Last night I got to see Brene Brown when she spoke in Austin to promote her book Rising Strong!

Update! 9/11/2017 Brene Brown

Brene Brown has a new book coming out tomorrow! You can order of Braving the Wilderness from Amazon!

Brene Brown’s talk – Rising Strong

Her talk was organized by our amazing local independent bookstore, Book People. The event was sold out!

Even so, Brene managed to make the talk so personal. She embodies the ability to Embrace the Gifts of Imperfection as she practices Daring Greatly in what she is willing to reveal to a wide audience.

Through her willingness to be vulnerable, we all learn.

About Rising Strong

From the publisher: Social scientist Brené Brown has ignited a global conversation on courage, vulnerability, shame, and worthiness. Her pioneering work uncovered a profound truth: Vulnerability—the willingness to show up and be seen with no guarantee of outcome—is the only path to more love, belonging, creativity, and joy. But living a brave life is not always easy: We are, inevitably, going to stumble and fall.

It is the rise from falling that Brown takes as her subject in Rising Strong. As a grounded theory researcher, Brown has listened as a range of people—from leaders in Fortune 500 companies and the military to artists, couples in long-term relationships, teachers, and parents—shared their stories of being brave, falling, and getting back up. She asked herself, What do these people with strong and loving relationships, leaders nurturing creativity, artists pushing innovation, and clergy walking with people through faith and mystery have in common? The answer was clear: They recognize the power of emotion and they’re not afraid to lean in to discomfort.

Walking into our stories of hurt can feel dangerous. But the process of regaining our footing in the midst of struggle is where our courage is tested and our values are forged. Our stories of struggle can be big ones, like the loss of a job or the end of a relationship, or smaller ones, like a conflict with a friend or colleague. Regardless of magnitude or circumstance, the rising strong process is the same: We reckon with our emotions and get curious about what we’re feeling; we rumble with our stories until we get to a place of truth; and we live this process, every day, until it becomes a practice and creates nothing short of a revolution in our lives. Rising strong after a fall is how we cultivate wholeheartedness. It’s the process, Brown writes, that teaches us the most about who we are.

Along with my current reading list, I also mentioned that I’ve been watching the Up Series documentaries. The Up documentaries have been a continuing project over the last fifty years, following the lives of 14 children. It was actually Tim who first found this series, and realized that it might have connections to everything I’d been reading about.

The series begins with a short film, 7 Up, that was actually meant to be a stand alone documentary showing how a child’s future in Britain was already limited by the age they were 7, simply by the class they were born into. (And yes, I realize I used “they” where I should have used “he,” but I really dislike using only the masculine form in such cases, and he/she is so awkward.) In this first film, it’s rather striking to see how the more affluent children have a pretty good idea of how their life will be charted out, rattling off a long stream of schools they plan to progress through….

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