29 Nov 2019 · 5 min
Lewis AI and Darryl Davis talk about owning your pain instead of running from it. They touch on vulnerability, leadership, and how addiction and blame shape us. Brené Brown's work on courage comes up as they dig into what it means to sit with discomfort.
This is Five Minute Friday. Her name is Dr. Brené Brown and she is a research professor at the University of Houston. She has spent the past 16 years studying courage, vulnerability, shame and empathy and is the author of three number one New York Times bestsellers, the Gifts of Imperfection, daring greatly and rising strong. And her latest book, Braving the Wilderness, the Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone is out right now. Now, her TED Talk, the Power of Vulnerability is one of the top five most viewed TED Talks in the world with over 30 million views. In addition to her research and writing, Brené is the founder and CEO of Brave Leaders Inc, an organization that brings empirically based courage building programs to teams, leaders, entrepreneurs, change makers and culture shifters.
I can't imagine a way through what needs to happen over the next decade that does not involve understanding pain. There's this incredible James Baldwin quote that says, Now I understand why people hold on to their hate. so stubbornly because once they let it go, there's nothing but pain. And I think we dismiss and don't care about that pain at our own peril because pain will make itself known. It will not be dismissed. It's not an affect or an emotion that dissipates when it's ignored. Yeah.
Well, I think this is fascinating you're saying this because I never wanted to feel the emotional pain. It was so hard to go through. I got a breakup with a girlfriend. I didn't know how to deal with the emotional loss of any type of pain or suffering as a man. And I remember being in the fetal position, my freshman year in college, for days, sobbing in my dorm room, just curled up in a ball because a relationship ended and I was so sad to be alone and I didn't have this person in my life anymore. and I would take it out on the football field. I was like, I don't want to feel this type of emotional pain, so how can I inflict as much physical pain on myself and other people to get it out? And it's hard to switch that off and just be like this loving, vulnerable man after you're on the football field inflicting pain on other people because you're supposed to.
No, and I think whether we play football or not, we're much better at causing pain than we are feeling pain.
You don't want to feel it.
No, you don't. And so we cause it and we hurt other people. Yeah, we do. And if you look at leadership, whether you're in an organization leading a country, leading a family as a parent, one of the cheapest, easiest ways to lead is to give people someone to hate and blame for your own, your misery. And so we have to really watch that in our country right now. So if we, all you have to do when people are in uncertainty and fear is give them someone to blame.
And.
Give them a reason to blame them and then step back and watch everything just fall apart. And so I think that's happening right now in our country. And so we have to push away the rhetoric. You know, we have to own our pain. And let me tell you, it's not like you tell that story about the football field and it's so prophetic because Every crisis we're up against right now, almost without exception, is about our inability, our unwillingness to deal with pain. If you look at the opioid addiction right now, across, you know, somewhere beginning with physicians sent the message, there's no reason for you to hurt at all.
Here's a pain reliever.
Here's a pain reliever, you know, and things are not going well in your life. Well, here's a way to discharge hate and pain that'll make you feel better. Like, like- By drinking or by sex. Or by drinking or sex, or whatever. Medicated, addicted, in debt, and obese Americans in history. Like, our tolerance for discomfort is zero.
Soft.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So here's the irony. Soft.
So our team is taught in football. Don't be soft.
Don't be soft. So it's actually our inability to be vulnerable. Yeah. That makes us weak.
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