The Gifts of Imperfection ~ Dr. Brené Brown

Each day we face a barrage of images and messages from society and the media telling us who, what, and how we should be. We are led to believe that if we could only look perfect and lead perfect lives, we’d no longer feel inadequate. So most of us perform, please, and perfect, all the while thinking,

What if I can’t keep all of these balls in the air?
Why isn’t everyone else working harder and living up to my expectations?
What will people think if I fail or give up?
When can I stop proving myself?

InTHE GIFTS OF IMPERFECTION, Brené Brown, Ph.D., a leading expert on authenticity, shame, and courage shares what she’s learned from a decade of research on the power of Wholehearted Living.

She writes, “Wholehearted living is about engaging in our lives from a place of worthiness. It means cultivating the courage, compassion, and connection to wake up in the morning and think, No matter what gets done andhow much is left undone, I am enough. It’s going to bed at night thinking, Yes, I am imperfect and vulnerable and sometimes afraid, but that doesn’t change the truth that I am also brave and worthy of love and belonging.”

Dr. Brown’s most unique contribution comes from her 10-year groundbreaking study on vulnerability and shame. In this new book, she not only gives us direction for living a more authentic life, but courageously talks about “the things that get in the way.”

For example, in the chapter on cultivating rest and play, Brown addresses the challenges of letting go of exhaustion as a status symbol and productivity as self-worth. In her chapter on creativity she explains the paralyzing properties of comparison. Brown may be one of the only writers in this genre that offers us a path for change and an honest look at the obstacles.

As a nationally renowned researcher and speaker, Dr. Brown’s perspective is fresh, honest, and always delivered with warmth and humor. She writes about the experiences we all have, but few of us are willing to discuss. Using personal stories of her own struggle to “embrace vulnerability” she writes about the experiences we all have, but few of us are willing to discuss.

The Gifts of Imperfection

In this special presentation, renowned research professor and author Dr. Brené Brown shares what she’s learned from a decade of research on the power of authenticity. She will help viewers engage with the world from a place of courage and worthiness. We’ve all experienced the pressure to fit in, and the feeling that our worthiness is measured by how we look or what we earn. For many, that leads to a cycle of performing, perfecting, pleasing, and proving.

For her latest book , view Daring Greatly, here

Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead ~ Brene Brown

Brene Brown (The Gifts of Imperfection) examines vulnerability and imperfection in her latest, which takes its title from Theodore Roosevelt’s speech “Citizenship in a Republic.” Brown, a research professor at the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work, is the first to admit that vulnerability makes her uncomfortable, but posits that daring to fail is the only true way to be wholeheartedly engaged in any aspect of life.

“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 disclosure,” she says.

Laying out a roadmap for change, the author includes chapters on eliminating blame and shame from work and education, and daring to be the adults we want our children to be. At the same time, she explores what drives people to feel vulnerable and how to address common coping mechanisms in what she calls the “Vulnerability Armory.”

But the core of her message is understanding the difference between guilt and shame, and developing “shame resistance.” Brown’s theories—complete with personal and not always flattering examples from her own life—will draw readers in and have them considering what steps they would dare to take if shame and fear were not present.

Agent: Jo-Lynne Worley, Worley Shoemaker Literary Management. (Sept.)

Click Here To Look Inside

Dr. Brené Brown is a research professor at the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work. She has spent the past twelve years studying vulnerability, courage, worthiness, and shame. Her groundbreaking research has been featured on PBS, NPR, CNN, The Washington Post, and The New York Times.

Brené’s 2010 TEDxHouston talk, The Power of Vulnerability, is one of the top ten most viewed TED talks on TED.com, with approximately 6 million viewers. Additionally, Brené gave the closing talk at the 2012 TED conference where she talked about shame, courage, and innovation.

Brené’s newest book is, Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the way we Live, Love, Parent, and Lead (Gotham, 2012). She is also the author of The Gifts of Imperfection (2010), and I Thought It Was Just Me (2007), and Connections (2009); a shame-resilience curriculum being facilitated by helping professionals across the globe.

Brené lives in Houston with her husband, Steve, and their two children, Ellen and Charlie.

Daring Greatly, Brene Brown

Researcher and thought leader Dr. Brené Brown offers a powerful new vision that encourages us to dare greatly: to embrace vulnerability and imperfection, to live wholeheartedly, and to courageously engage in our lives.

“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 at best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.” —Theodore Roosevelt

Every day we experience the uncertainty, risks, and emotional exposure that define what it means to be vulnerable, or to dare greatly. Whether the arena is a new relationship, an important meeting, our creative process, or a difficult family conversation, we must find the courage to walk into vulnerability and engage with our whole hearts.

In Daring Greatly, Dr. Brown challenges everything we think we know about vulnerability. Based on twelve years of research, she argues that vulnerability is not weakness, but rather our clearest path to courage, engagement, and meaningful connection. The book that Dr. Brown’s many fans have been waiting for, Daring Greatly will spark a new spirit of truth—and trust—in our organizations, families, schools, and communities.

Simplicity

When we are connected with the Universe, we realize that the small feelings in life are the ones that have the ability to make us happy

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What Does It Mean To Be Poor and Blessed? – Eric Simpson

Eric Simpson
Associate Editor, “In Communion: The Journal of the Orthodox Peace Fellowship”

More than a decade ago, I had a job working in an office at a strip mall in southern California, and I spent most of my time there. After dark, I would turn out the lights and sit at my desk and write. Not knowing I was there in the dark, nearly every night a homeless woman would arrive with a few cardboard boxes, put together a makeshift compartment to sleep in and situate it just outside the office in the cold air in a little cubbyhole that could not be seen from the street.

I would sometimes hear her muttering to herself. On some nights when she thought she was alone and did not know that on the other side of the stucco wall against which she propped her head, I sat in a comfortable office writing book reviews and other assorted items on a computer screen, my fingers flicking over a keyboard. I would hear her, after she was done putting her box home together, softly sobbing to herself. Here we were, me in the camp of the haves and she in the camp of the have-nots, relatively speaking, less than three feet away from each other, separated by a thin wall, each of us lost in our own universe as if the other were light years away.

Jesus says, “Blessed are you poor…” Such a statement is contrary to common sense and to all of our expectations and wisdom about how the world works. How was this woman blessed? To be blessed connotes happiness, but also signifies a more profound reality than that. There is a sense in which it means to be held in the providential hands of God, to be on the right track and to know the implicit joy of being in such a state in accordance with its potential and promise. Jesus contrasts this in His sermon on the plain, when he says, “But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.” St. James in his epistle follows this up with the words,

Come now, you rich, weep and howl for your miseries that are coming upon you. Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and your silver are corroded, and their corrosion will be a witness against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have heaped up treasure in the last days. Indeed the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out; and the cries of the reapers have reached the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth. You have lived on the earth in pleasure and luxury; you have fattened your hearts as in a day of slaughter.

This seems to have things upside-down and inside-out. Isn’t abundance and wealth a sign of blessing, and destitution a sign of shame and woe? Are not the rich happier because of their abundance of things, the multitude of conveniences, the ability to satisfy all desire and want? And are not the poor more woeful because of their lack of those same things, their misery, their unspent desires, their inability to access even the most basic necessities? Isn’t wealth a sign of integrity and hard work, and poverty a sign of probable addiction and implicit laziness?

I recently overheard someone who said, “money can’t buy happiness; it is happiness.” It fixes problems. The thought of winning the lottery sends many people into hours of profound daydreaming. It would seem that money is not only the source of happiness, but also of hope. It is the meaning of Christmas. Anyone who has had to undergo the onslaught of advertising and jingles that comprise the contemporary celebration of Christmas without a lot of money for gifts and food and travel, money to temper the excited passions of kids who want every new toy that flashes across the TV screen, money to buy ourselves the things we crave and desire using the holiday as an excuse, might agree that a Christmas without cash is a joyless one.

But Jesus says, “Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.” What does this mean? One is initially tempted to think it refers to a pie-in-the-sky when you die theology, the notion that your suffering on earth will be rewarded in heaven. I consider this amid my own awareness of that which I lack, and I don’t think it is the total truth or the point Jesus is making. The heaven to which He refers has an entrance, a door through which we go even in this life, Christ himself, and we become partakers with him and in him of the life of God even now prior to death and that which awaits us beyond death.

The kingdom of God is a realm of rulership wherein the walls separating us are dismantled: We become equal as human persons made in the image of God, and the judgments of comparison, either condemning others through pride or ourselves through shame, are thrown down. Jesus draws out the distinctions between the two kingdoms, whose kings vie to rule our hearts, later in the Sermon on the Mount as recorded by Matthew. “Do not lay up for yourself treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys.”

Does this mean that it is a sin to be wealthy? I don’t think that is the point either, although at the same time there is no justification implied here for seeking wealth as an end, or for the sins of acquisitiveness or greed. The point rather seems to be one that pertains to the disposition of the soul. The poor person because he does not have riches does not put his trust in them, he does not find his security in them.

We may want to have financial security, which is a good objective as long as we understand that the terminology is relative; financial security, as many people discovered in recent years, is not really secure; it can fall out from under your feet as readily as a trap door you did not know was there. The poor person is more easily predisposed to put his trust in God and to seek in Christ a sense of security that in His providential hands God will bring to him whatever medicine is most needed for his soul. That may or may not include a new car, a nice house and a beach vacation on some exotic island.

It is more difficult for a wealthy person to disengage himself from his attachment to riches and to put his trust in Christ. The temptation to feel secure because of affluence and wealth is overwhelming. By the same token, a poor person who desires to be wealthy is filled with the same avarice as the rich person who clings to his wealth, and Jesus advises that a heart captured by the deception that money buys happiness and security, whether rich or poor, will find it nearly impossible to enter the kingdom of heaven — though not impossible because all things are possible with God, even a camel walking through the eye of a needle.

Or, as Paul elaborates in his first letter to his spiritual son, Timothy, “…we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. And having food and clothing, with these we shall be content. But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and harmful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition.”

A person who is poor in spirit, on the other hand, does not trust in riches, or in the natural feeling of security afforded by a good job, or in the apparent stability of a comfortable home. Such things are necessary, desirable and part of life, and there is nothing implicitly wrong with one’s enjoyment of them; but the person who is poor in spirit does not invest in them beyond their usefulness. Someone who is poor in spirit depends finally on God, and this dependence leads to peace.

Jesus goes to great lengths to describe the peace that exemplifies the kingdom of God, the realm of the rulership of Christ over one’s own heart, body and mind. It is a realm where violence is not an alternative, where enemies are forgiven, where one gives to all who ask and does not judge. It is a kingdom of forgiveness, fulness, mercy and eternal life.

The kingdom ruled by riches, however, is one of spending and thrift, pride and shame, and constant comparison with others and what others have. Given notions of scarcity and feelings of unsatisfied desire, conflict is born, and perpetual unhappiness becomes the status quo despite the acquirement of many things, all of which I am ultimately ungrateful for and which I take for granted.

All the thanks that we give once a year on Thanksgiving Thursday is canceled out on Black Friday when we mob and fight each other over things, stuff on sale, stuff that we are apparently poised to give to someone we love even if it means crushing other people in our effort to get it, stuff that breaks and does not last. Against the backdrop of eternity before God, this stuff has no value and attaches to us inexorably through our desires for comfort and pleasure and pulls us down to hell.

The way we relate to money and to things in some sense determines the way we relate to other people, those in need and therefore how we relate to Christ. I am reminded of the words of St. Basil, which I read in the Fall issue of In Communion, the international quarterly journal of which I am an associate editor:

“To whom am I unjust when I keep what is mine, asks the rich man. Tell me, which things are yours? Where did you get them from at the beginning of your life? It is like someone who has a seat in the theater, and who objects when others also take their places. He claims that he owns what is for the common use of all. So too with the rich. They claim in advance that which is common property and make themselves the owners of it. Moreover, if everyone acquires what they need and leave the excess over for the destitute, then there will be no rich and no poor. Did you not come naked out of your mother’s womb? Are you not going to return naked to the earth? Where did you get your present possessions from?

If you say ‘from fate,’ then that makes you an atheist who neither acknowledges your Creator nor gives thanks to your Benefactor. If you acknowledge that they came from God, then tell me the reason why He gave them to you. Is God unjust that He gives the things of life to people unequally? Why are you rich while another is poor? In any case, is it not so that you can receive the reward for good and faithful stewardship, and the other can receive the reward for his patient effort? But you, who grasps at everything in your insatiable greed, do you really think that you are doing nobody injustice by plundering so much? Who is the greedy one? The one who is not satisfied with that which is enough. Who is the plunderer? The one who takes that which belongs to all.

Are you greedy? Are you a plunderer? The one who steals clothes off someone’s back is called a thief. Why should we refer to the one who does not clothe the naked, while having the means to do so, as anything else? The bread that you have belongs to the hungry, the clothes that are in your cupboard belong to the naked, the shoes that are rotting in your possession belong to the barefooted, the money that you have buried belongs to the destitute. And so you commit injustice to so many when you could have helped them.”

Jesus says to us, “Blessed are the poor.” To those of us who struggle in these present difficult times, this should come as a word of consolation and hope. Our struggles give us an opportunity to follow Christ, to place our trust in Him and let God be our strength and security.

The Beatitudes, if nothing else, are not only a set of blessings and promises, but they are also descriptive of the character and attributes of Jesus, who with extreme humility and poverty of spirit willfully submitted himself to death in order to redeem us from death. Let us take up our crosses and follow him. This, and not riches or possessions, is the path that leads not only to contentment even amid the trials and difficulties of life, but also leads to peace.

Andrew Harvey, Ph.D. on OurPassion.tv (Pt. 1, 2 & 3)

Alixandra interviews Andrew Harvey, Ph.D., youngest recipient of a fellowship at Oxford University. He speaks brilliantly about spirituality, protection, development, expansion, circles of power and more. Prolific and brilliant author of 30 books and the leader of Sacred Activism, he expands on his new book, The Hope.

PART 2

PART 3