The Tim Ferriss Show - #100: Brené Brown on Vulnerability and Home Run TED Talks

Episode Date: August 28, 2015

Dr. Brené Brown (@BreneBrown) is a research professor at the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work. Brené’s 2010 TEDx Houston talk, The Power of Vulnerability, has been viewed more than 20 million times and is one of the top five most viewed TED talks in the world. She has spent the past 13 years studying vulnerability, courage, worthiness, and shame. Brené is the author of two #1 New York Times bestsellers: Daring Greatly and The Gifts of Imperfection. Her brand-new book is titled Rising Strong. In it, she writes, “If we are brave enough, often enough, we will fall. This is a book about what it takes to get back up.” She is also the Founder and CEO for The Daring Way™, an organization that brings her work on vulnerability, courage, shame and worthiness to organizations, schools, communities, and families. 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limited, I share it first with Five Bullet Friday subscribers. So check it out, tim.blog forward slash Friday. If you listen to this podcast, it's very likely that you'd dig it a lot and you can, of course, easily subscribe any time. So easy peasy. Again, that's tim.blog forward slash Friday. And thanks for checking it out. If the spirit moves you. Hello, my friends, you muscular little oompa loompas. Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferris Show. My name is Tim Ferris, and my job is to deconstruct world-class performers, people who are the best at what they do, and to tease out the habits, routines, findings that you can apply to your own life, whether they are people like Arnold Schwarzenegger, chess prodigies like Josh Waitzkin, directors like Jon Favreau or Robert Rodriguez, and hedge fund managers, military strategists, everyone in between. Today we have a researcher, Dr. Brené Brown. And you can say hi to her on Twitter at Brene Brown is a research professor at the University

of Houston Graduate School of Social Work. And her 2010 TEDx talk, The Power of Vulnerability, has more than 20 million views. It is one of the top five most viewed TED talks in the world, which is very hard to pull off. She has other talks with millions and millions of views. So once you're lucky, twice you're good. She is very good. She has spent the past 13 years studying vulnerability, courage, worthiness, and shame.

All of my favorites. Brene is the author of two number one New York Times bestsellers, Daring Greatly and The Gifts of Imperfection. Her brand new book is titled Rising Strong. And in it, she writes, if we are brave enough, often enough, we will fall. This is a book about what it takes to get back up. And she interviews some very interesting folks, top performers in the corporate world, startup world, military world, and gathers data to support the recommendations and conclusions in these books. So I have a copy of Rising Strong

and encourage you to check it out. She's also the founder and CEO for The Daring Way, which is an organization that brings her work to organizations, schools, communities, and families. And without further ado, I want to let you enjoy this wide-ranging conversation that touches on some sensitive topics, you might say, with Dr. Brené Brown. Brené, welcome to the show. Thank you. I'm excited to talk to you. And my fans are excited to hear all of your wisdom and dig into your research.

And I suppose we could start with some context for those people who are not familiar with your work. When you are asked the question, what do you do? How do you answer that? I actually have two answers. One, if I want to keep talking and one if I don't. So if I don't want to keep talking, I usually will just say I'm a shame researcher and that scares people. And then they usually go on. they usually say, so what do you think about the Texans this season or something? And then if I'm in a normal conversation, I'll

say that I study vulnerability and courage, shame and worthiness. And that's kind of terrible, isn't it? That I do that. I don't think it's terrible. I think that you can do kind of a reverse George Costanza when you don't want to talk to someone if you're trapped on a plane or something. So instead of saying – picking the most interesting thing to get them to admire you and say you're an architect, you can be like, oh, yes. No, I'm a – you could bring up something extremely awkward, right? I research off-color sex trafficking or something and then depending on who you're sitting next to, I suppose it could be a good character check, right? It's a total character check because if they launch in after they hear I study shame, then that kind of bites me on the ass a little bit. But it works pretty well.

You're like, you're not following the script, pal. You're not following the script, pal. You're off script. So speaking of script, and I am not the only one who's been impressed with your presenting ability, but it seems like one of the ways of vulnerability, although that has more than 21 million views now, and some of your other presentations have more than 5 million views. So certainly, once you're lucky twice, you're good. You're good at this. Could you give people an overview of the components that make a hit speech or TED Talk? Because you're clearly good at it. It's not a one hit wonder. How did the power of vulnerability come to be? How did you decide on the, on that, on the content and rehearse it and so on? Just the, the, the Genesis story,

I think would be very interesting. Um, yeah, I'd love to share it cause it's been a, a huge learning for me. So the TEDx talk was kind of a combination of an accident and an experiment. The curators of TEDx Houston asked me to open their first event. And they called and they were really excited. And I asked, I said, sure, I'd love to. I was really excited. And they, Javier Fadul is the curator. And I said, what do you'd love to. I was really excited. And they, Javier Fadul is the curator. And I said, what do you want me to talk about?

And, you know, when you study things like shame and vulnerability, people can get very prescriptive about what they want you to say and what they don't want you to say. And it really has no bearing actually on what I do say, but they like to think in the beginning that they're going to control some of that. And so I said, you know, do you have any thoughts? And his answer was, be awesome, have fun. And the day before the, yeah, which is, you would think it's liberating and, but it's also kind of terrifying.

Right. And so, yeah. The blessing and the curse of no constraints. Exactly. Exactly. And so I was on a flight home the night before a long flight with my husband and kids. And I looked at Steve and I was like, I think I'm going to experiment tomorrow. And my husband looked at me and he said, that sounds like a terrible idea. And I said, yeah.

And I said, no, I think I'm going to actually be really vulnerable while I'm talking about vulnerability. And he said, again, not sure that's a great idea. So I went to the TED event and I experimented. I really kind of put myself out there. I talked about my own breakdown, spiritual awakening. I talked about having to go to therapy and how much I really hated that. I kind of thought it was bullshit, but I had to do it. And I really put myself out there.

And I remember driving home and thinking, I will never do that again. I mean, I literally had what I thought was one of the worst vulnerability hangovers of my career. And I was so grateful. I have to tell you, I was so grateful that there were only 500 people there and that it was recorded at University of Houston where I've taught for 20 years. So most people kind of are like, oh yeah, that's Brene. I don't have any memory of that being recorded. And I'm pretty sure, maybe the universe just aligned and thought, you know, let's not let her know that this is being recorded. So when it came out on the TEDx site, I was pretty mortified. And Steve's like, no one's going to watch it.

Don't worry. And then several months later, Chris Anderson called and said, Hey, we're, we don't usually put the TEDx talks up, but we really, we love your talk and we want to put it up. And I think the conversation like this, which is an interesting form of leadership.

I think I said, no, I'm flattered, but no, thank you. And he said, I think December 23rd will be great. And then that was that.

And so it went up on December 23rd. And again, Steve was like, don't worry, Renee. I don't think that people are not going to see it. And it went like one, two, one million, one million, one, three million. And I was like, oh.

And so if I look back, so my learning, my takeaway from that experience was this. If I'm not a little bit nauseous when I'm done, I probably did not show up like I should have shown up. That's great. That echoes advice from, I believe it's Neil Gaiman in the commencement speech, Make Good Art, where he talked about, you know, when you feel like you're walking down the street naked and extremely uncomfortable, maybe you're starting to get it right. I'm paraphrasing, of course, but that's a really good point. I mean, your delivery was so spot on. How did you rehearse? Or did you? I mean, maybe you're just, maybe that is a language that you're naturally fluent in, presentation that is. But how did you prep for it? I don't rehearse at all.

In fact, rehearsing is really, so when I rehearse, in the traditional way we think about rehearsing, it's about what I'm going to say and what I'm going to say it and how I'm going to say it. And so if I do that, what ends up happening, and I've tried a couple times, I get so like prefrontal cortex, I get so wrapped up and, oh, wasn't I supposed to pause here? And wasn't I supposed to do this there?

That I am not connecting. And so for me, it is use images as the arc, understand what image, every image means to me and what I want to wrap around that image and then require that the house lights are on so I can see people's faces. That's a good rule. That's a really good rule. Yeah. So that thing where they're, you know, and I, I rarely, rarely allow any of my presentations to be videotaped. Um, very, very rarely because one, if they're taping you, you have to be super hot under the lights and the audience has to be dark. And then it's performance, not connection for me. And then secondly, I don't feel like it's anyone's business what

happens between me and an audience at any given moment. I mean, I just really feel like that's a moment. And I think that comes, I mean, I'm speculating here, but from a lot of experience teaching, right? Being in front of students as opposed to viewing yourself as being in front of an audience, which I think enables a very different relationship with the people you're trying to communicate to or communicate with and to provide perhaps a little bit of connective tissue for people who are curious about your research. You mentioned vulnerability, you mentioned shame. How should we define these terms just for the purposes of this conversation? And so people can understand, And how did you research them? You know, I think the best place to start when we're talking about kind of what words mean, at least the way I use them in my work, is to really start with vulnerability. Because I think if you can get your head and heart wrapped about around vulnerability, the others make a lot more sense.

So to me, I don't know how you were raised and how the listeners were raised, but I was raised to believe that vulnerability is weakness. That you wake up in the morning, you armor up, you go out into the day, you kick some ass, you don't let people see your emotions, you mitigate uncertainty and risk as much as you can, and that's the way you live. And so from the very earliest stages of my research, you know, 13 years ago, that is not how vulnerability emerged in the data. Vulnerability emerged as not weakness, but probably our best measure of courage. So when we asked people, you know, what is vulnerability? They would say things like, it's the first date after my divorce. It's trying to get pregnant after my second miscarriage. It's sitting with my wife who has stage four breast cancer and making plans for our three-year-old and five-year-old.

It's starting my own business. It's taking my business public. It's getting fired. It's firing someone. It's getting promoted. It's missing the promotion. And so it became very clear to me early on that the simplest definition for vulnerability is really uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure. Vulnerability is about the willingness to show saw someone doing something truly brave, it is very easy to see how vulnerability underpins all acts of courage. Sure. And yeah, I mean, I just think it's about really, it's about putting yourself out there, which is increasingly difficult to do in this very hypercritical, unforgiving kind of media culture.

And so vulnerability is showing up and being seen. Courage to me, you know, I love the word courage because the root of the word is cur and the Latin for cur is heart. And when courage first came into the English language, the original definition was to tell the story of you are, of who you are with your whole heart. That was an act of courage. Um, so to me, courage is really about choosing what's right over what's easy, practicing your values, not just professing them and choosing to be brave over being comfortable. And these, I love this type of contextual kind of prelude. It's not a prelude, but it's defining because I think it's so important for any important conversation. And certainly I think for most conversations to make sure that the people in the conversation are talking about the same thing, right? Oh, it's the to be honest, say in intimate relationships, are actually can have,

no pun or no allusion intended, but you know, 50 shades of gray, right? I mean, there are, it can mean something very different, you know, is omission a lie? Or are we talking about a misrepresentation of truth, right? And it's really critical. And I like your description because courage, I remember thinking when you were walking us through this, Cus D'Amato, who was Mike Tyson's primary trainer, who brought him to the pinnacle of his success, would tell Mike, who was terrified before going into the ring in the dressing room and so on, that the hero and the coward feel the same thing. It's how the hero responds that makes him different. And you can't be courageous unless

you are exposing yourself to a perceived risk, which by definition makes you vulnerable, even if you're thinking about it in a very literal kind of physical sense. So I'd love to segue to shame, because I was reading one of your alumni publications, and you can correct this certainly if it's not accurate. But a quote of yours came up that I thought was really insightful and worth exploring a bit. And it said, shame hates to have words wrapped around it. If we talk about it, it loses its grip on us. And I was hoping maybe you could elaborate on that and help us to then understand shame. Yeah. And I think that that quote is so powerful because it's so true.

Like I often, when I talk about shame, I often like to personify it and say, you know, shame is a very formidable foe. You know, shame is this intensely painful belief or experience that something is wrong with us, that we are flawed, and that we are unworthy of love and belonging. And we all know it. Everyone knows that warm wash that comes over you that makes you feel like you're not enough. We have 50 years of data that really show us in my mind, unquestionably, that the only people who don't experience shame are people who don't have a capacity for connection, who people who don't have a capacity for empathy. So if we are capable of having connection, we know shame because shame is the fear that we're not worthy of connection. And so the thing about shame that makes it so difficult is it needs three things to thrive in our lives. dish and you put shame in a Petri dish and you douse it with secrecy, silence, and judgment,

it grows exponentially. It will grow into every corner and crevice of our lives. If you have the same amount of shame in a Petri dish and you douse it with empathy, shame can't survive empathy. Empathy is a very hostile environment for shame. And so to understand shame, I think what resonates mostly with people are the two kind of tapes that shame drives. The first is you're not enough and you can fill in the blank. You're not thin enough, pretty enough, strong enough, powerful enough, rich enough, promoted enough, loved enough, awesome enough. You know, you're not enough. And then if we can somehow get a handle on that and say, you know, like, okay, I've got, you know, I have this big presentation and you've got this shame gremlin in your ear saying,

you're not enough. You're not smart enough. There are going to be like a hundred MBAs in that room. What do you know about business? You're not enough. If you can wrestle that thing down, the other tape that shame drives is who do you think you are? So it creates this amazing vice that our self-worth gets caught in and just squeezes us from both sides. And so shame and shame is really visceral. I mean, if you,

if you just say the word to people, people can feel it. love to ask you, because a question that came from some of my listeners was, you know, what is the evolutionary need of shame or why did that develop in human beings? And it seems to me like shame can serve a useful purpose, right? If you are ashamed of the fact that you think about molesting a child, that serves a societal function, right? I would argue no. You would argue no? I would argue no, absolutely not. Okay. All right. Well, I'd love for you to expand on that because that's an interesting viewpoint. So could you expand on that? So shame, I think, if you look at shame from an evolutionary biological perspective, I think it did absolutely serve a function.

So Tim, you lead the dinosaur back to the cave. It eats my entire family and my whole clan. This is the second time you've done that. So we are literally going to shun you from our collective, which means you'll be alone, which means death, right? And so, because you're dangerous. Just not unlike if we see even in the animal world today, some pack animals, if there's a sick animal among them, will literally, you know, approach it as a group and back it off a cliff for the sake of the pack, right? So that makes sense. As we've evolved, as we've evolved neurobiologically, as we've evolved, shame becomes a very profoundly dangerous tool

for people who have the emotional understanding that we have. So now what we see is you can change a behavior sometimes, especially with children on a dime with shame, but it's like hitting a thumbtack with a 500-pound anvil. You are going to crush that thumbtack in the process of doing that. So what we see now is we see shame highly, highly correlated with addiction, depression, aggression, violence, suicide, eating disorders, very highly correlated. What we see as the inverse is we see guilt. And shame and guilt are very different. Shame is I am a bad person. Guilt is I did something bad.

So you go out on Thursday night, you get wasted. You're so hung over on Friday. You sleep through your alarm clock. You miss a really important meeting. You get to work late on Friday and your self-talk is, Jesus, I'm a loser. I'm an idiot. I'm such a loser. That shame.

If you get to work on Friday, same scenario, and your self-talk is, dude, I cannot believe I did that. That was such a lame thing to do. That was such a stupid thing to do. The difference is shame is a focus on self. Guilt is a focus on behavior. People who are very guilt-prone, who say, you know what? I got a bad grade.

I'm not a loser, but that was a loser idea to not study and go out last night. They have their relationship with addiction, depression, violence, suicide, bullying is inverse, meaning the higher the level of guilt, the less likely it is to experience these outcomes. So the most dangerous, if you look at shame and guilt in a criminal population, the most dangerous people have the highest levels of shame proneness and the lowest levels of guilt proneness. Because guilt is holding up something. Does that make sense? It makes perfect sense. So guilt is holding up something we've done against who we want to be or something we've done, thought about doing or failed to do up against our values, who we want to be,

what we think is right. And guilt is the psychological discomfort created by the cognitive dissonance between our behavior and who we want to be. And it's healthy and adaptive. That makes perfect sense. I was having a conversation with Josh Waitzkin, who's been on this podcast as well. He was the basis for searching for Bobby Fisher. So he was known as a chess prodigy as a child. He is a tremendous dad, a really amazing parent as a young boy. And he has a very particular parenting style and he always focuses on rewarding effort and not labeling

his son smart. So for instance, he'll say, that was a really good job. You worked really hard. You did A, B, and C that resulted in D. As opposed to, wow, you got a great grade. You're so smart. Because then when the kid gets a bad grade, it's viewed as this unsolvable, unfixable personal failing. And it seems to correlate to the difference between shame, i.e. I am flawed. I'm a broken toy that cannot be fixed versus guilt. Like, wow, I really fucked that up. Bad on me. But next time I'll do something different. It's usually different. And the other thing is, think about this. I have a 16-year-old and a 10-year-old. They get caught being dishonest with me. And I say, you know what? You're a liar and you're grounded.

When you tell somebody they're a liar, that's a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you're a liar, if I, Bernie Brown, am a liar, what option is there for growth or change? That's who I am. Right. Not only that, but what incentive is there not to lie if you're branded as such. Right. So when you talk about the person who is thinking about committing violence or assault on a child,

do I want that person to be more ashamed? No, because I have a feeling, I mean, there's, there's, you know, in your example,

I guess there's pedophilia, which can be an organic real issue. But the majority of what we see are people who are so deeply shame-based committing horrific crimes. So, look, if I thought shaming people no matter how – I mean, I hate to say this, but I'll just be honest. If I thought shaming people no matter how hurtful and painful it is, if I thought that kept people safer, I'd be all for it. It just doesn't. Right. Right. Well, it's, you know, it's interesting because I've been training a rescue pup for the last few weeks, a brand new rescue pup. And she was at a kill shelter in South Carolina and suffered a lot of abuse, but really got into looking at mammalian

training and looking at everything from dolphin training to polar bear training to dog training. And the fact of the matter is, you know, negative reinforcement or punishment-based training doesn't work that well, or at least at the very best, it's very slow compared to a lot of the positive reinforcement-based training, whether it's using clickers for conditioning and so on, because you can only reinforce a behavior that has occurred. And I think that the shame just seems to tie to me in an interesting way to not understanding what is malleable and what is not. And I'd love to come back to the I Am Enough, because in your book, one of your several books, but The Gift of Imperfection, one of the best book titles of all time, by the way, so well done on

that, has been described as the lifelong journey from, uh, what will people think to I am enough now, what I'm so curious to hear about. And then I'll, I'll leap forward to daring greatly. Uh, and I'll just read this, this quote, uh, from which I believe that the title was, um, was adapted. So this is Theodore Roosevelt. There's 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 arena,

whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who at the best knows in the end of the triumph of high achievement and who at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly. Now, what I have had as an internal conflict for a very long time, and this was brought to the surface most noticeably in the last year and a half through meditation. So I practice transcendental meditation in the mornings and have friends who practice Vipassana, Transcendental, different types of meditation. And these are type A driven competitive people. And I've had the conversation repeatedly,

the same conversation with different people about whether that removes a competitive edge. And the reason being that you decide I am enough, you're content, therefore you do not have discontent driving you to achieve big things that are, for most of us, pretty high on Maslow's hierarchy of needs, right? It's like we have shelter, we have food. So in reality, like in almost every capacity we have enough we are enough so how do you balance the the the well-being of having a mindset of i am enough versus the at least with a lot of my my peers and friends in silicon valley the kind of discontent that seems to drive

so many of those people to accomplish great things. So I would go back to your really important insight from the beginning of our conversation about defining terms. And I'd also go back to kind of the insights that you're learning from doing your training with your rescue pup, which is, does, to me, I am enough. I mean, I'm a competitive type A person too, which probably doesn't come as a surprise. The oldest of four, you know, very ambitious and, you know, I'm that person too in many ways. I think the soul or the center of my ability to keep putting myself out there and trying new things, even when I fail and I have had some big failures, I think the soul of my healthy competitiveness and my ambition is the belief that I am enough. Because I'm starting, and I think when I don't believe I'm enough, I engage in behaviors not to push myself, not to grow and stretch and learn, not to strive for excellence,

but to prove to other people what I can do. But when I start from a place that, you know what, I'm enough, I'm imperfect, I'm afraid, I'm super vulnerable, but that does not change the fact that I'm also brave and worthy of love and belonging. And when I start from that you, I'm enough. That's not what I'm talking about. a belief of self-worth that I am enough, not based on what I do, what I accomplish, what do I prove or produce? I am just enough.

And if you start from that, that's the healthy center. I think of most, most of the most awesome achievements we've seen. And I spent a lot of time in Silicon Valley too. And what I can tell you, and I know I would bet, I wish we could have a bet right now. most of the most awesome achievements we've seen. And I spent a lot of time in Silicon Valley too. And what I can tell you, and I know I would bet, I wish we could have a bet right now. I would bet you a lot of money that if we listed the names of 10 people, which we're not going to do, you could tell me which of those folks are operating and 10 competitive, ambitious, just like crazy fighters out there in the arena.

And we listed 10 names. You could tell me the five who are motivated from a place of being enough, but wanting to strive for excellence and learning and the five who are trying to fill a hole in their self-worth and who are dangerous. Yeah, no, for sure. And I think, I guess, in my mind, when I think, I'm just imagining this list of 10 people in my head, when I imagine the people who fall into the less self-destructive category, who are operating from a place of I am enough, I guess I would, in their cases, say that if I could hear their sort of subconscious internal mantra, in my mind, it would seem to be, and maybe this is the same thing, but closer to I am good or I'm really good, but I can be better. Not I am flawed. I need to impress everyone around me to make them validate me. But the I guess I'm just struggling with the

word enough, but I understand the the point of it. And I think this is something that I struggle with, right? I mean, I'm extremely, personally, I'm very hard on myself. I mean, I have always sort of been of the mindset that, second place is first loser and extremely competitive. And that has not always been the healthiest thing for me in all sorts of different capacities. But I don't, the, let's, let's sort of tackle this from a slightly different angle. So the, the daring greatly, the question that I think is raised in that, that book among others is, you know, have you dared greatly today? And please feel free to take this in any direction, because you obviously know more about your work than I do. But what is a good way to evaluate that? And do you ask yourself this type of question on a daily basis? I'll leave

it at that. I could make this a 12-part question, but how does someone determine if they've dared greatly and is how often would you suggest someone kind of check in and ask themselves that? So I think for me, daring greatly, and you know, that, that quote from Theodore Roosevelt, um, I even got teary eyed while you were reading it. You know, it was a life changer for me. It was right after the TEDx Houston talk had gone viral. I was kind of everywhere on the internet at that time. And, you know, everyone from ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, Huffington Post were all writing about this. Who is this person at the University of Houston with this TED talk going viral? And as you can imagine, all these online stories had online comments that were like,

yeah. And so my husband and my therapist were like, don't read the comments. Um, and so I read all the comments one day and yeah, I really, I sat down and just read them for like an hour. And I think,

you know, if you ask, if you're listening to the, like if you're a listener right now, you know, if you close, if you're listening to the, like if you're a listener right now, you know, if you close your eyes and think about, we all have the shame triggers. We all have two or three things. We have, most of us have more that you could overhear somebody,

you could overhear someone saying about you that would be so painful and so hurtful that you don't know if you could survive it. Most of us have those things. And so for me, up until that point, those things really dictated my life. I was like, look, I'm going to engineer this career to kind of be small and safe. I'm going to play right under the radar because I am not willing to put myself out there and get criticized like I know is happening. And so the problem with staying small is it's always served up with resentment and pissed-off-edness

because we're not using our gifts, we're not in our power, and there's always a price for that. Right. And so to me, when I read that quote, you know, when I looked at the comments, they were things like, of course, she embraces imperfection. What choice would you have if you look like her? I feel sorry for her husband and kids. More Botox, less research. You need to shake loose 10 pounds before you talk about being worthy.

I mean, just like really shitty, hurtful stuff. And then I came upon that. I mean, like the next 30 minutes after reading all on, I came upon that. I mean, like the next 30 minutes after reading all that, I came upon that comment. I mean, that quote from Theodore Roosevelt. And, you know, in that moment, what I realized is, you know what, I do want to live a brave life. I do want to live in the arena. And if you're going to live in the arena, the only guarantee is you will get your ass kicked. And the second thing is that daring greatly is being vulnerable.

So when you ask yourself, did I dare greatly today? The big question I ask is, did I, when I had the opportunity, did I choose courage over comfort? You know, when things went sideways between Steve and I this morning over, you know, who was going to pack the lunch for my son, did I just go into the old pattern of rolling my eyes and walking out of the kitchen? Or did I choose courage and say, I'm sorry, I'm feeling really overwhelmed with the book launch tomorrow. And I'm sorry, I really apologize. That was hurtful. Did I choose courage or did I choose comfort? And so to me, that's the question we ask about daring greatly. And I think one of the things that you said, Tim, really, when you're talking about your

friends and this idea of being enough, one of the things that really turned my life upside down, there were four or five things in the research that have taken me a long time to get over and get through. And one of them was the difference between healthy striving or striving for excellence and perfectionism. And I've always been perfectionistic about my stuff. And what I learned in the research was that perfectionism is very outwardly defined. It's dictated by what will people think and healthy striving is dictated or striving for excellence is internally motivated. And so perfectionism is really, I call it the 20 ton shield. And I think a lot of when we're talking about those 10 people, five of whom work from this place of wholeness and the other, I think what a lot of times we're talking about is the

difference between perfectionism and striving for excellence. And I think perfectionism is this 20 ton shield that we carry around. And it's a defense mechanism classically that just says, if I live perfect, love perfect, work perfect, and accomplish perfectly, I can reduce or minimize shame, blame, criticism, and judgment. And so we carry this thing around thinking it's protecting us, but what it's really doing is keeping us from being seen. And so I think when I ask myself personally, have I dared greatly today? Sometimes for me, it is the question of, was I enough?

Or am I trying to get everything perfect so that I can somehow think I'm mitigating criticism and judgment? Right. Well, I also find, and I haven't really thought about it in these terms before, but if you look at, say, I think it's Barry Schwartz, Paradox of Choice, where he talks about maximizers and I think it's satisficers.

But if I try to correlate that to my own experience being, I think, very much a perfectionist to correlate that to my own experience being, I think, very much a perfectionist and that of my friends, the people who are perfectionists very often are so future-focused that the perfection once achieved is viewed as the trigger that will sort of solve their guilt, shame, discontent, et cetera. Oh, yeah. Whereas the people who are striving for excellence are better at celebrating the little wins, accepting the small defeats and sometimes the large defeats, and tend to be a bit more

present state focused. And you mentioned vulnerability and the sort of components, right? So you're facing whether it's an uncertainty risk and so on. And I've seen it described elsewhere as stopping, controlling and predicting. It seems very much akin to certain tenets in, uh, completely because the, the, we are almost by definition experiencers of suffering,

right. And, and coming to terms with that, what, uh, which, which thinkers, philosophers,

or schools of thinking or philosophy most resonate with the insights you found in, in the data in your research? Ah, my God, E all of the above. Like, I mean,

it took me, it took me from Marcus Aurelius to liberation theology. What is liberation theology? Oh, it's a, it's a Catholic, um, kind of a Catholic theology of social justice that has had its stronghold and

beginning in Central America. But I mean, I think it is just one of the things about being a grounded theory researcher that I love and hate is we don't start with an existing theory and then go try to prove or disprove it. We build a theory from people's lived experiences, and then we do the literature review and see where it fits and where it doesn't fit. Because the idea behind grounded theory is if you start with an existing theory, you're just kind of paying homage to, they would say, the theoretical capitalists that came before you. And then it's people's lived experiences that really matter. And so people often comment in my books they're like how is it that you're quoting i do quote marcus abradius i think in one of my books how are you quoting him and then how are you quoting pema chodron who's an american

buddhist nun and then you're quoting disney a you know pixar movie from toy story and to me i i have no division or and very little tolerance for like the highbrow versus lowbrow inspiration. I think if you're paying attention, you can find truth and inspiration anywhere and everywhere. And so to me, I'm all over the place in the literature. And I think the people who really depend on polarity will hate this, but really some very strong, common themes across Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism, you know, Islam, Joseph Campbell. I mean, I think I end up finding myself in some just profound truths from a lot of, I mean, I was reading something yesterday in the data and it made me pull out my book

by Cabran. So I think it's roomy. Mary, Mary Oliver, Neil pert, the drummer for Rush. Like I was, something came up and I was like, yeah, I was like, I didn't know if you knew, so I had to put it in there. But I was like, this is when you choose, when you choose, when you don't make a choice, when you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.

And I think, I don't know that anyone says it more eloquently than Rush. I don't know what to say. Yeah. Neil, just as a side note, if people want to see just a beast of a drummer, then you can search on YouTube for some videos of this guy. Oh my goodness. What a just monster on the kit. And a know, so I find my inspiration kind of everywhere. And, uh, let's, let's talk about misinterpretations of vulnerability for a second. And I think maybe I'm getting a little, I'm probably projecting my own prejudices here, but, um, is it vulnerability there? I think there are some people who misinterpret being vulnerable and the benefits derived from being vulnerable with incessant oversharing of emotions or inner dialogue or doubt. What would you say to those people? Maybe my diagnosis is off base, but there are a lot of people who just kind of pour out every concern, worry, fault, mistake, and okay it with the label of vulnerability.

So I'd just love to hear your thoughts on that word salad that I just dropped on you. I love it. And I'm tracking 100% because I, yeah, it's, you know, there's a very simple formula in my head. Vulnerability minus boundaries is not vulnerability. It can be desperation. It can be oversharing. It can be manipulation. It can be oversharing. It can be manipulation. It can be a lot of different things, but it's not vulnerability.

We always have to hold awareness of boundaries and roles in our minds around vulnerability. We share with people who've earned the right to hear our story and we stay mindful all the time of the role we're in. So one of the great examples I can give you is I'm with 50 CEOs from Silicon Valley and we've spent a long weekend together. And toward the end of maybe the first day, one of them says, I came here thinking that I would never believe in vulnerability or accept it, but I am a hundred percent on board. So I want to thinking that I would never believe in vulnerability or accept it, but I am 100% on board. So I want to make sure I understand that I should stand up in front of my investors, my VCs, and say, look, I am in over my head. We are bleeding money, and I do not know what to do next. Right.

And I said, only if you don't want another round of funding, should you do that? I mean, no, that's, that's super, that's not appropriate, but let me, you know, let me ask you this. If you had, you know, if you had, I don't know, $50,000 invested with this leader, wouldn't you be praying to God that he's sitting across from someone saying that? Sure. Definitely. Right. Right. I don't care if it's, whether it's his therapist, a mentor, an advisor, because what the, what

the alternative is, if he's really drowning in over his head and bleeding money and doesn't know what he's doing is to just keep grinding harder and harder on the same things he's doing and not ask for help. Right. Right. Totally agreed. Yeah. And so when people say, you know, live tweeting your bikini wax, that is not vulnerability. I'm sorry about that.

It was only once. Yeah. I mean, if so, if you could hold back a little bit, Tim, we'd really all appreciate it. I'm sorry about that. It was only once. of intimacy, trust, connection, creativity, innovation. For leaders, it's the birthplace of trusted influence. But it's not permission to overshare. Right. Well, I mean, I thought the investor example was great because if a CEO or founder gets up and says, it provides the confession that you gave us an example in

front of a room that will almost inevitably respond by say, yanking funding. It's not a, it's not a constructive use of that confession, if that makes sense. And it's, I live in San Francisco most of the time and it's, it's this, this sort of this, this, uh, misinterpretation of vulnerability as oversharing is very common among the kind of burning man, um, spiritual atheist sect. And I think it's massively problematic. I think it appears to create many more problems than it solves. And let me use that as a segue to the opposite. I was interviewing a well-known strength coach named Pavel Tatsulin. He was originally from, I think, the Ukraine, in any case, former Soviet Union. And one of the questions I asked him on the podcast was, what do you write in your personal journal that you don't often talk about with other people? And his answer was, well, Tim, that is a very personal question.

And he proceeded to tell me that oversh he proceeded to tell me that, you know, oversharing is, is a big problem in the United States. And I was like, well, you know, that's actually, I feel like that's a fair response. And so I wanted to ask you a question that's based on input from a number of listeners of this podcast. And the, here's the the lead and I'd be very curious to hear your thoughts. So there's lots of chatter about over-feminization of boys. Um, how do you, how do you, um, how do you have vulnerability coexist with strong masculine virtues slash traits? And I'm paraphrasing here. And I'll just give another sort of contextual example that may or may not be interesting to comment on. So there's an expression in some military training that is suffer in silence.

And the idea is if you're going through hell week for the Navy SEALs or something like that, and you're carrying logs around and laying down in the freezing cold water, climbing under barbed wire, doing all these just nausea and fear-inducing things, if you complain, like my foot hurts, this, that, and the other thing, it will trigger more suffering in the people around you. Um, which I happen to agree with in that context. Um, so that's a lot at once, but, but, um, what, what is your thinking on the, uh, the, the so-called sort of over-feminization of boys and masculine virtues slash traits versus vulnerability. I mean, how do they coexist? And maybe that's not even the right question. It's a really good question.

And I work a lot with special forces and with the military and with vets. May I add one more thing? Yeah. Just so that people don't think I'm representing only the male side of this. A lot of my female friends complain to me that in a lot of urban centers in the US, San Francisco, etc.,

they can only find guys to date and they're looking for men to date. So it's not just, this is, this is a concern, not just from the male side. It seems to be coming from both sides. So sorry to interrupt, but I just wanted to throw that out. I think it's really important. So I have so much to say on it that I'm overwhelmed. I don't even know where to start.

So I'm going to just try to, I am, I'm just like busting a gut over here. Okay. So these binaries of, you know, tough and tender, masculine, feminine, you know, I think we have to be really careful about this because if we, when we start to talk about vulnerable, let's talk about in the context of my work, you got me really wrong. I'm like, okay. If you talk about vulnerability and vulnerability to me is courage. And so when I, when I hear women talk about their inability to be with a vulnerable man, it's, it makes tons of sense to me because, you know, you know, I wish I could say, you know, at the number one perpetrator of shame with men were all those shitty dads and terrible coaches and those buddies. But the number one perpetrator of shame with men is women.

And so I often say, show me a woman who can sit with a man in real fear and vulnerability. I will show you a woman who's done her own work around vulnerability and doesn't derive her power or status from that man. You show me a man who can sit with a woman who's in real fear and vulnerability, and I'll show you a man who's done his own work around vulnerability and doesn't derive his power from being Oz, the all knowing and all fixing, because what men have a tendency to do when we're feeling vulnerable, are afraid is try to fix it because it's how we're socialized. And so I don't think when you talk about how we're raising boys today,

here's what I can tell you from 150,000 pieces of data, looking back from what I've learned from men, the men who were raised to be open and feeling and tender and loving and given no skills and no information on how to navigate boy culture and male culture do not do well. Right. The boys who were raised on how to navigate male culture, king of the hill and had no tools on how to be open and vulnerable and emotionally available do worse, but they also don't do well. So it's about, we need to stop with these false separations between tough and tender,

you know, tough and tender can coexist. And to me, that's kind of this, that's kind of the equation for badassery. And it can also exist in women like, you know, grit and grace, tough and tender, afraid and brave. You know, this idea that we're either courageous or chicken shit is just not true because most of us are afraid and brave at the exact same moment all day long.

And so to take courage and vulnerability, to not teach that to our kids, boys or girls, is not teaching them how to be emotionally available or tender either. Right. And so I think what concerns me is about the need to drive a stake through the middle of these things. And I think that's, what's really important. I mean, to be both. Yeah, no, I, and I agree with you. I mean, I think that they're not mutually exclusive. There's no need for a false dichotomy. It's – I think a lot of it comes back to sort of choosing the appropriate environment for expressing that vulnerability, if that makes sense. It's a toughie.

It seems tough. I mean, because you find men who have the armor plating on and can never take it off, that for what it's worth, the guys I've met who are operating at the highest level in, say, special forces do not have that problem. They tend not to suffer from a lot of PTSD, for instance, and they are very empathetic and emotionally attuned for them, at least in the subset of folks that I've met. Um, but they've, they've been subjected to just insane amounts of abuse and conditioning to, for mental and physical toughness. But at the same time, I see them playing with their kids or with their wives and they're extremely present. So that's, but that's, it's a tough needle to thread. So speaking of just the challenges that people have with say vulnerability,

what are some daily practices or exercises that people can, can test to help them develop more vulnerability, less shame, et cetera. You know, I think it's interesting that you talk about, you know, daily practices, because I think vulnerability is a daily practice. And for a lot of us, you know, at least for me, when it was new, it was about trying on new ways of being and kind of testing it out. One of the things that emerged from the data is new ways of being and kind of testing it out. One of the things that emerged from the data is this idea of trust and the relationship between trust and vulnerability.

And people always ask me, you gain trust first and then you're vulnerable with people. But the truth is you can't really earn trust over time with people without being somewhat vulnerable. So it's a little bit of a back and forth. It's a little bit of sharing things that are maybe not super deeply personal, but it was such a remarkable insight from you that I want to go back to when you talk about daily practice is when you were talking about perfectionism being future focused and also kind of presenting some struggles about staying in the now. I think that's why, and again, I'm just putting this insight together, your insight. I think that's why a lot of people who are that super uber competitive, high, strong, overachieving, don't get the same results in their personal lives with their partners and their children as they do in their professional kind of endeavors or their recreational endeavors, because our personal relationships with the people we love,

those intimate relationships require a presence, a focus on now that a lot of times professional success does not depend on that as much. Very true. Yeah, very true. You, very true. You can fly fast. And if you know, if you're in a little Cessna two seater, you got to, you know, you're in the here and now and you got to pay attention to every bump and every gauge and pay, you know, but if you're in a jet, you can't afford to be thinking about now.

You have to be thinking about five minutes from now. And so I thought it was a really remarkable insight on your part, because when I do think about those 10 friends in Silicon Valley, or I think about my own life, even, I think what the research has changed most is that I think it has had a huge impact on my professional success. But more than anything, when I get home, I walk into a marriage, enter a relationship with kids that are fundamentally different than they were before I became okay with vulnerability and okay with less than perfect. What is the first 60 to 90 days of, 60 to 90 days, 60 to 90 minutes of your day look like? Your morning routines or rituals

outside of book launch times and things like that. Let's just assume that you have control of your optimal day. What is the first, what do your morning rituals look like? What does your first 60 to 90 minutes look like? I wake up early, 6.30-ish. I wake up, I do a lot of deep breathing

to stay off an absolute desperate need for a hit of data from my phone or from my computer. So I try very hard not to check email or texts because I don't, I sleep with my phone downstairs. I don't sleep with any kind of computer next to me. And then, you know, it's really super normal. I wake up kids, I make breakfast, I pack lunches, I go through the calendar with the day, I zip up backpacks. I drive carpool. I usually go from carpool to swim. I'm a swimmer.

I'm a competitive swimmer, so I like to swim. And I swim and walk. And swimming is kind of the trifecta for me. It's meditation, exercise, and therapy. And then I usually start my day, my work day. And what time, what time, what time do you finish swimming and how long is the swim session? Um, if I run my, my best case scenario is I run and swim. And so I don't swim fast enough anymore. I don't swim time, time swim anymore. Like, you know, 50s on every 20 or anything like I used to. So it's more, it's, it's not as cardio as it used to be.

Um, so I like to run on the treadmill for 30 minutes and then I like to swim for half an hour. Got it. And if I was a bike rider, I could be a triathlete, but the back, I tried it once and the bike going that fast next to that many people going that fast is really uncomfortable for me. Yeah. I'd imagine it. So I'm a do-athlete, a slow do-athlete. What book besides your own have you gifted to other people most? What book have you often given as a gift? Oh man, I have given so many copies of The Alchemist

to people that I should get a little royalty on it. Yeah, that's a great book. That's a great book. Speaking of books, so you have a new book out, Rising Strong. And it seems to me like this completes a trilogy in a sense. It seems like the three books go together very well, but could you give people a description of the latest book and why you wrote it? Yeah, sure. I think they do go together. I wasn't intentional on that, but I think the gifts is be you, daring greatly is be all in. And this book is get your ass kicked, get up and do it again. This is about just the physics of vulnerability. You know, if you're brave enough, often enough, you're going to fall, you're going to experience heartbreak, disappointment, failure, it's going

to happen. And so going into this research, the question for me was, what do men and women who experience falls and get back up and are even more courageous and more tenacious, what do they have in common? So Rising Strong is about the process that emerged from that question. And can you describe your research method? How do you find your interviewees? What does the sort of interview format look like? What do you do with the data afterwards, et cetera? About 70% of my interviews are individuals and more focus groups in the last data set. And so some of them, like, for example, I went to West Point and sat down with, I think there were six officers who had all come back from combat duty.

So sometimes I'll do focus groups, but the majority of them are individuals. A lot of it is snowball sampling, meaning I've interviewed you, Tim, and I'm like, you know what? This is really helpful. I would love to interview some of the folks that you know in, in Silicon Valley around perfectionism. Um, would you mind doing a warm introduction? Right. Um, and some of them are just kind of calls like this, this book is a lot about the power of story and the stories we tell ourselves. So I interviewed Shonda Rhimes, the show runner for scandal. And, um, and so, so, so some of them are just, you know, it's a lot easier to get people now than it was when I first started. And I was like, Hi, my name is Brené. And I would like to talk

to you about shame. But now it's more that, you know, I can now I just do mostly individual and focus groups. And so then I get the data. I, I, we don't record it. I take what we call in the field, anthropological field notes. So I capture exact phrases and sentences during our interview. I let participants look at them if they want to,

when they're done. Some say yes, some say no. And then I code what I learned against what I already know over patterns and saturation in the data. Meaning if I am trying to study perfectionism and entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, I'll start interviewing them and I'll know that I've reached saturation when I can predict what the next person is going to say. Because one of the really tough rules of grounded theory research

are we don't allow for any outliers. And so if I'm almost done and then I sit down with you and you say something and doesn't fit with the theory that I'm developing in my head about what's happening, then I have to go back to the drawing board and keep interviewing because every lived experience is real and matters. Right. So it would be like interviewing a hundred people in Silicon Valley or saying they're trying to democratize pizza ordering, democratize, uh, kitty litter delivery, democratize this.

And then someone said, I'm really looking to establish a silo of command and control like a North Korean dictator for X. And you'd be like, Oh, all right. Well then I have to keep going. Yes. And so if that happened, then I have to question what I'm hearing. I have to question what I'm hearing from the kitty litter and the other folks. And I have to figure out what do y'all meaningfully have in common. And it seems to me, rising strong is, it's a must have, not a nice to have, right? And I'm not saying that the be yourself, dare greatly are nice to haves. But if you don't have the resilience to recover from mistakes, you're never going to dare greatly in the first place.

In some respect, it would seem, right? So if you, if, would you recommend, what order would you recommend people read your books in? I mean, understanding that this is the latest, of course, but what, what's sort of a, the ideal sequence? Yeah, I think, you know, they go together, but they don't, I mean, I think they can each be read independently. So I think sometimes it's helpful to pick up the book based on where you are. When, if you're really struggling with the hustle, with hustling for perfection and hustle and, you know, proving and perfecting and pretending, I think the gifts is great. If you really are, you know, like the rest of us sick and tired of being afraid and you want

to be brave and you want to feel like, what does that look like? I think during greatly is this place to start. And if you find yourself face down in the arena and you're thinking, God, I just got my ass handed to me. I think rising strong would be a good place to start. It probably makes sense. You know, there's a sequence. So I think if you're just like, wow, I'm interested, I would start with during great. I mean, uh, the gifts, but I think, I also think for your audience, it's probably

helpful to know that I've spent the last couple of years probably exclusively working with leaders and entrepreneurs. So daring greatly and rising strong have much more of my research from organizations and from leaders than the gifts does. Got it. No, that is helpful. Just a few more questions and then I'm coming up on time. So I'll ask just a couple of rapid fire questions, but the answers don't have to be rapid. And I'm very curious about this one. When you think of the word successful, who is the first person who comes to mind for you and why? You know, what's so weird. I don't picture anybody. I, I picture the word redefine that, that is such a, that has been such a dangerous word in my research, the word successful or success. I agree that I don't even use it anymore

because what does that mean? Like, okay, so I am the CEO of this company. I make a shit ton of money. This is my title. This is the influence and power I have. I'm on my fourth marriage and no relationship with my adult children. Right. So I, I think when I hear the word successful, my answer is be clear that your ladder is leaning against the right building. Right. Yeah. Bad word.

Next question. Yeah. I don't know why. No, no, I agree with you. I think happiness is actually similar. Oh God.

Yes. That's a, that's a's a scary, nebulous, dangerous term as well. What $100 or less purchase has most positively impacted your life in recent memory? Oh, triathlon goggles, because I don't know, for some reason they're softer. So then I don't have goggle marks all day. Oh, really? I had no idea. What, what do't know, for some reason they're softer. Um, so then I don't have goggle marks all day. Oh really? I had no idea. What, uh, what, do you know the brand of goggles offhand? I don't, but they're like the most famous triathlon, but, and they're really patty. And you look like we all like swam with the speedo vanquisher, like little goggles that were a bad-ass. Um, and the bigger your goggle, the goofier you were. But now it's time for the goofy goggle for me. Yeah, I really like the Aquasphere Cayman goggles, K-A-I-M-A-N.

And Laird Hamilton, who's this big wave surfer, uses – I will look them up – goggles. I just put them – for those people interested, I put them in my latest Five Bullet Friday. You can just search my name in Five Bullet Fridays. But yeah, it does seem like the bigger goggles coming back. If you could have one billboard anywhere with anything on it, what would it say and where would you put it? I would put it in Washington, D.C. And it would say, shut up and listen.

That's great. That's great. That could be put anywhere. I would love to put that on the highway. Highway 101 and 280 in Silicon Valley, too, because, man, oh, man man are people talking a lot these days and pitching. Pitching really hard without asking many good questions. You know what? I wouldn't say

shut up because my kids would be like, oh my god, we're not even allowed to say that word. So I would say talk less, listen more. But in my heart, I would be saying shut up. Yeah, we could split test. That could be the hashtag. Yeah, we could split test. It could be – that could be the hashtag. Yeah.

Just shut your face. What advice would you give your 30-year-old self? It's okay to be afraid. You don't have to be so scary when you're scared. Huh? Meaning what? Put on, put on airs of confidence and overconfidence.

Yes. Yes. Like the thirties are so exhausting. It's like the age of, yeah. And it is at the age of perfecting, proving, pretending.

Um, and there's some liberation that can, you know, for me that came in my four, there was a breakdown of course, but followed by some liberation that came in my forties. So I would just say, you know, you know, stop hustling. Right. Yeah. The, you mentioned the breakdown, the breakthrough disguised as a breakdown. What would you say to your 30-year-old self? Start meditating and chill the fuck out. You don't need to have a resting pulse of 150 beats per minute to get a lot of big things done.

They're similar messages, right? Yeah. Very similar. I think that, well, I think it's very easy for people and I'm sure I still do this, but to mistake the symptoms of success with the things that cause success. They're not the same, right? Do you have any ask or request for all the people listening? Of course, I would highly recommend that they check out your work, including Rising Strong, the latest book, which I will link to in the show notes for everybody. But any other ask, request, or recommendation for everybody listening?

I would just say, keep being part of the conversation about these tougher, about these tougher topics, about vulnerability, about shame, about being brave. Just lean into some discomfort because I think these, what's the seemingly impossible problems that we have, um,

around race and homophobia and the environment, um, and just the lack of love sometimes are not going to be solved in a comfortable way. We can't, we've got to, you know, you have to choose comfort or courage.

You just can't have both. So I guess my ask would be more of a big metaphysical ask that, um, give vulnerability a shot, you know, and give discomfort it's due because I think there is a really strong relationship between your willingness. He or she who's willing to be the most uncomfortable, is not only the bravest, but rises the fastest. Totally agree. Well, I think the only way to ensure long-term comfort is to have continual short-term discomfort. Yeah. Well, this has been a blast.

Brené, where can people say hello to you online? Where can they find out more about you? Find you on the social networks? Yeah. I am at Brené Brown on Twitter and Instagram and Brené Brown on Facebook. We just launched a new project that we're excited about called Courage Works, which is bringing all of my teachings to online for individuals and leaders and organizations. And that's just courageworks.com. And so I'm in all those places. Well, I enjoy your work. I appreciate your work. And thank you so much for taking the time. Folks listening, you can find links to everything that we discussed, show notes, etc.

at 4hourworkweek.com. And just click on podcast, all spelled out, 4hourworkweek.com. And please say hello to Brene on the interwebs and join the conversation. I'll also have a question of the day in the blog post that you guys can continue this conversation as Brene on the interwebs and join the conversation. I'll also have a question of the day in the blog post that you guys can continue this conversation as Brene suggested. But Brene, thank you so much for making the time. It was awesome. Thank you so much, Tim. I appreciate it. And everybody listening, as always, thank you for listening. And until next day, until next day, until next time, Tim needs more caffeine, pura vida,

and face your discomfort practice discomfort thanks for listening