“Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change….Vulnerability is not weakness. And that myth is profoundly dangerous.” – Brene Brown
Think about a time when you made a significant shift. You created something new or did something courageous that took you down a different path or failed horribly at it. You never felt the same again. Take a minute and see that time clearly before you read any further.
It was probably one of the most difficult times in your life. Was it also a time when you were most vulnerable? And then all that difficulty was followed by thriving at a higher level.
In Brene Brown’s, “Listening to Shame” TED talk she shares compelling information from her years of research on vulnerability and shame and how you can shift into thriving by courageously moving forward and not letting the tapes of shame stop you. Do those words, vulnerability & shame, make you want to run? Stay with me, thriving comes with a better understanding of vulnerability, shame and failure. Click on the link and take a few minutes to watch the talk and you’ll see why she had over four million views on her earlier TED talk on vulnerability.
She shares a shortened version of this quote by Theodore Roosevelt:
“It is 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 errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. “
What is stopping you from going into the arena? Brene Brown’s research shows there are two tapes that stop us, “Never good enough” and if you silence that one then, “Who do you think you are?” comes up next. In order to thrive you have to courageously push past those tapes.
How will you step off the sidelines and possibly fail while daring greatly?
Photo credit via Flickr creative commons: Montanari.Michael