I’ve been fulfilling my personal mission to introduce as many people to Dr. Brené Brown as possible. She is so entrenched in my life — the books, the weekly podcasts, the videos — that it’s jarring to me when people say they’ve never heard of her. I have my Leadership Development Program participants read her book Dare to Lead for a discussion group late in the program. Today though I pulled one of those cool teacher moves and was like “what if we just watch a video of her speak and then talk about it a bit afterward?” . . . because it’s Thanksgiving week and I’m tired.
None of them had seen her original Ted Talk so screened that together — I’ve seen it quite a few times now. “The Power of Vulnerability” was filmed back in 2010, before Darling Greatly was written (the book that introduced me to her), but it really hits at the core of her work. It’s a worthwhile 20-minute watch or rewatch any day.
Courage, the original definition of courage, when it first came into the English language — it’s from the Latin word cor, meaning heart — and the original definition was to tell the story of who you are with your whole heart. And so these folks had, very simply, the courage to be imperfect. They had the compassion to be kind to themselves first and then to others, because, as it turns out, we can’t practice compassion with other people if we can’t treat ourselves kindly. And the last was they had connection, and — this was the hard part — as a result of authenticity, they were willing to let go of who they thought they should be in order to be who they were, which you have to absolutely do that for connection.
-Excerpt from the transcript
With Love,
Natalie