a cognitive process.

Brene Brown

#24. The irony is that when we're standing across from someone who is hidden or shielded by masks and armor, we feel frustrated and disconnected. That's the paradox here: Vulnerability is the last thing I want you to see in me, but the first thing I look for in you. If

Brene Brown

#25. Those who have a strong sense of love and belonging have the courage to be imperfect.

Brene Brown

#26. I'm just so grateful, because to feel this vulnerable means I'm alive.

Brene Brown

#27. There is no creativity without vulnerability.

Brene Brown

#28. 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

#29. 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

#30. You know how things always sound better when they're far away and you don't know the details?

Brene Brown

#31. Just because we didn't measure up to some standard of achievement doesn't mean that we don't possess gifts and talents that only we can bring to the world. Just because someone failed to see the value in what we can create or achieve doesn't change its worth or ours.

Brene Brown

#32. When we're anxious, disconnected, vulnerable, alone, and feeling helpless, the booze and food and work and endless hours online feel like comfort, but in reality they're only casting their long shadows over our lives.

Brene Brown

#33. I think that shame is a universal, paralyzing, painful emotion.

Brene Brown

#34. Laughter is the evidence that the chokehold of shame has been loosened. Knowing laughter is the moment we feel proof that our shame has been transformed. Like empathy, it strips shame to the bone, robs it of its power and forces it from the closet.

Brene Brown

#35. Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change.

Brene Brown

#36. 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

#37. Self-Compassion A moment of self-compassion can change your entire day. A string of such moments can change the course of your life. - CHRISTOPHER K. GERMER

Brene Brown

#38. 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

#39. Much of the beauty of light owes its existence to the dark.

Brene Brown

#40. When we spend a lifetime trying to distance ourselves from the parts of our lives that don't fit with who we think we're supposed to be, we stand outside of our story and hustle for our worthiness by constantly performing, perfecting, pleasing, and proving.

Brene Brown

#41. I don't have to chase extraordinary moments to find happiness - it's right in front of me if I'm paying attention and practicing gratitude.

Brene Brown

#42. 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

#43. 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

#44. A leader is anyone who holds her- or himself accountable for finding potential in people and processes.

Brene Brown

#45. We love seeing raw truth and openness in other people, but we're afraid to let them see it in us. We're afraid that our truth isn't enough - that what we have to offer isn't enough without the bells and whistles, without editing, and impressing.

Brene Brown

#46. Most people believe vulnerability is weakness. But really vulnerability is Courage. We must ask ourselves ... are we willing to show up and be seen.

Brene Brown

#47. The authenticity paradox: vulnerability is the last thing I want you to see in me and the first thing I look for in you.

Brene Brown

#48. Just because someone isn't willing or able to love us, it doesn't mean that we are unlovable.

Brene Brown

#49. when men feel that rush of inadequacy and smallness, they normally respond with anger and/or by completely turning off.

Brene Brown

#50. We teach what we have to learn. It's been an extraordinary journey that I couldn't have done with not only the research participants but the community, the tribe that we've built of people who are also on this journey.

Brene Brown

#51. 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

#52. We're a nation of exhausted and over-stressed adults raising over-scheduled children.

Brene Brown

#53. Here's the crux of the struggle: I want to experience your vulnerability but I don't want to be vulnerable. Vulnerability is courage in you and inadequacy in me. I'm drawn to your vulnerability but repelled by mine. As

Brene Brown

#54. We cannot ignore our pain and feel compassion for it at the same time.

Brene Brown

#55. People who wade into discomfort and vulnerability and tell the truth about their stories are the real badasses.

Brene Brown

#56. Daring greatly is not about winning or losing. It's about courage. In a world where scarcity and shame dominate and feeling afraid has become second nature, vulnerability is subversive.

Brene Brown

#57. 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.

Brene Brown

#58. Realized that only one thing separated the men and women who felt a deep sense of love and belonging from the people who seem to be struggling for it. That one thing is the belief in their worthiness.

Brene Brown

#59. Know how to chameleon our way through the day.

Brene Brown

#60. When we numb [hard feelings], we numb joy, we numb gratitude, we numb happiness.

Brene Brown

#61. To reignite creativity, innovation, and learning, leaders must rehumanize education and work. This means understanding how scarcity is affecting the way we lead and work, learning how to engage with vulnerability, and recognizing and combating shame.

Brene Brown

#62. I was raised in a family where vulnerability was barely tolerated: no training wheels on our bicycles, no goggles in the pool, just get it done. And so I grew up not only with discomfort about my own vulnerability, I didn't care for it in other people either.

Brene Brown

#63. I often refer to shame as the fear of disconnection
the fear of being perceived as flawed and unworthy of acceptance or belonging.

Brene Brown

#64. When the people we love stop paying attention, trust begins to slip away and hurt starts seeping in.

Brene Brown

#65. The intention and outcome of vulnerability is trust, intimacy and connection. The outcome of oversharing is distrust, disconnection - and usually a little judgment.

Brene Brown

#66. Shame works like the zoom lens on a camera. When we are feeling shame, the camera is zoomed in tight and all we see is our flawed selves, alone and struggling.(page 68)

Brene Brown

#67. The refugee in Syria doesn't benefit more if you conserve your kindness only for her and withhold it from your neighbor who's going through a divorce.

Brene Brown

#68. Vulnerability is about sharing our feelings and our experiences with people who have earned the right to hear them. Being vulnerable and open is mutual and an integral part of the trust-building process.

Brene Brown

#69. You cannot talk about race without talking about privilege. And when people start talking about privilege, they get paralyzed by shame.

Brene Brown

#70. If you own this story you get to write the ending.

Brene Brown

#71. 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.

Brene Brown

#72. 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

#73. I can encourage my daughter to love her body, but what really matters are the observations she makes about my relationship with my own body.

Brene Brown

#74. I guess I must have winced when Sylvia referred to the losers' list

Brene Brown

#75. One thing that I tell people all the time is, 'I'm not going to answer a call from you after nine o'clock at night or before nine o'clock in the morning unless it's an emergency.'

Brene Brown

#76. Shame derives its power from being unspeakable.

Brene Brown

#77. When we're looking for compassion, we need someone who is deeply rooted, is able to bend and, most of all, embraces us for our strengths and struggles.

Brene Brown

#78. 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

#79. The two most powerful words when we're in struggle: me too.

Brene Brown

#80. Courage is like - it's a habitus, a habit, a virtue: You get it by courageous acts. It's like you learn to swim by swimming. You learn courage by couraging.

Brene Brown

#81. I was also startled by the fact that research participants consistently described both joyfulness and gratitude as spiritual practices that were bound to a belief in human connectedness and a power greater than us.

Brene Brown

#82. There are infinite numbers of do overs for your teen girls.

Brene Brown

#83. You either walk into your story and own your truth, or you live outside of your story, hustling for your worthiness.

Brene Brown

#84. We judge people in areas where we're vulnerable to shame, especially picking folks who are doing worse than we're doing.

Brene Brown

#85. I am a storyteller and a researcher, and I'm sorry the world has a hard time straddling the tension of those two things, but that's who I am.

Brene Brown

#86. 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

#87. connections, so part of my transformation was owning and celebrating

Brene Brown

#88. Unused creativity is not benign.

Brene Brown

#89. I hesitate to use a pathologizing label, but underneath the so-called narcissistic personality is definitely shame and the paralyzing fear of being ordinary.

Brene Brown

#90. But as poet Mizuta Masahide wrote, "Barn's burnt down / now / I can see the moon.

Brene Brown

#91. Always put off writing by reorganizing my entire house and spending way too much time and money buying office supplies and organizing systems. Every single time.

Brene Brown

#92. Sometimes when we dare to walk into the arena the greatest critic we face is ourselves.

Brene Brown

#93. Faith is a place of mystery, where we find the courage to believe in what we cannot see and the strength to let go of our fear of uncertainty.

Brene Brown

#94. Fitting in is about assessing a situation and becoming who you need to be to be accepted. Belonging, on the other hand, doesn't require us to change who we are; it requires us to be who we are.

Brene Brown

#95. Hope is a function of struggle.

Brene Brown

#96. Caring about the welfare of children and shaming parents are mutually exclusive endeavors.

Brene Brown

#97. Courage is telling our story, not being immune to criticism.

Brene Brown

#98. 1. What more do I need to learn and understand about the situation? 2. What more do I need to learn and understand about the other people in the story? 3. What more do I need to learn and understand about myself?

Brene Brown

#99. For example, when I look at narcissism through the vulnerability lens, I see the shame-based fear of being ordinary.

Brene Brown

#100. Here's what is truly at the heart of wholeheartedness: Worthy now, not if, not when, we're worthy of love and belonging now. Right this minute. As is.

Brene Brown