I love ALL of Brene Browns books. Recently I have listened to Daring Greatly again and took notes of 10 points for whole hearted living in my journal. I have just come across them again in my journal and thought I would share them with you. I guess we all know them, but its good to be reminded to shift our focus to what matters regularly:
- Cultivate Authenticity and let go of what people might think of you.
- Cultivate Self Compassion and let go of perfection.
- Cultivate a resilient spirit and let go of numbing and powerlessness.
- Cultivate gratitude and joy. Let go of scarcity and fear of the dark.
- Cultivate intuition and trust faith. Let go of the need for certainty.
- Cultivate creativity and let go of comparison.
- Cultivate play and rest and let go of exhaustion as a status symbol and productivity as self worth.
- Cultivate calm and stillness and let go of anxiety as a lifestyle.
- Cultivate meaningful work and let go of self doubt and supposed to…
- Cultivate laughter, song and dance and let go of being cool and always in control.
Its something we could all hang on the fridge, over our desk, by the bathroom mirror, by our bedside to remind us regularly to shift our perspective.
Courage has played a big part in my life. Its a play between courage, fear, bravery, anxiety and everything around and in between. I liked this definition of Courage by Brene Brown and it’s also in my journal to remind me:
“COURAGE is a heart word. The root of the word courage is cor. – the Latin word for heart. In one of its earliest forms, the word courage meant “To speak one’s mind by telling all one’s heart.” Over time, this definition has changed, and today, we typically associate courage with heroic and brave deeds. But in my opinion, this definition fails to recognize the inner strength and level of commitment required for us to actually speak honestly and openly about who we are and about our experiences – good and bad. Speaking from our hearts is what I think of as “ordinary courage”.”
Over the years I have been drawn to writers and mentors who courageously and authentically share who they are and how they experience the world – honestly, fully. Its invited me to share more fully about my experiences and allowed to me to process lots of buried stuff. Writing and sharing helps to process and also to connect to other people with similar experience and feel less lonely and alien in this world. Recently someone sent me a private message, that I should not share about personal aspects of my relationships and our journey publicly. But for me that would be just a highlights reel and we already have enough of that. I think those highlights reels are responsible for a lot of anxiety, depression, unrealistic expectations of how things ‘should’ be and how things are for other people causing FOMO and jealousy and comparison and all sorts. If we all shared more authentically and courageously of what’s really going on I am convinced we would live in a better world.
Unfortunately the authentic and open sharing is two fold. It opens the doors to new connections that would otherwise not happen, but it also invites online trolls and people who “know better than us” to give us unsolicited advise or worse make comments that hurt deeply. Sharing authentically, courageously and openly required a soft hart and a strong back – also a Brene Brown saying. It has taken me many years to develop both and I still regularly get thrown off center. But I have enough tools to shake off what needs shaking off and get back to MY center.
Would love to hear your thoughts and experiences.