Sometimes when we dare to walk into the arena the greatest critic we face is ourselves.
Shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing we are flawed and therefore unworthy of acceptance and belonging.
Shame hates it when we reach out and tell our story. It hates having words wrapped around it- it can't survive being shared. Shame loves secrecy. When we bury our story, the shame metastasizes.
Perfectionism hampers success. In fact, it’s often the path to depression, anxiety, addiction, and life-paralysis.
People are opting out of vital conversations about diversity and inclusivity because they fear looking wrong, saying something wrong, or being wrong. Choosing our own comfort over hard conversations i...
Owning our story and loving ourselves through that process is the bravest thing we’ll ever do. I still believe in this quote from two of my previous books—maybe now more than ever. But I know that it...
Over the years I’ve learned that a surefooted and confident mapmaker does not a swift traveler make. I stumble and fall, and I constantly find myself needing to change course. And even though I’m tryi...
One of the biggest surprises in this research was learning that fitting in and belonging are not the same thing. In fact, fitting in is one of the greatest barriers to belonging. Fitting in is about a...
Generosity is not a free pass for people to take advantage of us, treat us unfairly, or be purposefully disrespectful and mean.
Funerals, in fact, are one of the most powerful examples of collective pain. They feature in a surprising finding from my research on trust. When I asked participants to identify three to five specifi...
As Rumi says, We’re all just walking each other home.
My husband's a pediatrician, so he and I talk about parenting all the time. You can't raise children who have more shame resilience than you do.
We don’t judge people when we feel good about ourselves.
Eventually our anxiety is compounded and made unbearable by our belief that if we were just smarter, stronger, or better, we’d be able to handle everything.
When we go against the grain and put ourselves and our work out in the world, some people will feel threatened and they will go after what hurts the most—our appearance, our lovability, and even our p...
When we can let go of what other people think and own our story, we gain access to our worthiness—the feeling that we are enough just as we are and that we are worthy of love and belonging.
When a group or community doesn’t tolerate dissent and disagreement, it forgoes any experience of inextricable connection. There is no true belonging, only an unspoken treaty to hate the same people....
We risk missing out on joy when we get too busy chasing down the extraordinary.
True belonging is not passive. It's not the belonging that comes with just joining a group. It's not fitting in or pretending or selling out because it's safer. It's a practice that requires us to be...
The shield required that I stay small and quiet behind it so as not to draw attention to my imperfections and vulnerabilities. It was exhausting.