PNTV - Daring Greatly by Brené Brown

You're listening to Optimize with Bryan Johnson. More wisdom in less time. Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to Philosopher's Notes tv. Today we've got another great book, Daring Greatly by Brene Brown. Daring greatly, Brene Brown. We've got the book, we've got the Philosopher's Note, where I unpack a number of my favorite big ideas. Today we're going to focus on five of my favorite big ideas. And if you don't know Brene Brown yet, check out her TED Talks. I'll put some links below. She's one of the world's leading researchers on shame and vulnerability, and she's amazing. We'll do this today and tomorrow we'll do another one of her books, the Gifts of Imperfection, where we'll unpack more of these ideas. But for now, let's kick this off with a quote. This is literally the first pages of the book. Renee tells us this. She says the phrase daring greatly is from Theodore Roosevelt's speech, Citizenship in a Republic. It was delivered in 1910. She says this is the passage that made the speech. It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs, who comes short again and again because there is no effort without error and shortcoming, but who does actually strive to do the deeds, who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly. It's amazing. And Brene proceeds to say that when she read that passage, she realized all of her work studying shame and vulnerability could come down to this, that it's all about being in the arena, being willing to be vulnerable. We're not bulletproof when we go out and we go for our dreams, but we need to dare a great way to do so. And that's what this book is all about. We're going to take a super quick look at just a handful of my favorite big ideas, and again, we'll compliment it with some more goodness tomorrow in the Gifts of Imperfection. But the number one idea that I want to start with is this idea of wholehearted living. Wholehearted living? What does that mean? Well, think of half hearted living. What is that like? Half hearted? I'm kind of Sort of going through it vis a vis wholehearted living. I'm all in. I'm committed. I'm going for it. I'm daring greatly. I'm in the arena. What she found was that some people fell short and got overwhelmed by their shame and by this sense of vulnerability as weakness. But not everyone did. Some people lived wholeheartedly. Those people embraced three different aspects. One, they were courageous. They embraced a lot more, which we'll talk about tomorrow. But today they will focus on these three things. Courage, compassion, and connection. They were courageous. They were willing to put themselves out there. They were compassionate. They realized they weren't the only ones struggling. Everyone falls short again and again and again. We all have the same ultimate challenge. We have different manifestations of that, but we all struggle with different things. When we can embrace that, we can have compassion we can suffer with. Then we can have the third aspect here. We can connect. We aren't disconnected or alienated. We're connected. We see that we're all in this together. We can demonstrate our courage, hopefully to inspire others to do the same thing. Courage, compassion, connection. Three core parts of wholehearted living. Again, we'll go into details that more tomorrow. For now, we're actually going to skip to number three, the paradox of vulnerability. So Brene unpacks and demystifies and demys debunks the myths of vulnerability. The number one myth of vulnerability is that vulnerability is weakness. Vulnerability is not weakness. Vulnerability is courageous. And she talks about the paradox of vulnerability. The paradox of vulnerability is very straightforward. And she does this in the book. She talks about it how? She talks about this in her second TED Talk, which you can check out. Here's the paradox. I admire someone else's vulnerability. I admire Brene when she talks about the fact that she had a breakdown. She always jokingly talks about a breakdown. And she writes a line through it. And she says it was a spiritual awakening. A breakdown, spiritual awakening. I admire that in her. I admire her courage to be vulnerable, to tell me that she's not perfect. I really feel connected when I see that. It's courageous in my mind when I see it in her. But when I think of my own vulnerability and I think of being vulnerability to you or to anyone else, I can tend to see that as a weakness. So we admire vulnerability in others. We see it as courageous. We dislike it. We hate it in ourselves. And we see it as a weakness we want to get rid of. We see it as courage in them. We see it as weakness in us. That's the paradox of vulnerability. But when we're able to be vulnerable and be courageous and be compassionate, that's how we form connection. It's the paradox of vulnerability. Now, one of the reasons why we dislike it in ourselves is we can wake up with what Brene calls vulnerability hangovers after we are willing to dare greatly. She shares an amazing story after giving her first TED Talk, and she publicly let people know that she had a breakdown. Spiritual awakening, and she woke up the next day with this vulnerability hangover and said, I cannot believe I just shared this. Hundreds of people now think I'm crazy. I can't even get out of bed this morning. I have a vulnerability hangover. Then she proceeds to say that she heard that it was going to go online and she wanted her husband to break in and somehow steal the video so it couldn't be shared. Long story short, not only did hundreds of people hear about her breakdown, millions of people did. And by her willingness to dare greatly to be vulnerable, to share her weaknesses, she's transformed millions of people's lives, certainly inspired them to transform their lives. That's the paradox of vulnerability and the vulnerability hangovers that come out of that at times. I'm sure you've experienced it. I know that I have. More than once. She also talks about the people in the stands. What do you do with the people in the stands? So if you're in the arena and you've got blood and dust and sweat on your face, you're marred and you're coming up short again and again and again. You're in the arena. What about the peanut gallery that's in the stands casting aspersions and criticisms at those of us who are striving to be in the arena. What about them? What do you do with them? Well, first, we appreciate the fact that a lot of people are actually in the arena with us. We want to start with gratitude for the people we're closest to who believe in us. And they aren't in the stands, they're in the arena with us. They're battling with us. We want to embrace them wholeheartedly and thank them for being there with us. And we want to be there with them as they go out and dare greatly. And. And then we want to distance ourselves from the opinions of others in the crowd. I talk in the note about Marcus Aurelius, who talks about the fact that why should I care what someone who doesn't even like. Who doesn't even like themselves thinks of me? So if someone doesn't even have a good opinion of themselves, why would I care if they don't have a good opinion of me? Marcus Earlais says. And the reality is that if I'm in the stands and I'm not in the arena, I'm going to project a lot of my issues onto you, a lot of resentment that I'm not actually trying, etc, etc, etc. And the people who are in the arena in their own ways, in different ways, even if they're not necessarily supporting you directly, they're the last ones to be super hypercritical. They get it, they understand that it's hard and they're not going to be the ones being all critical because they know what it's like to get their butts kicked. But the people who are in the stands who haven't chosen to Derek greatly are often the most vociferous in their criticism. She says we need to ignore him. And she quotes one of her friends, Scott Stratton, who wrote the great book Unmarketing, who says ignore those people. You are not the jackass whisperer. You're not going to win them over, so just let them be. Go on with your hero's journey, Go on with your daring greatly. People in the stands, we want to have compassion and also move on. Hope, big aspect of wholehearted living. Life kicks us around. That's a given. How do we cultivate hope, which is a key aspect of our whole harder living? She talks about the research on that. And the most important thing is that hope can be learned, hope can be cultivated. It's a big idea. How do we do that? Three step process. To boil it down, most simply, number one, you need to create goals. If you want to have hope, you got to have a future that you're excited about. You got to be leaning into something that you can actually dare greatly toward, right? What are your goals? Set them as realistic. They're stretched. Not snap goals. But what are your goals that fire you up? That's number one. Number two, how are you going to get there? Create your path, figure it out and then persist. Know that you're going to hit obstacles, not going to be a straight line from here to there. When you fall short, that doesn't mean that you should give up. Means you need to pick yourself up, pick yourself up, dust yourself off and go for it. Persist. So we have goals, we create a path and we persist in pursuit of that. And we believe we can achieve the goals. One, two, three. That's how we cultivate hope. If you're not feeling a lot of hope right now, start with, well, start with an embrace of your vulnerability and see that as weakness. You're willing to look at that and really step into these ideas. We're going to talk more about imperfection tomorrow, so we'll wait until tomorrow to get into that. But think about what goals inspire you. Create that path, persist and believe. It's a super quick look at daring. Greatly. I applaud you for being in the arena. I hope you enjoyed Tune in tomorrow. We talk about the gifts of imperfection. For now, have another awesome day. Look forward to sharing more soon. See you. Hi, this is Brian. 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