Vulnerability Brene Brown Quotes & Sayings

Vulnerability pushed, I pushed back. I lost the fight, but probably won my life back. — Brene Brown

Cultivating hope Practicing critical awareness Letting go of numbing and taking the edge off vulnerability, discomfort, and pain — Brene Brown

Vulnerability is life's great dare. It's life asking, "Are you all in? Can you value your own vulnerability as much as you value it in others?" Answering — Brene Brown

Trust is a product of vulnerability that grows over time and requires work, attention, and full engagement. — Brene Brown

What behaviors are rewarded? Punished? Where and how are people actually spending their resources (time, money, attention)? What rules and expectations are followed, enforced, and ignored? Do people feel safe and supported talking about how they feel and asking for what they need? What are the sacred cows? Who is most likely to tip them? Who stands the cows back up? What stories are legend and what values do they convey? What happens when someone fails, disappoints, or makes a mistake? How is vulnerability (uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure) perceived? How prevalent are shame and blame and how are they showing up? What's the collective tolerance for discomfort? Is the discomfort of learning, trying new things, and giving and receiving feedback normalized, or is there a high premium put on comfort (and how does that look)? — Brene Brown

You can't get to courage without walking through vulnerability. — Brene Brown

The most transformative and resilient leaders that I've worked with over the course of my career have three things in common: First, they recognize the central role that relationships and story play in culture and strategy, and they stay curious about their own emotions, thoughts, and behaviors. Second, they understand and stay curious about how emotions, thoughts, and behaviors are connected in the people they lead, and how those factors affect relationships and perception. And, third, they have the ability and willingness to lean in to discomfort and vulnerability. — Brene Brown

I'm still a researcher. The best way to explain it is that I trusted myself deeply as a professional, but I did not have a lot of self-trust personally. When I started learning all of these things about the value and the importance of belonging, vulnerability, connection, self-kindness and self-compassion, I trusted what I was learning - again, I know I'm a good researcher. When those things and wholeheartedness started to emerge with all these different properties, I knew I had to listen. I'd heard these messages before personally but I didn't trust myself there. — Brene Brown

Vulnerability is not knowing victory or defeat, it's understanding the necessity of both; it's engaging. It's being all in. — Brene Brown

There is no intimacy without vulnerability. Yet another powerful example of vulnerability as courage. — Brene Brown

Shame breeds fear. It crushes our tolerance for vulnerability, thereby killing engagement, innovation, creativity, productivity, and trust. — Brene Brown

leaning in to vulnerability — Brene Brown

Through my research, I found that vulnerability is the glue that holds relationships together. It's the magic sauce. — Brene Brown

When we lose our tolerance for vulnerability, joy becomes foreboding. — Brene Brown

The authenticity paradox: vulnerability is the last thing I want you to see in me and the first thing I look for in you. — Brene Brown

The intention and outcome of vulnerability is trust, intimacy and connection. The outcome of oversharing is distrust, disconnection - and usually a little judgment. — Brene Brown

For example, when I look at narcissism through the vulnerability lens, I see the shame-based fear of being ordinary. — Brene Brown

The moment someone asks you to do something you don't have the time or inclination to do is fraught with vulnerability. — Brene Brown

A study published in the October 22, 2014, issue of the journal Neuron suggests that the brain's chemistry changes when we become curious, helping us better learn and retain information. But curiosity is uncomfortable because it involves uncertainty and vulnerability. — Brene Brown

Live-tweeting your bikini wax is not vulnerability. Nor is posting a blow-by-blow of your divorce . That's an attempt to hot-wire connection. But you can't cheat real connection. It's built up slowly. It's about trust and time. — Brene Brown

Most people believe vulnerability is weakness. But really vulnerability is Courage. We must ask ourselves ... are we willing to show up and be seen. — Brene Brown

I define vulnerability as uncertainty, risk and emotional exposure. With that definition in mind, let's think about love. Waking up every day and loving someone who may or may not love us back, whose safety we can't ensure, who may stay in our lives or may leave without a moment's notice, who may be loyal to the day they die or betray us tomorrow - that's vulnerability. — Brene Brown

Vulnerability is the absolute heartbeat of innovation and creativity. There can be zero innovation without vulnerability. — Brene Brown

Vulnerability is like being naked onstage and hoping for applause rather than laughter. — Brene Brown

Here's the crux of the struggle: I want to experience your vulnerability but I don't want to be vulnerable. Vulnerability is courage in you and inadequacy in me. I'm drawn to your vulnerability but repelled by mine. As — Brene Brown

Vulnerability is about sharing our feelings and our experiences with people who have earned the right to hear them. Being vulnerable and open is mutual and an integral part of the trust-building process. — Brene Brown

On the flip side, I've also had to struggle with saying "yes." Before I did this research and before I had my own breakdown and spiritual awakening around this work, my motto was, "Don't do anything that you're already not great at doing." Which I think is the way the majority of adults in our culture live. Authenticity is also about the courage and the vulnerability to say, "Yeah, I'll try it. I feel pretty uncomfortable and I feel a little vulnerable, but I'll try it!" — Brene Brown

I wasn't raised with the skills and emotional practice needed to "lean into discomfort," so over time I basically became a take-the-edge-off-aholic. But they don't have meetings for that. And after some brief experimenting, I learned that describing your addiction that way in a traditional twelve-step meeting doesn't always go over very well with the purists. For me, it wasn't just the dance halls, cold beer, and Marlboro Lights of my youth that got out of hand - it was banana bread, chips and queso, e-mail, work, staying busy, incessant worrying, planning, perfectionism, and anything else that could dull those agonizing and anxiety-fueled feelings of vulnerability. — Brene Brown

But for many of us, there is no form of self-expression that makes us feel more vulnerable than dancing. It is full body vulnerability". — Brene Brown

The difficult thing is that vulnerability is the first thing I look for in you and the last thing I'm willing to show you. In you, it's courage and daring. In me, it's weakness. — Brene Brown

I want to be in the arena. I want to be brave with my life. And when we make the choice to dare greatly, we sign up to get our asses kicked. We can choose courage or we can choose comfort, but we can't have both. Not at the same time. Vulnerability is not winning or losing; it's having the courage to show up and be seen when we have no control over the outcome. Vulnerability is not weakness; it's our greatest measure of courage. A lot of cheap seats in the arena are filled with people who never venture onto the floor. They just hurl mean-spirited criticisms and put-downs from a safe distance. The problem is, when we stop caring what people think and stop feeling hurt by cruelty, we lose our ability to connect. But when we're defined by what people think, we lose the courage to be vulnerable. Therefore, we need to be selective about the feedback we let into our lives. For me, if you're not in the arena getting your ass kicked, I'm not interested in your feedback. — Brene Brown

we dismiss vulnerability as weakness only when we realize that we've confused feeling with failing and emotions with liabilities. — Brene Brown

When I look at the statistics in more vulnerability-intolerant Viking-or-Victim professions, I see a dangerous pattern developing. And no place is this more evident than in the military. The statistics on post-traumatic-stress-related suicides, violence, addiction, and risk-taking all point to this haunting truth: For soldiers serving in Afghanistan and Iraq, coming home is more lethal than being in combat. From the invasion of Afghanistan to the summer of 2009, the US military lost 761 soldiers in combat in that country. Compare that to the 817 who took their own lives over the same period. And this number doesn't account for deaths related to violence, high-risk behaviors, and addiction. — Brene Brown

To reignite creativity, innovation, and learning, leaders must rehumanize education and work. This means understanding how scarcity is affecting the way we lead and work, learning how to engage with vulnerability, and recognizing and combating shame. — Brene Brown

Minding the gap is a daring strategy. We have to pay attention to the space between where we're actually standing and where we want to be. More importantly, we have to practice the values that we're holding out as important in our culture. Minding the gap requires both an embrace of our own vulnerability and cultivation of shame resilience - we're going to be called upon to show up as leaders and parents and educators in new and uncomfortable ways. We don't have to be perfect, just engaged and committed to aligning values with action. — Brene Brown

Women can be the most fearful about letting men off the white horse and the most likely to be critical of their vulnerability. — Brene Brown

Joy and gratitude can be very vulnerable and intense experiences. We are an anxious people and many of us have very little tolerance for vulnerability. Our anxiety and fear can manifest as scarcity. We think to ourselves: I'm not going to allow myself to feel this joy because I know it won't last. Acknowledging how grateful I am is an invitation for disaster. I'd rather not be joyful than have to wait for the other shoe to drop. — Brene Brown

When I look at narcissism through the vulnerability lens, I see the shame-based fear of being ordinary. I see the fear of never feeling extraordinary enough to be noticed, to be lovable, to belong, or to cultivate a sense of purpose. — Brene Brown

Vulnerability is not winning or losing; it's having the courage to show up and be seen when we have no control over the outcome. Vulnerability is not weakness; it's our greatest measure of courage. — Brene Brown

We love seeing raw truth and openness in other people, but we're afraid to let them see it in us. We're afraid that our truth isn't enough - that what we have to offer isn't enough without the bells and whistles, without editing, and impressing. — Brene Brown

When we spend our lives (knowingly or unknowingly) pushing away vulnerability, we can't hold space open for the uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure of joy. — Brene Brown

There is no creativity without vulnerability. — Brene Brown

I spent a lot of years trying to outrun or outsmart vulnerability by making things certain and definite, black and white, good and bad. My inability to lean into the discomfort of vulnerability limited the fullness of those important experiences that are wrought with uncertainty: Love, belonging, trust, joy, and creativity to name a few. — Brene Brown

Vulnerability is the core of shame and fear and our struggle for worthiness, but it appears that it's also the birthplace of joy, of creativity, of belonging, of love. — Brene Brown

Interview - two years of practicing being brave and putting myself out there - and vulnerability is still uncomfortable and falling still hurts. It always will. But I'm learning that the process of struggling and navigating hurt has as much to offer us as the process of being brave and showing up. — Brene Brown

If we want greater clarity in our purpose or deeper and more meaningful spiritual lives, vulnerability is the path. — Brene Brown

As children we found ways to protect ourselves from vulnerability, from being hurt, diminished, and disappointed. We put on armor; we used our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors as weapons; and we learned how to make ourselves scarce, even to disappear. Now as adults we realize that to live with courage, purpose, and connection - to be the person whom we long to be - we must again be vulnerable. We must take off the armor, put down the weapons, show up, and let ourselves be seen. — Brene Brown

Serpentining is the perfect metaphor for how we spend enormous energy trying to dodge vulnerability when it would take far less effort to face it straight on. — Brene Brown

But ultimately these are questions that transcend what we know and how we feel - they're about our spirit. Are my choices comforting and nourishing my spirit, or are they temporary reprieves from vulnerability and difficult emotions ultimately diminishing my spirit? Are my choices leading to my Wholeheartedness, or do they leave me feeling empty and searching? — Brene Brown

When you shut down vulnerability, you shut down opportunity — Brene Brown

Another great example of the power of vulnerability
this time in a corporation
is the leadership approach taken by Lululemon's CEO, Christine Day. In a video interview with CNN Money, Day explained that she was once a very bright, smart executive who "majored in being right." Her transformation came when she realized that getting people to engage and take ownership wasn't about "the teling" but about letting them come into the idea in a purpose-led way, and that her job was creating the space for others to perform. She chracterized this change as the shift from "having the best idea or problem solving" to "being the best leader of people. — Brene Brown

There is a quiet transformation happening that is moving us from 'turning on each other' to 'turning toward each other.' Without question, that transformation will require shame resilience. If we're willing to dare greatly and risk vulnerability with each other, worthiness has the power to set us free. — Brene Brown

For many of us, our first response to vulnerability and pain of these sharp points is not to lean into the discomfort and feel our way through but rather to make it go away. — Brene Brown

The root of the word courage is cor - the Latin word for heart. In one of its earliest forms, the word courage had a very different definition than it does today. Courage originally meant "To speak one's mind by telling all one's heart." Over time, this definition has changed, and, today, courage is more synonymous with being heroic. Heroics is important and we certainly need heroes, but I think we've lost touch with the idea that speaking honestly and openly about who we are, about what we're feeling, and about our experiences (good and bad) is the definition of courage. Heroics is often about putting our life on the line. Ordinary courage is about putting our vulnerability on the line. In today's world, that's pretty extraordinary.1 — Brene Brown

Now I can lean into joy, even when it makes me feel tender and vulnerable. In fact, I expect tender and vulnerable. Joy is as thorny and sharp as any of the dark emotions. To love someone fiercely, to believe in something with your whole heart, to celebrate a fleeting moment in time, to fully engage in a life that doesn't come with guarantees - these are risks that involve vulnerability and often pain. When we lose our tolerance for discomfort, we lose joy. In fact, addiction research shows us that an intensely positive experience is as likely to cause relapse as an intensely painful experience. — Brene Brown

To feel is to be vulnerable. To believe vulnerability is weakness is to believe that feeling is weakness. — Brene Brown

Joy is as thorny and sharp as any of the dark emotions. To love someone fiercely, to believe in something with your whole heart, to celebrate a fleeting moment in time, to fully engage in a life that doesn't come with guarantees - these are risks that involve vulnerability and often pain. When we lose our tolerance for discomfort, we lose joy. — Brene Brown

Vulnerability is our most accurate measurement of courage. — Brene Brown

Vulnerability is not weakness. — Brene Brown

I became Vulnerability TED, like an action figure - like Ninja Barbie, but I'm Vulnerability TED. — Brene Brown

Heroics is often about putting our life on the line. Ordinary courage is about putting our vulnerability on the line. In today's world, that's pretty extraordinary. — Brene Brown

By definition, entrepreneurship is vulnerable. It's all about the ability to handle and manage uncertainty. People are constantly changing, budgets change, boards change, and competition means you have to stay nimble and innovative. You have to create a vision and live up to that vision. There is no vision without vulnerability. — Brene Brown

I think our capacity for wholeheartedness can never be greater than our willingness to be broken-hearted. It means engaging with the world from a place of vulnerability and worthiness. — Brene Brown

You know, and so, I've come to this belief that, if you show me a woman who can sit with a man in real vulnerability, in deep fear, and be with him in it, I will show you a woman who, A, has done her work and, B, does not derive her power from that man. And if you show me a man who can sit with a woman in deep struggle and vulnerability and not try to fix it, but just hear her and be with her and hold space for it, I'll show you a guy who's done his work and a man who doesn't derive his power from controlling and fixing everything. — Brene Brown

Vulnerability is the core, the heart, the center, of meaningful human experience. — Brene Brown

Word vulnerability is derived from the Latin word vulnerare, meaning "to wound." The definition includes "capable of being wounded" and "open to attack or damage." Merriam-Webster defines weakness as the inability to withstand attack or wounding. Just from a linguistic perspective, it's clear that these are very different concepts, and in fact, one could argue that weakness often stems from a lack of vulnerability - when we don't acknowledge how and where we're tender, we're more at risk of being hurt. — Brene Brown

Waking up every day and loving someone who may or may not love us back, whose safety we can't ensure, who may stay in our lives or may leave without a moment's notice, who may be loyal to the day they die or betray us tomorrow - that's vulnerability. Love is uncertain. — Brene Brown

Perfect and bulletproof are seductive, but they don't exist in the human experience. We must walk into the arena, whatever it may be - a new relationship, an important meeting, our creative process, or a difficult family conversation - with courage and the willingness to engage. Rather than sitting on the sidelines and hurling judgment and advice, we must dare to show up and let ourselves be seen. This is vulnerability. This is daring greatly. — Brene Brown

Vulnerability is not about fear and grief and disappointment; it is the birthplace of everything we're hungry for. — Brene Brown

Vulnerability is not weakness, and the uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure we face every day are not optional. Our only choice is a question of engagement. Our willingness to own and engage with our vulnerability determines the depth of our courage and the clarity of our purpose; the level to which we protect ourselves from being vulnerable is a measure of our fear and disconnection. — Brene Brown

Vulnerability is the core of all emotions and feelings. To feel is to be vulnerable. To believe vulnerability is weakness is to believe that feeling is weakness. To foreclose on our emotional life out of a fear that the costs will be too high is to walk away from the very thing that gives purpose and meaning to living. — Brene Brown

Vulnerability is about showing up and being seen. It's tough to do that when we're terrified about what people might see or think. — Brene Brown

No one reaches out to you for compassion or empathy so you can teach them how to behave better. They reach out to us because they believe in our capacity to know our darkness well enough to sit in the dark with them. — Brene Brown

I'm learning that recognizing and leaning into the discomfort of vulnerability teaches us how to live with joy, gratitude, and grace. I'm also learning that the uncomfortable and scary leaning requires both spirit and resilience. — Brene Brown

The profound danger is that, as noted above, we start to think of feeling as weakness. With the exception of anger (which is a secondary emotion, one that only serves as a socially acceptable mask for many of the more difficult underlying emotions we feel), we're losing our tolerance for emotion and hence for vulnerability. — Brene Brown

For me, vulnerability led to anxiety, which led to shame, which led to disconnection, which led to Bud Light. — Brene Brown

I only share when I have no unmet needs that I'm trying to fill. I firmly believe that being vulnerable with a larger audience is only a good idea if the healing is tied to the sharing, not to the expectations I might have for the response I get. — Brene Brown

When you stop caring what people think, you lose your capacity for connection. When you're defined by it, you lose our capacity for vulnerability. — Brene Brown

true. I define vulnerability as uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure. With that definition in mind, let's think about love. Waking up every day and loving someone who may or may not love us back, whose safety we can't ensure, who may stay in our lives or may leave without a moment's notice, who may be loyal to the day they die or betray us tomorrow - that's vulnerability. Love is uncertain. It's incredibly risky. And loving someone leaves us emotionally exposed. Yes, it's scary and yes, we're open to being hurt, but can you imagine your life without loving or being loved? — Brene Brown

If you think dealing with issues like worthiness and authenticity and vulnerability are not worthwhile because there are more pressing issues, like the bottom line or attendance or standardized test scores, you are sadly, sadly mistaken. It underpins everything. — Brene Brown

Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change. — Brene Brown

The irony is that when we're standing across from someone who is hidden or shielded by masks and armor, we feel frustrated and disconnected. That's the paradox here: Vulnerability is the last thing I want you to see in me, but the first thing I look for in you. If — Brene Brown

Here's the bottom line: If we want to live and love with our whole hearts, and if we want to engage with the world from a place of worthiness, we have to talk about the things that get in the way - especially shame, fear, and vulnerability. — Brene Brown

Courage starts with showing up and letting ourselves be seen. — Brene Brown

I think we can all agree that feeling shame is an incredibly painful experience. What we often don't realize is that perpetrating shame is equally as painful, and no one does that with the precision of a partner or a parent. These are the people who know us the best and who bear witness to our vulnerabilities and fears. Thankfully, we can apologize for shaming someone we love, but the truth is that those shaming comments leave marks. And shaming someone we love around vulnerability is the most serious of all security breaches. Even if we apologize, we've done serious damage because we've demonstrated our willingness to use sacred information as a weapon. — Brene Brown

Spirituality emerged as a fundamental guidepost in Wholeheartedness. Not religiosity but the deeply held belief that we are inextricably connected to one another by a force greater than ourselves
a force grounded in love and compassion. For some of us that's God, for others it's nature, art, or even human soulfulness. I believe that owning our worthiness is the act of acknowledging that we are sacred. Perhaps embracing vulnerability and overcoming numbing is ultimately about the care and feeding of our spirits. — Brene Brown

Faith minus vulnerability is fundamentalism — Brene Brown

Vulnerability sounds like truth and feels like courage. Truth and courage aren't always comfortable, but they're never weakness. — Brene Brown

we are the kind of people who "don't do vulnerability," there's nothing that makes us feel more threatened and more incited to attack and shame people than to see someone daring greatly. — Brene Brown

One of the things I did when I discovered this huge importance of being vulnerable is very happily moved away from the shame research, because that's such a downer, and people hate that topic. It's not that vulnerability is the upside, but it's better than shame, I guess. — Brene Brown

There really is "no effort without error and shortcoming" and there really is no triumph without vulnerability. — Brene Brown

I was raised in a family where vulnerability was barely tolerated: no training wheels on our bicycles, no goggles in the pool, just get it done. And so I grew up not only with discomfort about my own vulnerability, I didn't care for it in other people either. — Brene Brown

I know I'm ready to give feedback when: I'm ready to sit next to you rather than across from you; I'm willing to put the problem in front of us rather than between us (or sliding it toward you); I'm ready to listen, ask questions, and accept that I may not fully understand the issue; I want to acknowledge what you do well instead of picking apart your mistakes; I recognize your strengths and how you can use them to address your challenges; I can hold you accountable without shaming or blaming you; I'm willing to own my part; I can genuinely thank you for your efforts rather than criticize you for your failings; I can talk about how resolving these challenges will lead to your growth and opportunity; and I can model the vulnerability and openness that I expect to see from you. — Brene Brown

Wholeheartedness. There are many tenets of Wholeheartedness, but at its very core is vulnerability and worthiness; facing uncertainty, exposure, and emotional risks, and knowing that I am enough. — Brene Brown

Faith minus vulnerability and mystery equals extremism. If you've got all the answers, then don't call what you do 'faith.' — Brene Brown

People who wade into discomfort and vulnerability and tell the truth about their stories are the real badasses. — Brene Brown

Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it. Embracing our vulnerabilities is risky but not nearly as dangerous as giving up on love and belonging and joy - the experiences that make us the most vulnerable. Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light. — Brene Brown

Show me a woman who can hold space for a man in real fear and vulnerability, and I'll show you a woman who's learned to embrace her own vulnerability and who doesn't derive her power or status from that man. Show me a man who can sit with a woman in real fear and vulnerability and just hear her struggle without trying to fix it or give advice, and I'll show you a man who's comfortable with his own vulnerability and doesn't derive his power from being Oz, the all-knowing and all-powerful. — Brene Brown

When we pretend that we can avoid vulnerability we engage in behaviors that are often inconsistent with who we want to be. — Brene Brown

Daring greatly is not about winning or losing. It's about courage. In a world where scarcity and shame dominate and feeling afraid has become second nature, vulnerability is subversive. — Brene Brown