We Can Do Hard Things with Glennon Doyle - 48. DR. BRENÉ BROWN: How to Know Ourselves & Be Known by Our People

Episode Date: November 30, 2021

1. Why Brené’s new book ATLAS OF THE HEART is a game changer for communicating hard emotions more easily.  2. Brené breaks down the difference between stressed and overwhelmed—and gives us tools to navigate both. 3. How our survival strategies from our families of origin can become both our superpowers and our stumbling blocks in our relationships and wellness.   4. How we can make sure our kids experience deep, steady belonging—even if they don’t feel like they “belong” out in the world.   5. The one question that Brené now asks herself whenever she’s considering a decision—and how it’s changed everything.  About Brené: Dr. Brené Brown is a research professor at the University of Houston where she holds the Huffington Foundation Endowed Chair at The Graduate College of Social Work. Brené is also a visiting professor in management at The University of Texas at Austin McCombs School of Business.   She has spent the past two decades studying courage, vulnerability, shame, and empathy, is the author of five #1 New York Times bestsellers, and is the host of the weekly Spotify Original podcasts Unlocking Us and Dare to Lead.  Brené’s books have been translated into more than 30 languages and titles include:  Dare to Lead, Braving the Wilderness, Rising Strong, Daring Greatly, and The Gifts of Imperfection. Most recently Brené collaborated with Tarana Burke to co-edit You Are Your Best Thing: Vulnerability, Shame Resilience, and the Black Experience.  Her TED talk – The Power of Vulnerability – is one of the top five most viewed TED talks in the world with over 50 million views. She is also the first researcher to have a filmed lecture on Netflix. The Call to Courage special debuted on the streaming service in April 2019.   Brené lives in Houston, Texas, with her husband, Steve. They have two children, Ellen and Charlie.  Book: Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience Instagram: @brenebrown Twitter: @BreneBrown To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

And because I'm mine to introduce you to, although who needs this introduction? We're going to do it anyway, to our friend, one of our favorite people on this little earth. And her name is Dr. Brene Brown. Dr. Brene Brown is a research professor at the University of Houston,

where she holds the Huffington Foundation Endowed Chair at the Graduate College of Social Work. She has spent the past two decades studying courage, vulnerability, shame, and empathy. She is the author of five number one New York Times bestsellers, which Abby actually asked me. Five! She was like, wait, Brene, she goes, that's not right. This isn't right. Five! Oh, no, no, no. It's right. Five number one. That's so weird. Okay. And is the host of the weekly Spotify original podcast, unlocking us and dare to lead. So freaking good. So good. Brene's books have been translated into more than 30 languages and titles, including dare to lead, braving the wilderness, rising strong, daring greatly,

and the gifts of imperfection. I love them all. Most recently, Brene collaborated with Tarana Burke to co-edit You Are Your Best Thing, Vulnerability, Shame, Resilience, and the Black Experience. So good. Have we ever had so much to say about someone's introduction? No, every single one. I'm like, yes. We'd like to comment on all the words. Okay. In her latest book, Atlas of the Heart, which our entire team has spent the last weeks with. Look at the freaking thing. She takes us on a journey through 87 of the emotions and experiences that define what it means to be human. Brene lives in Houston, Texas with her husband, Steve.

They have two children, Ellen and Charlie. Dr. Brene Brown, thanks for being you. Hello, hi. Hello, hello. Okay, so we, this little team, have been talking about your book for the last weeks, okay? The new book, Atlas of the Heart, which is about to take the entire world by storm.

I think it already has. I think before anyone got it, Amazon already named it number one or on the top. I'm like, have they even read it? No. Everyone's just like, here we go. Brene put out a book. It's the best. Number one. And they're always right. Okay. So here's what I want to say about this book to start off with. I want you to tell me if I'm right about this. Okay. Okay. I'm ready. Okay. So start to finish, read the whole thing many times. And in my own little brain, I'm trying to figure out why this is so freaking important. And so for me, I think this is what I say to my sister the other day. I think for me, it's because, okay, say to my sister the other day. I think for me, it's because, okay, if connection to other human beings is what heals us and gets us through, then the ability to understand, put language to,

and communicate our internal emotional selves to each other is the only way that we will heal and get through because that is how we connect. And it's also the only really real way to be loved by anyone if being loved is truly about being seen and understood. We can only be seen and understood if we can put words to this wild thing that's constantly happening inside of ourselves. Dr. Brene Brown, is that right?

Am I right? So this book is a guide to defining our internal selves so that we can translate ourselves to the people we love and to the world. Okay. Tell me if I'm right. If I'm not right, I'm just going to, I'm going to splice in something that says,

yes, Glennon. No, I mean, yeah, you nailed it. That's it. I mean, it is, that's it. It's like, I didn't know going into this book, first of all, oh God, this book was so fricking hard. It was just, I wasn't sure I was going to make it through this book, to be honest with you. And I think it is everything that you're describing. It is how do we find our way back to ourselves and to each other? And how do we do it without language, without some kind of understanding of, I love what you said, what this wild thing happening inside of us. We are not, what you said, what this, this wild thing happening inside of us. Like we are not much to my dismay and the dismay of many other people. We are not cognitive thinking beings who on occasion feel

we are emotional beings. It defines who we are. And it just, it was like every now and then when I was writing this, I got to this place where I was like, fuck, what have I gotten myself into? Like, what is happening here? This is, it's like too big. It's too unwieldy. And so, yeah, it's everything you said, Glennon. No splicing necessary. A plus on the book report, Glennon. A plus on the book report, Glennon.

A plus on the book report. Thank you. Thank you. That's right. Sissy, you have had, I can't wait for Brene and sister to talk about this book because sister has had so many thoughts and feelings. So I have had 87 emotions about this book. You matched me. I really feel so grateful to you because you're explaining it

so well, but you're also so vulnerable in it at the same time. And I feel like you were sharing some about when growing up in your home was both full of intense love and also intense rage. And Glennon and I had a similar experience when we were growing up. And I really deeply resonated with your description of how kind of the unpredictability of that environment gave you this superpower that enabled you to meticulously read people's emotions. And I feel like that has also served me well as the kind of survival strategy works in the world because you can read people. But the flip side of that is also true that I can't turn off that high monitoring. So I feel like I'm always just like an anticipatory anxiety mode, just like high

alert at all times. So when I was reading this, I got to the place where you talk about calm and you say that nothing is more important than getting a grip on your reactivity. My question is about that. It's how do we manage to use the superpower to be tuned in to people's emotions, but also not let it completely hijack our own emotional experience of really everything? And it was a superpower. It was a survival power. Because even, I think I write in there, and it was, for sure, is the most personal I've ever been with kind of growing up and how things were hard. And even when things were great, I mean, y'all know my sister, Barrett, and then I've got, she's got a twin, Ashley, and then I've got a, we've got a brother between us. And so I'm the oldest. And so even when things, and it's a hard place to be because even when things were really fun and intensely fun, I was the protector in waiting. And I knew one, something is going to

go sideways. One comment's not going to work. One joke is not going to be funny and something's going to happen. And so at the same time, I'm kind of being made fun of for not jumping in all the fun. I'm also going to be the person when shit turns really fast, that's going to have to gather my siblings and get them out of the way. And so as I've worked through that, especially with my therapist, she's like, you know, you called it a superpower because you could read very quickly. Wow. This is going to go bad in five to seven minutes. You know, she said, I would call it hypervigilance. Yeah. And she said, and boy, does that exact a price. You know, you are, yeah, you're always hypervigilant. Even if things are good, because the unpredictability growing up is the really hard part.

It's like, you know, that's the hard part about not being able to guess what the antecedent is. Like, what is the thing that's going to cause everything to tumble? And so I think the work that I still do is, there's two things. there's two things. So I think honestly, and this has been hard and I think I was in the space writing the book, which made it really hard. I could cry maybe, but I think I've had to limit my time with people that demand that hypervigilance, including people I love. Same. Yeah. And I remember when I first started seeing Diana, my therapist, I was, golly, I was 10 years sober and I'm 25 now, so 15 years ago. And I was sober, but I was really leaning into food and work. And so I had just

kind of given up some of the food stuff and I was really working on work. And I remember saying to her, I need some medicine. Like I need some medicine because I got nothing now. I got nothing. because I got nothing now. I got nothing. And she said, what do you mean? I said, I'm like a turtle in a briar patch and you took away my Bud Light and you took away my cigarettes. Now you've taken away the apple fritter and now you've taken away the 70 hours of work. I'm a turtle without a shell in a briar patch. Everywhere I turn, it hurts. I'm going to need something. And she goes, have you thought about getting out of the fucking briar patch? Oh my gosh. Yes. Yeah. Yes. Oh my gosh. Yeah. And I was like, but is that the world? And she said, it can partly be the world, but it's also your relationships, the family

stuff, the worlds you create. And so for me, there was a definition by Jon Kabat-Zinn that I came across when I was studying overwhelm that really I think about it every day. He said that overwhelm was the feeling that life is unfolding at a rate that's unmanageable for me and my nervous system. And so really what I have found, what I have found, you know, emotion is body. And so like, like you, I think I, how do I be calm, but hypervigilant? And I don't think you can be. I think it becomes a safety issue. You know, I think it just becomes, I, you know, it was funny because we had some really hard family shit going on. And it was the first time in my life, because I was writing this book where I said, I can opt into this, but my nervous system can't take it anymore. I don't have that anymore.

It's such permission. It's not always the next strategy or the next thing to cope. It's creating a life that needs less coping from us. that we cannot control, like the pandemics and white supremacy. And I mean, we can make changes, but we don't have a ton of control over it. But the stuff we can control, I think, where do I feel safe enough to be my best calm self? Mm-hmm. I love that. I love that. The course of true love doesn't always run smooth. She got really like upset and then I got super upset and we were like screaming at each other.

I'm Dr. Laurie Santers. And in a special Valentine's Day season of my podcast, The Happiness Lab, we'll explore the science of making our intimate relationships more harmonious. This is like the worst possible way to spend a relaxing vacation. Journalist Charles Duhigg will help us all become super communicators. Everyone knows that experience, right? When you've had a great conversation and you just feel like you're on cloud nine afterwards. And we'll hear from husband and wife relationship experts, the Gottmans. I turned the phone off. You didn't turn it off.

On why we should argue better. I did, yeah. Uh-uh. Listen to The Happiness Lab wherever you get your podcasts. To go back to what you said about the overwhelm, we did an entire podcast on overwhelm. And it's a topic of conversation in my family for a lot of reasons. And I think you did an extraordinary job in this book to define overwhelm. You said, I mean, I think that it's so important to me because I don't necessarily get overwhelmed, but I live with people that get

overwhelmed. And your definition of overwhelmed just blew my mind. You said you define it as relating to our perception of how we are coping with our situation, not how we are actually coping, but our perception of how we are coping, whether we can handle it. For me, I'm like, okay, wow, that is incredible. And it makes me remember the story you told in this book about I'm blown. Can you please tell the story of I'm blown? Because we actually just walk around our house now. I'm blown. Brenna, 30 times a day. I'm the boy who cried, I'm blown. And now no one's going to listen to me anymore. You have to tell the story, please. Do you know what's so weird, Glennon, that you said that? I gave a talk last night. It's the

first time I've been in front of an audience since a year and a half. And I actually talked about the boy who cried wolf related to overwhelm. It's so weird that you say that. Well, first of all, let me just start by saying this, that there's a power of language. So this was new to me and I've studied emotion for 20 years, but we just didn't have until probably the last five or seven, maybe 10, but really five or seven years, like the fMRIs and the PET imaging to understand that language doesn't just communicate emotion. It shapes emotion. So if I said, hey, Glennon, can you make me those great chocolate chip cookies that you make? And

you get out your bowl and you put in, I've never made chocolate chip cookies in my life, but like, I don't know, flour, I guess, and chocolate chips and shit like eggs and milk and whatever. Butter. Butter, butter. Anything good has butter. What if I told you that the cookies tasted radically differently depending on what bowl you used. We think of language just like as a carrier of things, but it doesn't. It shapes things. And so the story about being blown and being in the weeds is really just waiting tables, bartending for six, seven years, all the way through college and graduate school. And when it was busy, we'd get in the weeds. And I'd be in the weeds. I'd come in through the kitchen door and I'd be

like, shit, Abby, can you take teas to three and four? Glennon, can you rebread seven? Amanda, can you pull a ticket for me for seven? I don't know where their Greek salad is. That's in the weeds. Things are getting hard. There are obstacles for moving through. I need to take a breath, but I'm on top of it, but it's difficult. Every now and then, this is a funny story actually, every now and then, someone would walk in the kitchen and just say, I'm blown. And it only happened to me twice in a six or seven year career. And this is a hard, the Papa's restaurants in Texas, Papa Do, Papa Cito's, they're serious. They have scarred me deeply because still today, if I walk in the kitchen and Steve's like kind of leaning there, talking to Charlie, I'm like, hey, you got time to lean. You got time to clean.

Or I'll walk. Glennon, you would like be like, what's happening? No, I know what you're saying because this one will forget the stage of life she's in and she will turn around to me in an airport and say, hustle, let's hustle. And I'm like, oh no, no, no, no. This is not the soccer.

We don't tell each other to hustle, right? So same. I'm with soccer. We don't tell each other to hustle. Right. So same. I'm with you. We, we don't. We do not tell each other to hustle. Oh my God. My favorite line in the airport is, hey folks, walk with purpose. Walk with purpose. Let's go. Yeah, let's go. So if I go into the kitchen and I'm like, I'm blown. It's really weird because what happens is the rule if you're blown is you have to leave the floor of the kitchen and the restaurant for at least 10 or 15 minutes. So what will happen is Amanda will go, okay, she'll go up and get my table numbers from the hostess stand, not even assuming I can tell

you what tables I have or what section I have. So Abby's the kitchen manager because you would be, of course, it's a high stress, get it done job. So Abby starts pulling all the table numbers once she knows what they are, and then they just take over. So overwhelmed is a very intense amount of stress where actually you can no longer function in it. What's interesting is the only real empirically based solution to overwhelm is nothingness. That's what I'm talking about. I knew this all along. Say more things about that. I knew this all along. Say more things about that. Nothing. I knew this all along.

I knew from the time I was born, nothingness was the cure. I'm going to have my Glennon and Abby Atlas score sheet. Glennon nails the overview and Abby knew overwhelm from the very beginning okay amanda i just have you in the healthy we'll do therapy together call yeah okay um no so it's so funny because actually these popito managers through just trial and error knew what to do they knew you had to leave. So back then, actually, we'd go behind the restaurant and smoke a cigarette. That's what we would do. But it's nothingness. And so one time when I was overwhelmed, they kind of took over. I went to the

cooler for five minutes and I went to the back of the restaurant, smoked a cigarette. One time, it was toward the end of the shift. It was the only other time I was blown. And I was working a triple, which was lunch, light lunch lunch and dinner because tuition was due at UT. And I said, I walked in the kitchen and they're like, like move, you're in the way. And I was like, you know, cause it's people hustling, carrying big trays. And I was like, I, I'm, I'm just, I'm, I'm blown. And they said, okay, grab her stuff. And they got my stuff. And they said, listen, just go home, give us all your money and we'll check you out. The headway, we'll check you out. And I said, okay. So instead of doing nothing, I got in my car.

Well, because it was the end of the night, I had already started marrying the Tabascos and ketchups, like putting them together and filling them up. So I'm driving my car. I light a cigarette. I rub my eye. I get Tabasco in my eye. I can't see out of this eye. I drop my cigarettes and we had to wear these polyester skirts. So it catches on fire and just starts, yeah, just starts burning like an 80s girl with a cigarette at a rock concert. Like we used to light the thing and be like this. Yeah. It just starts burning a hole. Then it catches on my tights.

And then I can't see. So I do this with the other eye. I can't see out of both eyes. I jump the curb and end up almost getting to a really terrible wreck. And I always think about that now. This is what I've learned from this research. One, I got to freaking stop saying I'm overwhelmed when I'm not overwhelmed. Damn it. Okay. Because neurobiologically, my body goes, okay, life's happening too fast. We're out of control now. So I need to, when I'm overwhelmed, my commitment to myself now is if I use that language, I'm going to stop what I'm doing and go outside for 10 or 15 minutes.

Wow. So, because your body says, oh, we know what to do. We're shutting down. Yeah. And if you can tell people what you need, you're probably not overwhelmed. That's interesting. Yeah. Have you ever had that thing where like, I would say to Steve, oh, okay, fuck, I'm completely overwhelmed. Okay. Make me a list. And I'm like,

dude, if I could make you a list, that would not be overwhelmed. Like I need you to take the wheel. Yes. Yes. You know, that's the power of language. It is interesting empirical research in the book too. Anxiety and excitement present exactly the same neurophysiologically. In studies, people who labeled it excitement had positive experiences. Those who labeled it as anxiety had negative experiences. That's very much the difference between Glennon and I. Well, I feel that we have married the two ideas. So now instead of saying I'm anxious or I'm scared about big things that are coming up, we say I'm skited.

Yeah. Half scared, half fixed. That's the butterflies, right? That's the like, okay, this is new, but say I'm skited. Half scared, half fixed. That's the butterflies, right? That's the like, okay, this is new, but it's a good one. I'm going to keep going because I want the thing afterwards. So I'm going to keep going. It's not fear, the gift of fear, which is telling me stop. It's the butterflies, which are telling me go. So skited is where we land. I love it. Okay. Let me just stop you here and say, this is a working example of the importance of language. So this German philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein says, the limits of my language are the limits of my world.

So why did you make up that word? To talk to the kids. Everything is, it's like, because one of them had to do something new at school. Was it the spelling bee? It was something like that. And she was saying, I'm too scared. I'm too scared. And so we started talking through what that feeling was inside. Did she actually even want to do the spelling bee? Yes. I do want to be a part of the spelling bee. So then, well, if you want the thing afterwards, then what is this? This thing that's happening inside of us, it's saying this thing is new. It's out of my comfort zone, but it feels like a good thing. It doesn't feel like a thing that

is scaring me to stop. It's scaring me to go. It doesn't have to be either or. It doesn't have to be, you don't have to be scared or excited. You can be both. Right, right. And both. Yes. And that's exactly why language matters so much. So now your kids, and now after this podcast, my kids will have a word for, this is what courage feels like. It's guided. Yes. like it's guided. Yeah. It's like, but we make up those words because language gives us a neurobiological handle on what feels too amorphous and gauzy to grab. Yes. Good. And what you're doing, because actually when you think about it, that word having the, and we have a lot of invented words in our family actually, but it, it helps me know them better because when they're saying I'm skited about this, the tissue is going to play guitar last

night or something. I know they want that thing. I know that they're not signaling to me, mommy, this is too much for me, which is I'm scared or I'm uncomfortable or I'm, it's a signal to me. I'm about to do something hard and I need your encouragement because I'm feeling really vulnerable, but I don't want you to talk me out of the thing. That's really good. Yes. That's the power. I mean, that's like why we make up things like hangry or, you know, it's like we need language. Yeah.

Brutiful. Brutiful is a word we say all the time. Oh, God. Yes. This is something like it's like saying goodbye to someone you love. It's both. It's the and both of this is so painful and so important to my human experience that I wouldn't change it for anything.

Yeah. Right. Language matters. Okay. So I want to talk about this thing, this part about belonging, which you're the most brilliant person on earth teaching us about how important belonging is. But in this book, I felt like there was a whole new part for me. So in it, you talk about a time you asked a large group of eighth graders to come up with their experiences of belonging and not belonging. Okay. And I expected, these are eighth graders, the majority of their response is to be about the pressure of middle school peers. But the majority were about their parents' reactions to them seeming not to fit in, right? So they said not belonging feels

like not being as cool or as popular as your parents want you to be. Not being good at the same things your parents are good at. Your parents being embarrassed because you don't have enough friends. And while I'm reading this, it struck me, holy shit, we are so desperate to make sure our kids don't experience the trauma of not belonging that we are in fact the ones that are giving them that experience. Unreal. So in Braving the Wilderness, you talked about not making the drill team at your school and said that became the day I no longer belonged in my family. at your school and said that became the day I no longer belonged in my family. I tried out for cheerleading five times for a day. She never made it. Five times. I wanted that uniform of belonging so bad. I just wanted someone to just put on something that would say I belonged. But no.

Okay. So how do we as parents release our people from this kind of manufactured pressure to belong so that they actually can feel like they belong in our families? Yeah. I think it's as simple and as hard as I see you, I love you, and you will always belong here. It is as simple and hard as doing your own work so you're not working your shit out on your kids. Dang. Yeah. I mean, and it is, you know, the hardest thing about raising a middle schooler is the unhealed, sweaty seventh grader inside of us who's got the tray in their hand and doesn't smell quite right and doesn't know where they're going to sit. And we so desperately don't want that for our own children. And that thing is so still raw that we almost can't take it if we have to watch it unfold again. I want to tell you, let me think about this for a second.

And I want to tell you, let me think about this for a second. So one of my kids, I'm just trying to think about how to do it in a mindful way with boundaries with my kids. But one of my kids experienced a not getting into something recently. And it's very hard. And I was prepping for it because we had to tell them and I was prepping for it. I get really, you know, Steve's superpower is calm. It's just how he's wired, but it's also kind of the pediatrician, you know, thing. And so I'm like, okay, so how bad is it going to be? Like how, how, how hard, how hurt, like, can you give me? And I sat and he's like, I think it's going to be okay. I think, you know, this is, you know, I think it's this.

And I said, fuck, is this going to be like the bear cadets? And he said, he said, no, no, no, no, we're not even near bear cadet level. And I said, okay. And so then he went upstairs and I was doing something and he came down like five minutes later and he was teary eyed. And I was like, but first I was like, shit, it's going to be like the bear cadets. I was like, what's going on? And he said, it will never be like that for our kids because we aren't those parents. Oh my God. You know, and so all I needed in that moment was really for one of my parents to say, fuck that drill team.

Yes. Yes. You know what I mean? And God, that sucks. But, and I had no idea at the time that like, I had no idea of their trauma and their history at the time. I just had like the grease version in my mind, captain of the football team, head of the drill team, you know, like it was a movie. I didn't know like head of the football, you know, captain of the football team to work out rage

after his father's death and head of the drill team to overcompensate for an alcoholic mother. And no one was allowed to go to their house because my grandmother was an alcoholic. And back then the only women in A were bringing coffee to the men in AA, you know? And so I didn't know that part of it. So all I thought, and so when I got in the back of the station wagon, first of all, I went up to the numbers and it was like, you wore a number when you tried out. I'll never forget the song either. I know my song. Yeah, just boo. And I remember looking, I was number 62 and I was like 58, 60, 64. And I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. And then I remember a girl named Chris, who everyone wanted to be a girl named Chris back then because you wanted a Charlie Angels name or a boy name. And a girl named Chris runs up and

she's like, yes. And then her dad leaped out of his car and ran toward her and grabbed her and twirled in the air with her. And I was like, yeah, yeah. And I remember just walking back to the car and getting in the back seat and Ashley and Barrett were in the back, back of the station wagon. It was me and my brother and my mom and my dad. And I just cried with my head in my hands and we just drove off and nothing was ever spoken about it again. Oh my. Okay. Yeah. I mean, that, that reminds me in your, in the book, you say that the center will hold if, and only if we can feel the edges. And that, like, I was until this moment thinking about that as like, that's our boundaries with other people. You know, if we have a solid ground under us and

we know where we end and when someone else begins, we can love them without shaking our core. without shaking our core. But that's with our kids, right? Like only if we can accept our edges are not their edges. They're not their edges. They're not their edges. Yeah. And their edges are forced us out into really shaky ground sometime. And I remember my therapist saying, I said something about, Ellen was talkative. Ellen would come home from school. She's 22 now. She's in graduate school. She would come home from school and she'd say, okay, this has happened. And then the drop me on it. And then like an hour later, we'd be at first period. Oh my God. Yes. It's a hostage. It's a hostage situation. Yeah. And I was like, yes.

Yeah. And we still, I'm like, give me tea. I'll be asleep when you get home tonight, but then I'll see the tea when I wake up in the morning. You know? And then with Charlie, good. No, no, no. Like, how was it?

Good. Fine. And so I tell my therapist, I'm like, this is unacceptable. And she says, say more. And I said, he's not giving me enough information for me to shine. And she said, what do you mean? And I said, I don't have enough information. He's not telling me what I need in order for me to, you know, I have all the words and I have all the relationship information. And I have like, I wonder if you're making up a story and I need more. I, you know, this is not working at all for me. He is under utilizing this resource that is. Yes. Yeah. And I am not able

to be my best self. You know, and she, yeah. And she was just like, yeah, she, yeah. She was just like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We sure do. We have one that at one point when I demanded that they talk about their feelings said to me, I do not know where they are. Yeah. I mean, it's, yeah. And then I realized, wow. She's like, I think you just let him be him and you worry about shining on your own terms. You don't get to, you know, he's not responsible for your shine. Yeah, that's good.

Yeah. Goodness. Okay. You worry about shining on your own terms. Okay. Not a sermon, just a thought. The story of not making that team has given you, I think, quite a bit of story now. And it's not for nothing.

And I just want to say like some of the stuff for Glennon that she had to like struggle through has given her a little bit of positive stuff in her adulthood. It's true. Material for days. Material. Material. And I do want to just make one slight confession, but then I don't want to talk about it. I just want to say the thing and then I want to move on to the next thing. Okay.

Okay. When you were talking, I just remembered, and sister, I've been up for, voted up for the superlative of most popular and most likely to succeed. But that was not true. And I don't want to talk about it, but I just want to say, think about what kind of poor child is trying to convince her parents that she is like something at school that she's not.

And why is that so important? Why did I think that was so important? Do you want to talk about it? That my parents thought I was cool. Next. Okay. So here I have to ask you this. This is a huge topic of conversation in my family right now.

a huge topic of conversation in my family right now. In our house, we can't stop talking about this idea of what is enough. And you know this, Brene, we've talked a lot about the scarcity mentality with my book, Wolfpack. And I come from that mindset and that place of scarcity, women's sports. Glennon, when offers are made made to me it's impossible for me to say no and since untame has come out things get offered to glennon and she says no a lot and i that makes me feel anxious because of my scarcity stuff i know that's my stuff my problems however However, she sees it as a way or people not having defined what enough means to them. just we just love and idolize you i wonder how you decide what is enough and how you define it and contentment right because you spoke about it in your book which is so freaking good i mean how do you define what you're i just want to show everyone bernie's face right now when you said contentment that's like that's the face that I feel in my heart when people say, it's fine.

It's just like, I'm allergic at every level to what's happening right now. Yes. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what's enough. I mean, I only can tell you what's too much with a side dish of rage and resentment. Dang. Good stuff. Yeah. But I really, yeah, I can't. Wow. I say no. So first of all, I say no.

Like I interviewed James Clear who wrote Atomic Habits and that book is really powerful. And one of his quotes is literally on a sticky note everywhere I walk that says, we will never rise to the level of our goals. We will fall to the level of our systems. Yeah. And so I have systems in place where I don't even see 90% of the stuff I say no to. So I have a system in place that controls my scarcity stuff and my shame stuff and my, holy shit, if I say no, they're going to stop asking stuff and my, who do you think you are stuff. And so, and I'm really comfortable with that. And I, and I, and I feel good about myself for putting those systems in place. This is not my, my idea, but I'm working on this right now. And I met with a business coach and I don't think, I don't know that he'd be comfortable with me sharing who he is, but I was

working with a business coach and we were talking, he said, you're going to have more opportunities and you've got time just based on how old you are in my fifties. And he said, what do you want? And I described kind of what I wanted and he goes, that's not going to work. And I said, why? And he said, because you want all control and no accountability. And I said, well, yes, that's not going to work. And I said, why? And he said, because you want all control and no accountability. And I said, well, yes, that's true. That's what I said. That's exactly what I want. Yeah, that's right.

But then he said, he gave me this piece of advice that has really been, I'm processing it. I'm in it right now. I don't have any report back to you. He said, your problem, I actually told him, my problem is discernment and fear about what's enough. I have a discernment problem. And he said, I want you to change the way you think about every opportunity into this

question. What do you want to be held accountable for? Wow. So now when I get asked to do something, I say to myself, do I want to be held accountable for that? Fuck no. I do not want to be held accountable for that. Do you want to be held accountable for this? Yes. I'll be held accountable for that. And for me, it may be just personalized advice, but he said, you're a magnet for accountability because of your platform and because I have a lot of visibility. And he said, but I would imagine you were that

way when you were four. Well, think about you with your sisters and brother. You were accountable for the environment, the atmosphere. This has been who you have been since birth probably. Wow. Yeah. And so the thing for me now is, A, what do I want to be held accountable for? That drives my yes or no. And B, do I want to do it? Is there joy in it? Or do I want to prove I can do it? Okay. Yep. That's good. Yes. And that's the power of language, right? When you think of something as an opportunity, you're like, I want all the opportunities. Give me all the opportunities.

But when you really drill down and say, no, this thing that is coming is something for which I will be responsible and accountable and name it that way. It's like the bowl with the cookies. Amen. It changes your whole expenses. It is the bowl with the cookies. It does because it's the question is,

hey, this is great opportunity. We really think we can scale your work and we could do this and we could start this. And then we're going to, you know, I'm sure something that y'all both heard a million times, you know, we can scale. Oh my God, if I hear scale again, if I hear the word scale again.

Yeah, we can scale. We can bring your work here and blah, blah, blah. And then, of course, yes. What will I be held accountable for? Well, we'll need to hire a team of engineers and everything from password resets to customer survey. I don't want to be held accountable for any of that. Well, who would you like to be held accountable for? Well, anybody but me. Well, there's no one else. Then I don't want to do it. And that is beautiful. I mean, we are going into the holidays. We are going into a new year, reframing things that we feel like things are happening to us all the time and around us. And to be able to make commitments out in the world, invitations, and to say,

I don't want to be accountable for that. I will be accountable for coaching my daughter. That's something I want to do, but I will not be accountable for signing up for whatever the heck I feel pressured into. Yes. Because I want to be held accountable for my ass on the stadium seat, every water polo match. Yeah. Yes. Hold me accountable for that. I'm that person with the like, I'm the person with the neck and the ball side,

ball side, weak, weak. You got time to lean. You got time to swim. Brene, you and my sister, I just, my sister has sent me videos of her daughter's lacrosse games where I have said to Abby, who is this freaking, they need to not let this person in who's on this video. This is inappropriate. And Abby's always like, it's her again. It's her. Your sister's the one that's yelling.

Screaming. That's not positivity, but just the intensity. Intensity. Okay. Dr. Brene Brown, our next right thing is without a doubt going to be to get this incredible book that I feel like could be like a family Bible too. Like a family where people sit and go through it with their kids like we are doing with our little ones who are big now. Because I think it will help us know each other better

and communicate each other better, which I can't imagine a better thing that you could do that you could be more accountable for in your life than actually giving people the language to strengthen their bonds and understanding of each other. It's so beautiful. And then also in addition to going to get Atlas of the Heart yesterday, can you give us a next right thing that we can do in terms of our language just right now, this week, to help us be seen and see our people a little bit better?

Like if we're tired, if we're just tired and we just want like a little easy thing. Yeah, a tired, easy thing. When we see someone in struggle, reframe, I'm here to fix to I'm here to walk with. Yeah, you know, for me, yeah, I'm here to fix to I'm here to walk with. Yeah. You know, for me, yeah, it's like when I, you know, this framework for meaningful connection that's in the back, I've been working on it since my dissertation, so 22 years.

And I came across this concept of near enemy. It's a Buddhist concept, which, you know, there's the opposite of things, like the opposite of compassion, the far enemy is cruelty. But what we better really watch and what's more likely to unravel connection every single time is not the far enemy of the virtue that we're seeking to show up in. It's the near enemy. So the near enemy of compassion is pity. So to me, it was a really big breakthrough that I believe, and I'm putting forward now, and I think researchers will come back behind me and test, but I think the near enemy of connection is control. And when I see my kids suffering and they say, this happened at school and it was so painful.

And I jump in to fix it rather than sitting in the pain with them. I have severed connection for the sake of control. And it's not Machiavellian control, but I'm trying to control hurt. I'm trying to control my own discomfort, their discomfort, my pain, their pain. And so I would just say the easy thing we can do, it's not easy, but the small thing is when we see someone struggling, especially someone we care about, my job is to be in connection with, not to fix. There you go. You heard it from Dr. Brene Brown. And when we heard it from Dr. Brene Brown and when we hear it from Dr. Brene Brown we just effing do it just do it so do it when

life gets hard this week don't fix it just walk with it and we'll see you back here in two days with more Dr. Brene Brown we love you bye bye I give you Tish Melton and Brandi Carlile. I chased desire, I made sure I got what's mine

And I continue to believe that I'm the one for me And because I'm mine, I walk the line Cause we're adventurers in heartbreaks on a map A final destination we lack We've stopped asking directions We are now at Upper Session Road back home and through the joy and pain that our lives bring we can do

a hard thing I hit rock bottom it felt like a brand new start I'm not the problem, sometimes things fall apart And I continue to believe the best people are free. And it took some time, but I'm finally fine. Cause we're adventurers and heartbreaks on a map A final destination we lack We've stopped asking directions To places they've never been

And to be loved we need to be known. We'll finally find our way back home. And through the joy and pain that our lives bring, we can do hard to take Cause we're adventurers and heartbreaks on the map We might get lost but we're okay with that We've stopped asking directions To places they've never been And to be loved we need to be known. We'll finally find our way back home.

And through the joy and pain that our lives bring, we can do hard things. Yeah, we can do hard things. Yeah, we can do hard things. Yeah, we can do hard things. We Can Do Hard Things is produced in partnership with Cadence 13 Studios. Be sure to rate, review, and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Odyssey, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Especially be sure to rate and review the podcast if you really liked it. If you didn't, don't worry about it. It's fine.