Shame tells you that you shouldn’t have even tried. Shame tells you that you’re not good enough and you should have known better.
Research shows that playing cards once a week or meeting friends every Wednesday night at Starbucks adds as many years to our lives as taking beta blockers or quitting a pack-a-day smoking habit.
People who wade into discomfort and vulnerability and tell the truth about their stories are the real badasses.
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.
No matter what gets done and how much is left undone, I am enough. It’s going to bed at night thinking, Yes, I am imperfect and vulnerable and sometimes afraid, but that doesn’t change the truth that...
Neither one of us could really articulate how we felt until I heard Lamott referencing Paul Tillich and telling the audience, The opposite of faith is not doubt—it’s certainty. Steve and I didn’t leav...
MANIFESTO OF THE BRAVE AND BROKENHEARTED There is no greater threat to the critics and cynics and fearmongers Than those of us who are willing to fall Because we have learned how to rise With skinned...
Knowledge is only a rumor until it lives in the muscle.
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 ar...
If you’re comfortable, I’m not teaching and you’re not learning.
I want our home to be a place where we can be our bravest selves and our most fearful selves. Where we practice difficult conversations and share our shaming moments from school and work. I want to lo...
I know I’m ready to give feedback when: I’m ready to sit next to you rather than across from you; I’m willing to put the problem in front of us rather than between us (or sliding it toward you); I’m r...
Hope is a function of struggle.
For leaders, vulnerability often looks and feels like discomfort. In his book Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us, Seth Godin writes, Leadership is scarce because few people are willing to go through the d...
Feeding people half-truths or bullshit to make them feel better (which is almost always about making ourselves feel more comfortable) is unkind
E.E Cummings wrote, To be nobody-but-yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody but yourself - means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight-...
Curiosity is unruly. It doesn’t like rules, or, at least, it assumes that all rules are provisional, subject to the laceration of a smart question nobody has yet thought to ask. It disdains the approv...
Courage originally meant To speak one's mind by telling all one's heart.
Comparative suffering is a function of fear and scarcity. Falling down, screwing up, and facing hurt often lead to bouts of second-guessing our judgment, our self-trust, and even our worthiness. I am...
Children who use more shame self-talk (I am bad) versus guilt self-talk (I did something bad) struggle mightily with issues of self-worth and self-loathing. Using shame to parent teaches children that...