First and foremost, we need to be the adults we want our children to be. We should watch our own gossiping and anger. We should model the kindness we want to see.
The truth is: Belonging starts with self-acceptance. Your level of belonging, in fact, can never be greater than your level of self-acceptance, because believing that you're enough is what gives you t...
Waking up every day and loving someone who may or may not love us back, whose safety we can't ensure, who may stay in our lives or may leave without a moment's notice, who may be loyal to the day they...
• Belonging is being somewhere where you want to be, and they want you. Fitting in is being somewhere where you want to be, but they don’t care one way or the other. • Belonging is being accepted for...
There is a quiet transformation happening that is moving us from 'turning on each other' to 'turning toward each other.' Without question, that transformation will require shame resilience. If we're w...
Often people attempt to live their lives backwards: they try to have more things, or more money, in order to do more of what they want so that they will be happier. The way it actually works is the re...
It was December 15, 2012, the day after twenty-year-old Adam Lanza fatally shot twenty children between six and seven years old, as well as six adult staff members, at Sandy Hook Elementary School in...
DIG Deep—get deliberate, inspired, and going.
Conspiracy thinking is all about fear-based self-protection and our intolerance for uncertainty.
As I look back on what I’ve learned about shame, gender, and worthiness, the greatest lesson is this: If we’re going to find our way out of shame and back to each other, vulnerability is the path and...
Another great example of the power of vulnerability -- this time in a corporation -- is the leadership approach taken by Lululemon's CEO, Christine Day. In a video interview with CNN Money, Day explai...
As a shame researcher, I know that the very best thing to do in the midst of a shame attack is totally counterintuitive: Practice courage and reach out!
I'm not a parenting expert. In fact, I'm not sure that I even believe in the idea of 'parenting experts.' I'm an engaged, imperfect parent and a passionate researcher. I'm an experienced mapmaker and...
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 mos...
We put so much of our time and energy into making sure that we meet everyone’s expectations and into caring about what other people think of us, that we are often left feeling angry, resentful and fea...
Lying is a defiance of the truth. Bullshitting is a wholesale dismissal of the truth.
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 fe...
I've learned that men and women who are living wholehearted lives really allow themselves to soften into joy and happiness. They allow themselves to experience it.
The uncertainty of parenting can bring up feelings in us that range from frustration to terror.
Bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.Harry G. Frankfurt, Professor Emeritus, Yale University(From his book, On Bullshit)