Brené Brown Quotes

We can't pack down hurt, nor can we off-load it to someone else while maintaining our authenticity a...

I think if you follow anyone home, whether they live in Houston or London, and you sit at their dinn...

You're imperfect, and you're wired for struggle, but you are worthy of love and belonging.

I'm not a parenting expert. In fact, I'm not sure that I even believe in the idea of 'parenting expe...

The difficult thing is that vulnerability is the first thing I look for in you and the last thing I'...

Many people think of perfectionism as striving to be your best, but it is not about self-improvement...

Shame is the most powerful, master emotion. It's the fear that we're not good enough.

'Crazy-busy' is a great armor, it's a great way for numbing. What a lot of us do is that we stay so ...

One thing that I tell people all the time is, 'I'm not going to answer a call from you after nine o'...

The best marriages are the ones where we can go out in the world and really put ourselves out there....

A deep sense of love and belonging is an irreducible need of all people. We are biologically, cognit...

I hesitate to use a pathologizing label, but underneath the so-called narcissistic personality is de...

In many ways, September feels like the busiest time of the year: The kids go back to school, work pi...

If I feel good about my parenting, I have no interest in judging other people's choices. If I feel g...

Ironically, parenting is a shame and judgment minefield precisely because most of us are wading thro...

Faith minus vulnerability and mystery equals extremism. If you've got all the answers, then don't ca...

I can encourage my daughter to love her body, but what really matters are the observations she makes...

First and foremost, we need to be the adults we want our children to be. We should watch our own gos...

Daring to set boundaries is about having the courage to love ourselves, even when we risk disappoint...

When the people we love stop paying attention, trust begins to slip away and hurt starts seeping in.

As a shame researcher, I know that the very best thing to do in the midst of a shame attack is total...

Social media has given us this idea that we should all have a posse of friends when in reality, if w...

Waking up every day and loving someone who may or may not love us back, whose safety we can't ensure...

Live-tweeting your bikini wax is not vulnerability. Nor is posting a blow-by-blow of your divorce . ...

Guilt is just as powerful, but its influence is positive, while shame's is destructive. Shame erodes...

I've learned that men and women who are living wholehearted lives really allow themselves to soften ...

There is no innovation and creativity without failure. Period.

My husband's a pediatrician, so he and I talk about parenting all the time. You can't raise children...

The intention and outcome of vulnerability is trust, intimacy and connection. The outcome of oversha...

I spent a lot of years trying to outrun or outsmart vulnerability by making things certain and defin...

The truth is: Belonging starts with self-acceptance. Your level of belonging, in fact, can never be ...

Perfectionism is not the same thing as striving to be our best. Perfectionism is not about healthy a...

The uncertainty of parenting can bring up feelings in us that range from frustration to terror.

Talk to yourself like you would to someone you love.

At the exact time that our society embraces shaming, blaming, judgment, and rejection, it also holds...

I don't have to chase extraordinary moments to find happiness - it's right in front of me if I'm pay...

Courage, the original definition of courage, when it first came into the English language — it’s fro...

Daring to set boundaries is about having the courage to love ourselves, even when we risk disappoint...

I now see how owning our story and loving ourselves through that process is the bravest thing that w...

It is easy to see how quickly expectations become layered, competitive and conflicting. This is how ...

Those who have a strong sense of love and belonging have the courage to be imperfect.

We cultivate love when we allow our most vulnerable and powerful selves to be deeply seen and known,...

When you shut down vulnerability, you shut down opportunity

One of the greatest barriers to connection is the cultural importance we place on "going it alone." ...

Shame hates it when we reach out and tell our story. It hates having words wrapped around it- it can...

Courage originally meant "To speak one's mind by telling all one's heart.

Spirituality is recognizing and celebrating that we are all inextricably connected to each other by ...

Ordinary courage is about putting our vulnerability on the line. In today’s world, that’s pretty ext...

Dr. Kristin Neff is a researcher and professor at the University of Texas at Austin. She runs the Se...

Fear of the Dark I’ve always been prone to worry and anxiety, but after I became a mother, negotiati...

Cruelty is easy, cheap and rampant.

Until we can receive with an open heart, we are never really giving with an open heart.

Authenticity is a collection of choices that we have to make every day. It's about the choice to sho...

Understanding the difference between healthy striving and perfectionism is critical to laying down t...

Practicing self-love means learning how to trust ourselves, to treat ourselves with respect, and to ...

Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it. Embr...

When we fail to set boundaries and hold people accountable, we feel used and mistreated. This is why...

Fitting in is about assessing a situation and becoming who you need to be to be accepted. Belonging,...

Requiring accountability while also extending your compassion is not the easiest course of action, b...

Denying emotion is not avoiding the high curbs, it's never taking your car out of the garage. It's s...

This doesn't mean that we stop helping people set goals or that we stop expecting people to grow and...

Folks write down the name of someone who fills them with frustration, disappointment, and/or resentm...

When unconscious storytelling becomes out default, we often keep tripping over the same issue, stayi...

Too much twee emotional expression--too many claims like, "Everything is awesome," or "I just never ...

When you judge yourself for needing help, you judge those you are helping. When you attach value to ...

The rising strong reckoning has two deceptively simple parts: (1) engaging with our feelings, and (2...

Talk to ourselves in the same way we'd talk to someone we'd love. Yes, you made a mistake. You're hu...

To be forgiven is to be loved

When you judge yourself for needing help, you judge those you are helping. When you attach value to ...

Our silence about grief serves no one. We can't heal if we can't grieve; we can't forgive if we can'...

When you look away from a homeless person, you diminish their humanity and your own.

The reckoning is how we walk into our story; the rumble is where we own it. The goal of the rumble i...

Given the dark fears we feel when we experience loss, nothing is more generous and loving than the w...

One of the reasons we judge each other so harshly in this world of parenting is because... we percei...

Grief seems to create losses within us that reach beyond our awareness--we feel as if we're missing ...

Maybe looking away is about privilege. I need to think harder and longer about my choices and recogn...

Heartbreak is an altogether different thing. Disappointment doesn't grow into heartbreak, nor does f...

We're wired for story. In a culture of scarcity and perfectionism, there's a surprisingly simple rea...

In the absence of data, we will always make up stories. In fact, the need to make up a story, especi...

To know shame is to be human. And to have the capacity for empathy is also to be human.

Shame corrodes the very part of us that believes we are capable of change.

Compassion is not a virtue -- it is a commitment. It's not something we have or don't have -- it's s...

If you want to make a difference, the next time you see someone being cruel to another human being, ...

We cannot grow when we are in shame, and we can't use shame to change ourselves or others.

When we are experience shame we are often thrown into crisis mode...In this mode, the neocortex is b...

Courage is a heart word. The root of the word courage is cor - the Latin word for heart. In one of i...

The biggest potential for helping us overcome shame is this: We are “those people.” The truth is…we ...

Another great example of the power of vulnerability -- this time in a corporation -- is the leadersh...

What we know matters but who we are matters more.

Vulnerability is the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, courage, empathy, and creativity. It is the...

It's in our biology to trust what we see with our eyes. This makes living in a carefully edited, ove...

Knowing what I do now, I think about shame and worthiness in this way: 'It's the album, not the pict...

Shame derives its power from being unspeakable.

I only accept and pay attention to feedback from people who are also in the arena. If you're occasio...

There is no question that engagement requires sacrifice, but that's what we signed up for when we de...

Numb the dark and you numb the light.

The willingness to show up changes us, It makes us a little braver each time.

You can't claim to care about the welfare of children if you're shaming other parents for the choice...

After doing this work or the past twelve years and watching scarcity ride roughshod over our familie...

I've found what makes children happy doesn't always prepare them to be courageous, engaged adults.

Worrying about scarcity is our culture's version of post-traumatic stress. It happens when we've bee...