Book review: Daring Greatly by Brené Brown
If you are going to read Daring Greatly by Brené Brown, be prepared to be uncomfortable. Vulnerable, even. Brown is a research professor at the University of Houston who studies courage, vulnerability, shame, and empathy. Her 2012 book Daring Greatly talks about how there is no courage without vulnerability. Brown argues that without vulnerability, we can become disconnected from the “experiences that bring purpose and meaning to our lives.”
Throughout her book, Brown weaves together reflections on the culture and experiences that lead us to reject vulnerability and build armor to protect ourselves. What we should really be doing, she says, is recognizing those moments and building resilience through them. By doing that we can cultivate what she terms a “Wholehearted” life. What that means, simply put, is that you are fully engaging in your life from a place of worthiness. Brown intersperses her research with stories from her hundreds of interviews. It talks about why vulnerability is hard, its relation to shame, what are the external factors that cause it, and the internal tools you can engage with to live a more “Wholehearted” life.
I picked this book up because of the tagline ‘How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead.’ I’m a parent of young children, trying to figure out new ways to live, learning what it means to lead at an organization, and — let’s be honest — always appreciates a good tip on love! Daring Greatly covers a lot of the connections between our experiences of vulnerability and shame and provides tools for working on ourselves. But what struck me in reading this book is the preciousness of our vulnerability — and how important privacy is for a healthy approach to it. There isn’t a precise set of rules or circumstances that need to be met in order for people to feel vulnerable and share, but the questions she asks are about trust. And within trust, there must be a space of privacy. You trust that the person you share with won’t go and blab your embarrassing story. You trust that in sharing it, that person will still support, love and respect you.
“I love you.” One of the most vulnerable things we can say, and also one of the most rewarding. Do you remember the first time you said it and weren’t sure the other person would say it? Holding your breath, heart racing, feeling at your most vulnerable? You took that private emotion that you held in yourself and put it out there.
Vulnerability, trust and privacy and inexorably linked. In Ari Ezra Waldman’s book, Privacy as Trust: Information Privacy for an Information Age, he observes that to participate in social life, requires a certain amount of public sharing of yourself, whether on social media or just through the electronic data trails that we now leave behind as we move through the world. And he argues that vehicles for sharing must be compatible with privacy. Privacy is a foundation for trust and trust is a foundational need for people to make deep connections with one another. When we don’t trust someone or a company with our information, we can’t get to those connections…or be truly vulnerable.
Brown says “we must dare to show up and let ourselves be seen,” and that is daring greatly. How can we build a world with enough trust to share ourselves and feel protected when we are our most vulnerable? After reading the book, I’m not sure how I ‘live, love, parent, and lead’ has been completely transformed, but there were enough stories that resonated with me that I still think about them now and believe they have tipped my behavior in a more positive direction. If you are looking for ways to make deeper connections, explore your inner vulnerability and shame triggers, or engage more fully in your life, this is a great read.
