48. DR. BRENÉ BROWN: How to Know Ourselves & Be Known by Our People

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Welcome to We Can Do Hard Things.

This is going to be the shortest introduction on earth because nobody wants to hear me talk when you know who's about to speak on these very

grounds we are on.

I'm going to introduce you to, although who needs this introduction?

We're going to do it anyway, to our friend, one of our favorite people on this little earth, and her name is Dr.

Brene Brown.

Dr.

Brene Brown is a research professor at the University of Houston where she holds the Huffington Foundation Endowed Chair at the Graduate College of Social Work.

She has spent the past two decades studying courage, vulnerability, shame, and empathy.

She is the author of five number one New York Times bestsellers, which Abby actually

was like, wait, Brene, she goes, that's not right.

This isn't right.

I was like, oh, no, no, no, it's right.

Five number one.

Correct.

That's so weird.

Okay.

And is the host of the weekly Spotify original podcast, Unlocking Us and Dare to Lead.

So freaking good.

So good.

Brene's books have been translated into more than 30 languages and titles including dare to lead braving the wilderness rising strong daring greatly and the gifts of imperfection I love them all most recently Brene collaborated with Tarana Burke

to co-edit you are your best thing vulnerability shame resilience and the black experience so good in her have we ever had so much to say about someone's introduction every single one unlike yes we'd like to comment on all the words okay in her latest book atlas of the heart which our entire team has spent the last weeks with look at the book she takes us on a journey through 87 of the emotions and experiences that define what it means to be human brene lives in houston texas with her husband steve they have two children ellen and charlie dr brene brown thanks for being here

hello okay so we this little team have been talking about your book for the last weeks.

Okay.

The new book, Atlas of the Heart, which is about to take the entire world by storm.

I think it already has.

I think before anyone got it,

Amazon already named it number one or on the top.

I'm like, have they even read it?

No.

Everyone's just like, here we go.

When I put out a book, it's the best.

Number one.

And they're always right.

Okay.

So.

Here's what I want to say about this book to start off with.

I want you to tell me if I'm right about this.

Okay.

Okay.

I'm ready.

Okay.

So

start to finish, read the whole thing many times.

And in my own little brain, I'm trying to figure out why this is so freaking important.

And so for me, I think this is what I say to my sister the other day.

I think for me, it's because, okay, if connection to other human beings is what heals us and gets us through.

Then the ability to understand,

put language to and communicate our internal emotional selves to each other is the only way that we will heal and get through because that is how we connect.

And it's also the only really real way to be loved by anyone

if being loved is truly about being seen

and understood.

We can only be seen and understood if we can put words to this wild thing that's constantly happening inside of ourselves.

Dr.

Brene Brown, is that right?

Am I right?

So this book

is a guide to defining our internal self so that we can translate ourselves to the people we love and to the world.

Okay.

Tell me if I'm right.

If I'm not right, I'm just going to, I'm going to splice in something that says, yes, Glennon, you need it.

No, I mean, yeah, you nailed it.

That's it.

I mean, it is, that's it.

It's like,

I didn't know going into this book, first of all, oh, God, this book was so freaking hard.

It was just, it,

I, I wasn't sure I was going to make it through this book, to be honest with you.

And I think it is everything that you're describing.

It is

how do we find our way back to ourselves and to each other?

And how do we do it without language, without some kind of understanding

of, I love what you said, what this wild thing happening inside of us.

Like, we are not,

much to my dismay and the dismay of many other people, we are not cognitive thinking beings who on occasion feel.

We are emotional beings.

It defines who we are.

And

it just, it was like every now and then when I was writing this, I got to this place where I was like, fuck.

What have I gotten myself into?

Like, what is happening here?

This is, it's like too big.

It's too unwieldy.

And so,

yeah,

it's everything you said, Glennon.

No splicing necessary.

Let's put her on the book report, Glennon.

A plus on the book report.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

That's right.

Cecily, you have had, I can't wait for Brene and sister to talk about this book because sister has had so many thoughts and feelings.

So I have had 87 emotions about 87.

Yeah.

You back.

I really feel so grateful to you because you're explaining it so well, but you're also so vulnerable in it at the same time.

And I feel like

you were sharing some about when growing up in your home was both full of intense love and also intense rage.

And Glennon and I had a similar experience when we were growing up.

And I really deeply resonated with your description of how kind of the unpredictability of that environment gave you this superpower that enabled you to meticulously read people's emotions.

And I feel like I, that has also served me well as the kind of survival strategy works in the world because you can read people.

But the flip side of that is also true that I can't turn off that.

high monitoring.

So I feel like I'm always just like in anticipatory anxiety mode, just like high alert at all times.

So, when I was reading this, I got to the place where you talk about calm and you say that nothing is more important than getting a grip on your reactivity.

My question is about that.

It's how do we manage

to use the superpower to be tuned in to people's emotions, but also not let it completely hijack our own emotional experience

of really everything.

Whoo, man,

it was a superpower.

It was a survival power.

Because even I think I write in there, and it was, for sure, is the most personal I've ever been with kind of growing up and how things were hard.

And even when things were great, I mean, y'all know my sister,

Barrett, and then I've got, she's got a twin, Ashley, and then I've got a, we've got a brother between us.

And so I'm the oldest.

And so

even when things, and it's, it's a hard place to be because even when things were really

fun and intensely fun, I was the protector in waiting.

And I knew one,

something is going to go sideways.

One comment's not going to work.

One joke is not going to be funny.

And something's going to happen.

And so at the same time, I'm kind of being made fun of for not

jumping in all the fun.

I'm also going to be the person when shit turns really fast that's going to have to gather my siblings and get them out of the way.

Wow.

You know, and yeah.

And so,

so

as I've worked through that, especially with up there at my therapist, she's like, you know, you called it a superpower because you could read very quickly,

wow,

this is going to go bad in five to seven minutes.

You know,

she said, I would

call it hyper vigilance.

Yeah.

And she said, and boy, does that exact a price?

You know, you are,

yeah, you're always hyper vigilant.

Even if things are good,

because the unpredictability growing up is the really hard part.

It's like, you know, that's the hard part about not being able to guess what the antecedent is.

Like, what is the thing that's going to cause everything to

tumble?

And so

I think the work that I still do is

there's two things.

So

I think honestly, and this has been hard.

And I think I was in the space writing the book, which made it really hard.

I could cry maybe, but I think I've had to

limit my time with people that demand that hyper vigilance, including people, including people I love.

Same.

Yeah.

And

I remember when I first started seeing Diana, my therapist, I was,

golly, I was 10 years sober and I'm 25 now, so 15 years ago.

And I, I was sober, but I was really leaning into food and work.

And so I had just kind of given up some of the food stuff and I was really working on work.

And I remember her, I remember saying to her, I need some medicine.

Like, I need some medicine because I got nothing now.

I got nothing.

And she said, What do you mean?

And I said, I, I'm like a turtle in a briar patch.

And you took away my, my Bud Light and you took away my cigarettes.

And now you've taken away the apple fritter.

And now you've taken away the 70 hours of work.

Like,

I'm a turtle without a shell in a briar patch.

Everywhere I turn, it hurts.

I'm going to need something.

And she goes, have you thought about getting out of the fucking briar patch?

Oh, my gosh.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yes.

Oh, my gosh.

Yeah.

And I, and I was like,

but is that the world?

And she said,

it can partly be the world, but it's also, it's also your relationships, the family stuff, the worlds you create.

And so, for me,

there was a definition by John Cabot-Zinn that I came across when I was studying overwhelm.

That really I think about it every day.

He said that overwhelm was the feeling that life is unfolding at a rate that's unmanageable for me and my nervous system.

And so, really, what I have found, you know,

emotion is body.

And so, like, like you, I think

I, how do I be calm, but hyper vigilant?

And I don't think you can be.

I think it becomes a safety issue.

You know, I think it just becomes, I, you know, and it was funny because we had some really hard family shit going on.

And it was the first time in my life because I was writing this book where I said, I,

I can opt into this, but my nervous system can't take it anymore.

I don't have that.

I don't have that anymore.

Well, such permission, it's such, it's like, it's not always the next strategy or the next,

you know, thing to cope.

It's creating some a life that create that needs less coping from us.

I mean,

it's yeah, because there's shit that we cannot control, like the pandemics and white supremacy.

And I mean, we can make changes, but we don't have a ton of control over it.

But the stuff we can control, I think,

where do I feel safe enough to be my best calm self?

I love that.

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To go back to what you said about the overwhelm, overwhelm,

we did an entire podcast on overwhelm, and it's a topic of conversation in my family for a lot of reasons.

And I think you

did an extraordinary job in this book to define overwhelm.

You said,

I mean, I think that it's so important to me because I don't necessarily get overwhelmed, but I live with people that get overwhelmed.

And your definition of overwhelmed just blew my mind.

You said,

you define it as relating to our perception of how we are coping with our situation, not how we are actually coping, but our perception of how we are coping, whether we can handle it.

For me, I'm like, okay, wow, that is incredible.

And it makes me remember the story you told in this book about I'm Blown.

Can you please tell the story of I'm blown?

Because we actually just walk around our house now.

I'm blown.

Brunette.

30 times a day.

I'm, I'm the, the, the boy who cried, I'm blown.

And now no one's going to listen to me anyway.

You have to tell the story, please.

Do you know it's so weird?

Glennon, that you said that.

I gave a talk last night.

It's the first time I've been like in front of an audience since, you know, a year and a half.

And I actually talked about the boy who cried wolf related to overwhelm.

It's so weird that you say that.

Well, first of all, let me just start by saying this, that the power of language.

So this was new to me and I've studied emotion for 20 years, like, but we just didn't have until probably the last five or seven, maybe 10, but really five or seven years, like the fMRIs and the pet imaging to understand

that

language doesn't just communicate emotion.

It shapes emotion.

So if I said, you know, if I said, hey, Glenn, can you make me those great chocolate chip cookies that you make?

And you get out your bowl and you put in, I've never made chocolate chip cookies in my life, but like, I don't know, flour, I guess, and chocolate chips and shit, like eggs and milk and whatever.

Butter.

Butter, butter.

Anything good has butter.

What if I told you that the cookies tasted differently, radically differently, depending on what bowl you used?

Hmm.

Like we think of language just like as a carrier of things, but it doesn't, it shapes things.

And so

the story about being blown and being in the weeds is really just waiting tables, bartending for, you know, six, seven years all the way through college, graduate school.

And when it was busy, we'd get in the weeds and I, you know, and I'd be in the weeds.

I'd be like, I'd come in through the kitchen door and I'd be like,

shit, Abby, can you take teas to three and four?

Glennon, can you rebread seven?

Amanda, can you pull a ticket for me for seven?

Where's, I don't know where their Greek salad is, you know, like that's, that's, that's in the weeds.

It's things are getting hard.

There are obstacles for moving through.

I need to take a breath, but I'm, I'm on top of it, but it's, it's, it's difficult.

Every now and then, this is a funny story, actually.

Every now and then,

someone would walk in the kitchen and just say, I'm blown.

And it only happened to me twice in, you know, in a six or seven year career.

And this is a hard, the Papa's restaurants in Texas, Papado, Papacitos, they're serious.

Like,

like they have scarred me deeply because, you know, still today, if I walk in the kitchen and Steve's like kind of leaning there talking to Charlie, I'm like, hey, you got time to lean, you got time to clean.

Or I'll, I'll walk.

Glennon, you would like be like, what's happening?

No, I know what you're saying because this one will forget.

the stage of life she's in and she will turn around to me in an airport and say hustle let's hustle and i'm like oh, no, no, no, no, this is not the soccer.

Yeah.

We don't tell each other to hustle, right?

So same.

I'm with you.

We don't.

I'm going to say thank you for it.

We do not tell each other to hustle.

Oh, my God.

My favorite line in the airport is, hey, folks, walk with purpose.

Let's walk with purpose.

Let's go.

Yeah, let's go.

Let's go.

When I, if I go into the kitchen and I'm like, I'm blown, it's really weird because what happens is the rule, if you're blown, is you have to leave the floor of the kitchen and the restaurant for at least 10 or 15 minutes.

So, what will happen is Amanda will go, okay, she'll go up and get my table numbers from the hostess stand, not even assuming I can tell you what tables I have or what section I have.

So, Abby's the kitchen manager because you would be, of course, it's a high stress,

get it done job.

So, Abby starts pulling all the table numbers once she knows what they are.

And then they just take over.

So overwhelmed is a very intense amount of stress where actually

you can no longer function in it.

What's interesting is the only real empirically based solution to overwhelm is nothingness.

That's what I'm talking about.

Say more things.

I knew this.

Say more things about that.

I knew this all along.

I knew

from the time was born, nothingness was the cure.

I'm going to have my

Glennon and Abby at the score sheet.

Glennon nails the

core and Abby knew overwhelm from the very beginning.

Okay.

Amanda, I just have you in the healthy.

We'll do therapy together, Paul.

Yeah.

Perfect.

Okay.

No, so

it's so funny because

actually these Papado managers through just trial and error knew what to do.

They knew you had to leave.

So back then, actually, we'd go behind the restaurant and smoke a cigarette.

You know, that's what we would do.

But it's nothingness.

And so

one time when I was overwhelmed, they kind of took over.

I went to the cooler for five minutes and I went to the back of the restaurant, smoked a cigarette.

One time it was toward the end of the shift.

It was the only other time I was blown.

And I was working a triple, which was lunch, light lunch, and dinner because the tuition was due at UT.

And

I said, I walked in the kitchen and they're like,

like, move, you're in the way.

And I was like, you know, because it's people hustling, carrying big trays.

And I was like, I,

I'm, I'm just, I'm, I'm blown.

And they said, okay, grab her stuff.

And they got my stuff.

And they said, listen, just go home, give us all your money and we'll check you out.

The headway will check you out.

And I said, okay.

So instead of doing nothing, I got in my car.

Well, because it was the end of the night, I had already started marrying the the Tabascos and ketchups, like putting them together and filling them up.

So I'm driving my car.

I light a cigarette.

I rub my eye.

Oh, shoot.

I get Tabasco in my eye.

I can't see out of this eye.

I drop my cigarettes and we had to wear these polyester skirts.

So it catches on fire.

It just starts.

Yeah, just starts burning

like an 80s girl with a cigarette at a rock concert.

Like we used to light the thing and be like this.

Yeah.

It just starts burning a hole.

Then it catches on my tights.

And then I can't see.

So I, I, and, you know, and I, I do this with the other eye, I can't see out of both eyes.

I jump the curb and end up almost getting to a really terrible wreck.

And I always think about that now.

This is what I've learned from this research.

One, I got to freaking stop saying I'm overwhelmed when I'm not overwhelmed.

Damn it.

Okay.

Because neurobiologically, my body goes, okay, life's happening too fast.

We're out of control now.

So I need to, when I'm overwhelmed, my commitment to myself now is if I use that language, I'm going to stop what I'm doing and go outside for 10 or 15 minutes.

Wow.

So, because your body says, oh, we know what to do.

We're shutting down.

Yeah.

And if you can tell people what you need,

you're probably not overwhelmed.

Yeah, have you ever had that thing where like I would say to Steve, oh, okay,

fuck, I'm completely overwhelmed.

Okay, make me a list.

And I'm like, dude, if I could make you a list,

that would not be overwhelmed.

Like I, I need you to take, like, take the wheel.

Yes.

Yes.

You know, that's the power of language.

It is interesting empirical research in the book too.

Anxiety and excitement present exactly the same neurophysiologically.

In studies, people who labeled it excitement had positive experiences.

Those who labeled it as anxiety had negative experiences.

That's very much the difference between Glennon and I.

Well, I feel that we have married the two ideas.

So now instead of saying I'm anxious or I'm scared about big things that are coming up, we say I'm skighted.

Yeah.

Half scared.

Half fixed.

That's the butterflies, right?

That's the like, okay, this is new and I'm, but it's a good one.

I'm going to keep going because I want a thing afterwards.

So I'm going to keep going.

It's not fear, the gift of fear, which is telling me stop.

It's the butterflies, which are telling me go.

So skided is where we land.

I love it.

Okay.

Let me just stop you here and say

this is this is a working example of the importance of language.

So this German philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein says the lane, the limits of my language are the limits of my world.

So why did you make up that word?

To talk to the kids.

Everything is all, it's like, because one of them had to do something new at school.

Was it the spelling B?

It was something like that.

And she was saying, I'm too scared.

I'm too scared.

And so we started talking through what that feeling was inside.

Did she actually even want to do the spelling be?

Yes.

I do want to be a part of the spelling bee.

So then, well, if you want the thing.

afterwards, then what is this?

This thing that's happening inside of us?

It's saying this thing is new.

It's out of my comfort zone, but it feels like a good thing.

It doesn't feel like a thing that is scaring me to stop.

It's scaring me to go.

It doesn't have to be either or.

It doesn't have to be, you don't have to be scared or excited.

You can be both.

Right.

Right.

And both.

Yes.

And that's exactly why language matters so much.

So now your kids and now after this podcast, my kids will have a word for

this is what courage courage feels like.

It's skided.

Yes.

It's yeah, it's like, but we make up those words because language gives us a

neurobiological handle

on what feels too amorphous and gauzy to grab.

Good.

And what you're doing, because actually, when you think about it, that word having the, and we have a lot of invented words in our family, actually.

Yeah.

But it helps me know them better.

Yeah.

Because when they're saying, I'm skided about this, Tisha's going to play guitar last night or something.

I know they want that thing.

I know that they're not signaling to me, mommy, this is too much for me,

which is, I'm scared, or I'm uncomfortable, or I'm, it's a signal to me, I'm about to do something hard and I need your encouragement because I'm feeling really vulnerable, but I don't want you to talk me out of the thing.

That's really good.

Yes.

That's the power.

I mean, it's like why we make up things like hangry or, you know, it's like we need

language.

Yeah, brutiful.

Brutiful is a word we say all the time.

God, yes.

This is something like, it's like saying goodbye to someone you love.

It's both.

It's the and both of this is so painful and so important to my human experience that I wouldn't change it for anything.

Yeah.

Right?

Language matters.

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Okay, so I want to talk about this thing, this part about belonging, which you're the most brilliant person on earth teaching us about how important belonging is.

But in this book, I felt like there was a whole new part for me.

So in it, you talk about a time you asked a group, a large group of eighth graders to come up with their experiences of belonging and not belonging.

Okay.

And I expected, these are eighth graders, the majority of this, of their responses to be about the pressure of middle school peers.

But the majority were about their parents' reactions to them.

seeming not to fit in, right?

So they said not belonging feels like not being as cool or as popular as your parents want you to be.

Not being good at the same things your parents are good at.

Your parents being embarrassed because you don't have enough friends.

And while I'm reading this, it struck me: holy shit, we are so desperate to make sure our kids don't experience the trauma of not belonging, that we are, in fact, the ones that are giving them that experience.

Unreal.

So, in Braving the Wilderness, you talked about not making the drill team at your school and said that became the day I no longer belonged in my family.

I tried out for tree leading five times per day.

She didn't pay me

five times.

I wanted that uniform of belonging so bad.

I just wanted someone to just put on something that would say I belonged.

So, but no.

Okay.

So, how do we as

parents release our people from this kind of manufactured pressure to belong

so that they actually can feel like they belong

in our families?

Yeah, I think it's as simple and

as hard as

I see you,

I love you, and you will always belong here.

It is as simple and hard as

doing your own work so you're not working your shit out on your kids.

Yeah, I mean, and it is, you know,

the hardest thing about raising a middle schooler

is the unhealed, sweaty seventh grader inside of us, yes who's got the tray in their hand and doesn't smell quite right and doesn't know where they're going to sit and we so desperately don't want that for our own children and that thing is so still raw that

we almost can't take it if we have to watch it unfold again

you know and say you know i i want to tell you let me think about this for a second

So one of my kids, I'm just trying to think about how to do it in a mindful way with boundaries with my kids, but one of my kids experienced a, you know, a not getting into something recently.

And

it's very hard.

And I was prepping for it because we had to tell them and I was prepping for it.

I get really, you know, Steve's superpower is calm.

It's just how he's wired but it's also kind of the pediatrician you know thing and so i'm like okay so how bad is it going to be like how how how hard how how hurt like can you give me and i said and he's like i think it's going to be okay i think you know this is you know i think it's this and i said

is this going to be like the bear cadets

and he said he said no no no no no we're not even near bear cadet level and i said okay and so then he went upstairs and I was doing something.

And

he came down like five minutes later, and he was teary-eyed.

And I was like,

But first, I was like, Shit, it's gonna be like the bear cadets.

I was like, What's going on?

And he said,

It will never be like that for our kids because we aren't those parents.

Oh my God,

you know, and so

all I needed in that moment was really for one of my parents to say,

fuck that drill team yes

yes you know what i mean and

god that sucks but and i had no idea at the time that like

i had no idea of their trauma and their history at the time i just had like the grease version in my mind captain of the football team head of the drill team you know like it was it was a movie I didn't know like head of the football, you know, captain of the football team to work out rage after his father's death and head of the drill team to overcompensate for an alcoholic mother.

And no one was allowed to go to their house because my grandmother was an alcoholic.

And back then, the only women in A were bringing coffee to the men in AA, you know.

And so

I didn't know that part of it.

So all I thought, and so when I got in the back of the station wagon, first of all, I went up to the numbers.

And it was like you wore a number when you tried out.

I'll never forget the song either.

You know,

Yeah, just boo.

And I remember looking, I was number 62, and I was like, 58, 60, 64.

And I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

And then I remember this, a girl named Chris, who everyone wanted to be a girl named Chris back then, because like you wanted a Charlie Angel's name or a boy name.

And a girl named Chris runs up and she's like,

Yes!

And then her dad leaped out of her car, his car, and ran toward her and grabbed her and twirled in the air with her.

Oh, God.

And I was like, Yeah,

and I remember just walking back to the car and getting in the back seat.

And Ashley and Barrett were in the back back of the station wagon.

It was me and my brother, my mom, and my dad.

And I just cried with my head in my hands, and we just drove off, and nothing was ever spoken about it again.

Oh, wow.

Oh, my.

Okay.

Yeah.

I mean, that

reminds me in your, in the book, you say that the center will hold if and only if we can feel the edges.

And

that,

like, I, I was until this moment thinking about that as like, that's our boundaries with other people.

You know, if we have a solid ground under us and we know where we end and when someone else begins, we can love them without shaking our core.

But it's,

but that's with our kids, right?

Like only if we can accept our edges are not their edges.

They're not their edges.

They're not their edges.

Yeah.

And their edges are force us out into really shaky ground sometime.

You know, and I think my therapist saying, you know, I said something

about,

you know, Ellen was talkative.

Ellen would come home from school.

You know, she's 22 now.

She's in graduate graduate school.

She would come home from school and she'd say, Okay, this has happened.

And then you know, the drop, you know, and then like an hour later, we'd be at first period.

Oh my God, yes.

It's a hostage.

It's a hostage situation.

Yeah.

And I was like, yes, yeah.

And we still, I'm like, give me tea.

I'll be asleep when you get home tonight, but then I'll see the tea when I wake up in the morning.

You know, and then with Charlie,

good.

No, no, no.

Like, how was it?

Good.

Fine.

And so I tell my therapist, I'm like, this is unacceptable.

And she says, say more.

And I said, he's not giving me enough information for me to shine.

And she said, what do you mean?

And I said,

I don't have enough information.

He's not telling me what I need in order for me to,

you know, I have all the words and I have all the relationship information and I have like, I wonder if you're making up a story and I need more.

I, you know, this is not working at all for me.

He is underutilizing this resource that is here.

Yes, yeah.

And, and, and I am not able to be my best self.

Yes.

Obsessed.

You know, and she, yeah, and she was feeling like

I'm stealing it.

Yeah, she was, yeah, she was just like,

yeah, yeah, yeah.

Do you?

Yes.

Yes, we do.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We sure do.

We have one that at one point, when I demanded that they talk about their feelings, said to me, I do not know where they are.

Yeah.

I mean, it's, yeah.

And then I realized, wow, she's like, I think you just let him be him and you worry about shining on your own terms.

You don't get to, you know, he's not responsible for your shine.

Yeah, that's good.

Yes, goodness.

Fuck.

You worry about shining on your own terms.

Okay.

Okay.

Not a sermon, just a thought.

The story of not making the

team has given you, I think, quite a bit of

story now.

And

it's not for nothing.

And I just want to say, like, some of the stuff for Glennon that she had to like struggle through has given her a little bit of positive stuff in her adulthood.

It's true.

Material for material.

Material.

And I do want to just make one slight concession, but then I don't want to talk about it.

I just want to say the thing and then I want to move on to the next thing.

Okay.

Okay.

When you were talking, I just remembered, and sister, I've never even freaking told you this.

I one time came home from high school and told mom and dad that I had been

up for, voted up for the superlative of most popular

and most likely to succeed.

But that was not true.

And I don't want to talk about it, but I just want to say

that we're going to talk about what kind of poor child is trying to convince her parents that she is like

something at school that she's not.

And why is that so important?

Why did I think that was so important?

Do you want to?

Because my parents thought I was cool.

Next.

Okay.

So here I have to ask you this.

This is a huge topic of conversation in my family right now.

In our our house, we can't stop talking about this idea of what is enough.

And you know this, Brene, we've talked a lot about the scarcity mentality with my book, Wolfpack.

And I come from that mindset and that place of scarcity, women's sports.

You know, Glennon, when offers are made to me, it's impossible for me to say no.

And since Untame has come out, things get offered to Glennon and she says no a lot.

And I, that makes me feel anxious because of my scarcity stuff.

I know that's my stuff, my problems.

However,

she sees it as a, as a way, or, or people not having defined what enough means to them.

And because of your success, and because you are at the top of your game and are always just, we just love and idolize you.

I wonder

how you decide what is enough and how you define it.

And contentment,

right?

Because you spoke about it.

And contentment, which is so

freaking good.

I mean,

how do you just define what you're contentment?

I just want to show everyone Brene's face right now when you said contentment.

That's like, that's the face that I feel in my heart when people say it's fine.

It's just like, I'm allergic at every level to what's happening right now.

Yes.

Yeah, I don't know.

I don't know.

I don't know what's enough.

I mean,

I only can tell you

what's too much with a side dish of rage and resentment.

Dang.

Good stuff.

Yeah, but I really, yeah, I can't.

Wow.

I say no.

Like, so first of all, I say no.

Like

I interviewed James Clear, who wrote Atomic Habits.

And that book is really powerful.

And one of his quotes is literally on a sticky note everywhere I walk that says, we will never rise to the level of our goals.

We will fall to the level of our systems.

Yeah.

And so

I have systems in place where I don't even see 90% of the stuff I say no to.

So I have a system in place that controls my scarcity stuff and my shame stuff and my holy shit, if I say no, they're going to stop asking stuff and my who do you think you are stuff.

And

so, and I'm really comfortable with that.

And I, and I, and I feel good about myself for putting those systems in place.

This is not my idea, but I'm working on this right now.

And I met with a business coach.

And I don't think, I don't know that he'd be comfortable with me sharing who he is, but I was working with a business coach and we were talking.

He said, you're going to have more opportunities and you've got time just based on how old you are in my 50s.

And he said, what do you want?

And I described kind of what I wanted.

And he goes, that's not going to work.

And I said, why?

And he said, because you want all control and no accountability.

And I said, well, yes, that's true.

That's what I said.

That's exactly what I said.

But then he said, he gave me this piece of advice that has really been, I'm processing it.

I'm in it right now.

I don't have any report back to you.

He said, your problem, I actually told him, my problem is discernment and fear about what's enough.

I have a discernment problem.

And he said, I want you to change the way you think about every opportunity into this question.

What do you want to be held accountable for?

Wow.

So now when I get asked to do something,

I say to myself, do I want to be held accountable for that?

Fuck no.

I do not want to be held accountable for that.

Do you want to be held accountable for this?

Yes.

Like I'll be held accountable for that.

And so, you know, and for me, it may be just personalized advice, but, you know, he said, you're a magnet for accountability because of your platform and because I have a lot of visibility.

And he said, but I would imagine you were that way when you were four.

Well, think about you with your sisters and brother.

You were accountable for the environment, the atmosphere.

Yeah.

This has been

who you have been since birth, probably.

Wow.

Yeah.

And so the thing for me now is, A, what do I want to be held accountable for?

That drives my yes or no.

And B,

do I want to do it?

Is there joy in it?

Or do I want to prove I can do it?

Okay.

Yep.

That's good.

Yes.

And that's the power of language, right?

When you think of that as an opportunity, you're like i want all the opportunities give me all the opportunities but when you really drill down and say no this this thing that is coming

is something for which i will be responsible and accountable and name it that way it's like the bowl with the cookies amen it changes your whole life with the cookies

it does because it's the question is hey this is great opportunity we really think we can scale your work and we could do this and we could start this and then we're going to you know i'm sure something that y'all both heard a million times you know we can scale we've gotten

scale again if i hear the word scale again

yeah we can scale we can bring your work here and gluttony blah blah blah and then

of course yes

what will i be held accountable for well you know we'll need to hire a team of engineers and everything from password resets to customer survey i don't want to be held accountable for any of that

well who would you like to be held accountable for it well anybody but me well there's no one else oh then i don't want to do it

And that is beautiful.

I mean, we are going into the holidays.

We are going into a new year, reframing things that we feel like things are happening to us all the time and around us.

And to be able to, to make commitments out in the world, invitations, and to say, I don't want to be accountable for that.

I will be accountable for coaching my daughter.

I want, I, that's something I want to do, but I will not be accountable for signing up for whatever the heck I feel pressured into.

Yes.

Cause I want to be held accountable for my ass on the stadium seat every water polo match.

Yeah.

Yes.

Hold me accountable for that.

Like, I'm that person with the, like, I'm the person with the neck and the ball side, ball side, weak, weak.

You know, that, like, you got time to lean, you got time to swim.

Brene, you and my sister, I just, my sister has sent me videos of her daughter's lacrosse games where I have said to Abby, who is this freaking person?

They need to not let this person in

this video.

Who's yelling?

I'm like, inappropriate.

And Abby's always like, it's her again.

It's her.

Your sister's the one that's yelling.

Screaming.

Positivity, but just the intensity.

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Okay,

Dr.

Berne Brown, our next right thing is without a doubt going to be to get this incredible book that I feel like could be like a family Bible too, like a family where people sit and go through it with their kids, like we are doing with our little ones who are big now, because I think it will help us know each other better and communicate with each other better, which I can't imagine a better thing that you could do, that you could be more accountable for in your life than.

actually giving people the language to strengthen their bonds and understanding of each other.

It's so beautiful.

And then, also, in addition to going to get Atlas of the Heart yesterday, can you give us a next right thing that we can do in terms of our language just right now, this week, to help us be seen and see our people a little bit better?

Like if we're tired, if we're just tired and we just want like a little easy thing,

yeah,

a tired, easy thing.

When we see someone in struggle,

reframe, I'm here to fix, to I'm here to walk with.

Yeah.

You know, that's so for me.

Yeah, it's like when I, you know, this framework for meaningful connection that's in the back, I've been working on it since my dissertation, so 22 years.

And

I came across this concept of near enemy.

It's a Buddhist concept, which, you know, there's, there's the opposite of things, like the opposite of compassion, the far enemy is cruelty.

But what we better really watch and what's more likely to unravel connection every single time is not the far enemy of the virtue that we're seeking to, you know, show up in.

It's the near enemy.

So the near enemy of compassion is pity.

So to me, it was a really big breakthrough that I believe, and I'm putting forward now, and I think researchers will come back behind me and test, but I think the near enemy of connection is control.

And when I see my kids suffering

and they say this happened at school and it was so painful

and I jump in to fix it rather than sitting in the pain with them.

I have severed connection for the sake of control.

And it's not Machiavellian control, but I'm trying to control hurt.

I'm trying to control my own discomfort, their discomfort, my pain, their pain.

And so I would just say the easy thing we can do, it's not easy, but the small thing is when we see someone struggling, especially someone we care about,

my job is to be in connection with, not to fix.

There you go.

You heard it from Dr.

Brene Brown.

And when we hear it from Dr.

Brene Brown, we just effing do it.

Just do it.

So do it when life gets hard.

This week, don't fix it.

Just walk with it.

And we'll see you back back here in two days with more Dr.

Brene Brown.

We love you.

Bye-bye.

I give you Tish Melton and Brandy Carlisle.

I walked through fire.

I came out the other side.

I chased desire.

I made sure I got what's mine

and I continue

to believe

that I'm the one for me.

And because I'm mine,

I walk the line

because we're adventurers, and heartbreaks are map.

A final destination.

We've stopped asking directions

to places they've never been.

And to be loved, we need to be known.

We'll finally find our way back home.

And through the joy and pain

that our lives bring,

we can do a hard pain.

I hit rock bottom, it felt like a brand new start.

I'm not the problem,

sometimes things fall apart

and I continue to believe

the best

people are free

and it took some time

but I'm finally fine

Cause we're adventurers and heartbreaks on that

a final destination

we lack.

We've stopped asking directions

to places they've never been.

And to be loved, we need to be known.

We'll finally find our way back home.

And through the joy and pain

that our lives bring,

we can do hard against adventurers and heartbreaks on that.

We might get lost, but we're okay with that.

We've stopped asking directions

in some places they've never been.

And to be loved, we need to be known.

We'll finally find our way back home.

And through the joy and pain

that our lives bring.

We can do hard things.

Yeah, we can do hard things.

Yeah, we

can do hard

things.

We Can Do Hard Things is produced in partnership with Cadence 13 Studios.

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