Book Review: Daring Greatly, by Brene Brown
Brene Brown’s book Daring Greatly is about living with courage, and how (as opposed to cultural stereotypes) that courage is fueled by one’s willingness to be vulnerable.
That’s right. Contrary to every Die Hard movie you’ve seen, to be courageous you must open yourself up to vulnerability, to the chance of failure, and take risks.
As I did with the last book, I listened to the audio version of Daring Greatly for free, using my Jacksonville Public Library with the Hoopla app on my phone.
She starts the book by quoting the most famous lines from President Theodore Roosevelt’s 1910 Man in the Arena speech at the Sorbonne in Paris, France:
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 errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
Living Courageously Means Being Vulnerable
Vulnerability, Brown explains, is neither bad nor good. It just is. Though most people associate it with feelings of fear, anxiety, and shame; it is equally a part of love, joy, and passion. Vulnerability, according to her research, is at the core of all these emotions and is the key to being truly courageous.
She fights back against a couple of myths about vulnerabilities:
Myth 1: “Vulnerability is a weakness.”
Pssh! Get real. To believe that vulnerability is a weakness is to believe that feeling is a weakness, and that’s just silly. To illustrate the fallacy of this argument, Brown points to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. The etymology of vulnerability derives from the Latin word vulnerare which means “to wound.” M-W’s definition of the word says “capable of being wounded” or “open to attack or damage.” The definition of weakness, however, is “the inability to withstand attack or wounding.” Comparing these definitions, one should surmise that weakness would derive from a lack of vulnerability, and that courage and bravery is required to be vulnerable.
The key to overcoming these fears is to open ourselves up to failure, to new experiences, and to take risks. In short, we must be vulnerable, or in other words — dare greatly.
Myth 2: “I don’t do vulnerability.”
Yes, you do. You can’t avoid it. Did you even read that Teddy Roosevelt quote? Unless you’re willing to open yourself up and take a risk, you will always be among those “cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
Myth 3: “Vulnerability is letting it all hang out.”
WRONG! Vulnerability isn’t about spilling your guts and feelings to everyone who will listen (that’s called oversharing), it’s about sharing your feelings and experiences with people who have earned the right to hear them. It’s about sharing with the true friends and family members who have earned our trust and with whom we have a strong relationship.
Myth 4: “We can go it alone.”
No, you can’t. We, humans, are social beings. We crave feelings of belonging and acceptance. Besides, we have a phrase for people who think they can do everything themselves. They’re called “control freaks” and we don’t really speak that positively about them.
Combatting Shame
One of the keys obstacles this book tackles is shame. Defined in noun form, shame means a painful feeling of humiliation or distress caused by the consciousness of wrong or foolish behavior. This feeling plays a large part in our behavior, driven by what Brown calls our culture of “never enough.”
Our feelings of shame, driven by thoughts of not being “enough” when comparing ourselves to others, drives us to react in negative ways — either through lashing out or disengaging. We’re afraid of failing and looking weak.
Perfectionism is a form of shame, and one form I am intimately familiar with. It’s driven by feelings of insecurity and a lack of self-compassion — again feeling inadequate when comparing oneself to others. A perfectionist won’t take the risk if they don’t feel that they’re efforts are perfect or the best, and they miss out on so much because of that. They’re stuck.
So how do you combat shame? Brown says that shame derives its power from being unspeakable. To fight that, you must speak to it, and cut it off from its power. Find someone whom you trust that you can share your thoughts and feelings with.
Brown lays out the four elements of shame resilience:
- Recognizing shame and understanding its triggers
- Practicing critical awareness
- Reaching out
- Speaking shame
Reading this book, I’ve come to notice the influence shame has had on my life. In my second year of college, at age 19, my first child was born. Now don’t get me wrong, I love my daughter. She made my world a thousand times better (and still does), but to a great degree, my shame of having a young child out of wedlock drove me to disengage from many opportunities as I progressed through college and graduate school. I didn’t get involved in extracurricular clubs or activities, or partake in extra research, or go volunteer for causes or campaigns I was interested in. I withdrew and disengaged. I was being one of those “cold and timid souls.”
See what I’m doing here? I’m practicing shame resilience. I recognized the shame I felt, practiced critical awareness, reached out to you readers, and spoke to that shame — cutting it off at the knees.
As Brown says, “if we are going to find our way out of shame and back to each other, vulnerability is the path and courage is the light. To love ourselves and support each other in the process of becoming real is perhaps the greatest single act of daring greatly.”
Vulnerability Armor
The negative opinion of vulnerability we feel didn’t spring from nothing, it is driven by the strong feelings of fear and anxiety we derived from our negative experiences. To combat those feelings, we developed different types of emotional armor in an attempt to protect ourselves, but we often fail to realize how that armor is restricting us.
The different varieties of armor include: letting it all hang out, floodlighting, viking or victim, numbing, perfectionism, the smash and grab, serpentining, cynicism, criticism, cool, and cruelty. It is in this section where I pulled my favorite quote from the book:
Cruelty is cheap, easy, and chicken shit.
Cultivating Change
So you know that you need to overcome shame and fears of being vulnerable. How do you move from that and get to where you want to be? As that famous Nike slogan and Shia Lebouf say and “Just Do It!”
You have to overcome that which drives you to shun away and disengage and work for what you want in your life. As Lao Tsu is often quoted, “the journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step.” Or as the coach as my daughter’s gymnastics camp put it, “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.”
Conclusion
Daring Greatly is an amazing book. Brene Brown writes in such a genuine way, bolstered with heavy doses of humor and backed by years of scientific research. This adds so much credibility to her observations and remedies and keeps the words from getting too academic and dry. It’s an entertaining read. Self-help books like this often run the risk of being nauseatingly optimistic, but her use of sarcastic humor negates that risk.
I have a feeling that as I move forward in my life and career, I’ll often think back to some of the lessons I learned in this book. I highly recommend that you read it. Go ahead, it’s free at your library. Dare greatly and go check it out.
