Daring Greatly by Brene Brown | Book Review
The July book for the Nourished Book Club was Daring Greatly by the shame and vulnerability researcher, Brene Brown.
After watching her Netflix special, I was fascinated by what she had to say about ‘living life in the arena’. Essentially she was asking the viewers to take a look at their life and ask if they were actively living it and going after their goals, or just watching from the sidelines going through the motions. She spoke about having to be willing to put yourself out there and that yes there will be times where you feel uncomfortable and vulnerable. Of course, you will receive criticism and you will make mistakes and chances are that you will fail at some things. However if you are willing to let shame, the fear of other peoples opinions, or the fear of failure stop you, then you will never be able to live life to your fullest potential. Something she pointed out that I absolutely loved was that often the people that are criticising or judging you are the ones that are not actually in the arena themselves, so why do we value their opinion when we are the ones out there trying and showing up everyday? The talk was certainly full of gems of wisdom and many of these themes were carried into her book Daring Greatly.
Personally, I loved this book just as much as I loved the talk. It was extremely eye opening and I learnt a lot about myself and people in general. It is amazing to see how vulnerability and shame effects all of us and that we are not alone in many of the thoughts, limiting beliefs and feelings that hold us back. She provided some fantastic tools as to how we can combat this and ensure we are showing up and living life in the arena.
Brene starts by debunking the myths of vulnerability, including the common misconception that ‘vulnerability is weakness’. Feeling itself is to be vulnerable and we all have feelings and emotions. She highlights the importance of vulnerability and why it is not something that we need to be afraid of. Instead we need to normalise the discomfort it causes and move through it. This is where the juicy stuff is.
Some of my key take aways from Daring Greatly are:
Experiencing vulnerability isn’t a choice. The only choice we have is how we’re going to respond when we are confronted with uncertainty, risk and emotional exposure.
Vulnerability can lead to increased connection, trust and engagement.
Shame stops us from being vulnerable and connected and in order to be vulnerable we need to develop resilience to shame.
Wholeheartedness is the journey from ‘what will people think’ to ‘I am enough’. This involves detaching your self-worth from anything external to you.
One of the greatest fears for women is not being loved. One of the greatest fears of men is the fear of failure.
We use various ‘shields’ to stop us from being vulnerable, this includes common traits like perfectionism.
Practicing gratitude is an important tool for living in the ‘scarcity’ culture and shining the light on all of the amazing things that we have available to us.
You can’t selectively numb emotion. If you numb the dark and you numb the light.
One of our greatest desires as humans is to belong. Belonging is to be a part of something larger than us.
We can’t give people what we don’t have. Who we are matters immeasurably more that what we know or who we want to be.
So many truth bombs and these key take aways are just scratching the surface of what she shares in the book. I highly recommend this book to anyone that wants to step into themselves, show up and be open to a life of their fullest potential.
The willingness to show up changes us, are you willing to show up as the best version of you? I know I am!
For anyone who read along, please be sure to share your thoughts in the comments below. I’d love to hear them.
Now that we’re through July, we’re onto the August book - Spark by John Ratey. In this book, we’ll learn all about the science behind exercise and the impact it has on our brain.
I hope you’re joining us, you can grab your copy here. Keep an eye out for the next review, which will be up at the end of August.
