OK, let's just let's unpack this. We are living
in a moment where the pressure I mean, the external
pressure to look completely bulletproof is just
at an all time high. Oh, absolutely. It's everywhere.
You look at social media, you look at, you know,
the corporate world, modern politics. It's all
about the armor. It's the curated image. They
never let them see you sweat. Whole mentality.
I feel like we're just obsessed with competence,
with looking like we have it all together and
just never, ever missing a single step. It really
is the default setting for modern life, isn't
it? Yeah. I mean, we are conditioned probably
from a very young age to believe that competence
just looks like invulnerability. Right. If you
have questions, well, you're weak. If you have
feelings, you're messy. If you admit you were
wrong about something. Yeah. You're finished.
Yeah. It's game over. It's game over. We treat
emotions like these liabilities that need to
be managed or just hidden away instead of what
they are, which is just part of our humanity.
Exactly. And yet the subject of our deep dive
today has built, I mean, you could argue one
of the most significant intellectual and cultural
empires of the 21st century by arguing the exact
opposite. We are talking about someone who looked
at the things we are most terrified of, shame,
fear, being seen as less than, and used hard
data to prove that those are actually the birthplace
of everything we say we want. She's basically
telling us that the armor we're all wearing.
it's actually suffocating us it is a paradox
isn't it it's a paradox that shouldn't work But
it so clearly does. Yeah. We are, of course,
talking about Cassandra Brené Brown. Most people
just know her as Brené. And to be honest, her
footprint is just inescapable at this point.
We're talking about a viral TED talk that basically
broke the Internet. Right. Netflix specials,
bestselling books that dominate the charts for
like years at a time. And these high level consulting
gigs where she's telling Fortune 50 CEOs how
to run their companies. I mean, she's everywhere.
She really has become a household name, but I
think because she is so ubiquitous now, you know,
because we see the quotes on Instagram and the
little clips on TikTok, it's... it's easy to
dismiss her as just another motivational speaker.
Totally. Or to think this is just, you know,
feel -good fluff. Yeah. There is a real risk
that when someone becomes that famous, the nuance
of their actual work gets completely lost in
the memes. That is exactly the misconception
we are here to dismantle today. The mission for
this deep dive is to strip away the buzzwords.
I really want to move past the pop culture version
of vulnerability and actually look at the engine
under the hood. We need to understand the academic
rigor, the specific methodology, and the raw
data that took a social worker from Houston and
turned her into a global phenomenon. I want to
know how she bridges that gap between hard data
and messy human feelings. And to do that, we're
going to stick to the facts. We're pulling today's
insights from a comprehensive profile of her
life, her career trajectory and her bibliography.
And we're specifically relying on the detailed
account in her Wikipedia entry and the associated
source links. Good. We are going to ground the
feelings talk in the actual biography and the
academic record. Because at her core, she isn't
a guru. Yeah. She's a researcher. I love that
approach because she calls herself a researcher
storyteller, right? Right. She isn't just some
guru on a mountaintop just guessing about life.
She's bridging that gap between cold, hard data
and the messy reality of being human. She's saying,
look, I'm not telling you this because I feel
it. I'm telling you this because I measured it.
That is the key to her entire career. She is
such a unique figure because she transitioned
from, I mean, total obscurity in academia studying
topics that, quite frankly, nobody wanted to
touch to the mainstream spotlight. And in doing
so, she fundamentally changed the vocabulary
we use to talk about leadership, parenting, connection.
Before her, shame wasn't a word you'd ever hear
in a boardroom. Now it's part of the executive
lexicon. And we have some really surprising details
to get to later in this discussion. We found
connections to a speech by Teddy Roosevelt, some
very specific and surprising sports loyalties
that I did not see coming. Not at all. And this
is my personal favorite, a cameo in a comedy
movie that involves a lot of wine. It's a colorful
life, absolutely. But to understand how she got
to the movie cameos. We have to start with the
credentials. Yes. We have to establish why we
should even listen to her in the first place.
Because if we don't respect the foundation, the
house she built just doesn't make sense. Right.
Let's look at that academic foundation, because
I think a lot of people assume she just wrote
a self -help book and got lucky. But she is a
heavy hitter in the university world. This isn't
a hobby for her. She is. And this is not a weekend
certification we're talking about. Currently,
she holds the Huffington Foundation's Brene Brown
Endowed Chair at the University of Houston's
Graduate College of Social Work. OK, let's pause
on that title for a second. An endowed chair
for listeners who aren't in academia. Can you
can you translate that? What does that actually
signify? Yeah, it's a big deal. In the academic
world, an endowed chair is one of the highest
honors you can possibly achieve. It means that
a donor or a foundation, in this case the Huffington
Foundation, has donated a significant amount
of money specifically to fund her position and
her research. Wow. It signals that the university
and the donor class view her work as vital and
permanent. It comes with prestige, funding, and
a really high level of autonomy. It basically
says, we believe in your work so much, we are
going to guarantee it has a home here forever.
Okay, so she's at the absolute top of the food
chain in social work. But that's not the only
place she's teaching, is it? This was the part
of the research that actually made me do a double
take. No, it's not. She is also a visiting professor
in management at the McCombs School of Business
at the University of Texas at Austin. Okay, so
she's a social work professor dealing with emotions,
human struggle. But she's teaching management
at a business school. That feels like a collision
of two completely different worlds. It really
does. Usually, you know, social work is over
here saving the world and business schools over
there making money. It does seem like a crossover
episode, doesn't it? But this is actually a critical
data point for understanding her impact. For
decades, the corporate world and business schools
viewed management through the lens of, like,
efficiency, finance, and strategy. Hard skills.
Sure. The idea was that you check your emotions
at the door when you clock in. Right. The bottom
line is just business. It's not personal. That
whole thing. Exactly. Anything related to empathy,
shame or vulnerability was just dismissed as
soft skills. It was seen as completely irrelevant
to the profit margin. Right. But what happened
is that companies started realizing that the
hard skills weren't enough. You can have the
best strategy in the world, but if your company
culture is toxic, you fail. The fact that a top
-tier business school like McCombs brings in
a social worker to teach management signals a
massive shift. It suggests that the business
world is finally realizing that you cannot optimize
an organization if you don't understand the humans
inside it. That's a really profound point. It's
like they realized the spreadsheet doesn't work
if the people entering the numbers are burned
out or... Or just terrified. Precisely. And her
background is purely in understanding those people.
She is a Texan through and through, education
-wise. She did her undergraduate work at the
University of Texas at Austin, earning her Bachelor
of Social Work in 1995. Okay. Then she moved
over to the University of Houston for her Master
of Social Work in 1996, and she stayed there
to grind out her Ph .D. in social work, which
she completed in 2002. A Ph .D. is no joke. That
is years and years of grueling work. And looking
at the notes here, the title of her PhD thesis
is, well, it's a mouthful. It's very academic.
It is. The title is Acompañar, a grounded theory
of developing, maintaining, and assessing relevance
in professional helping. Acompañar. That's Spanish,
right? Yes. It means to accompany. That seems
really significant. The whole idea that helping
isn't about fixing someone, but accompanying
them. It feels like a total shift in power dynamics.
It threads through everything she does later.
She moves away from that expert model where the
doctor fixes the patient to a model of connection.
But the phrase I really want to drill down on
from that title is grounded theory. Yes, I've
heard her mention this in interviews, but I've
never really understood it. It sounds, I don't
know, it sounds like something involving electrical
wiring. What does grounded theory actually mean
in a research context? This is maybe the most
important thing to understand about her method.
In traditional science, say, medical research
or physics, you often start with a hypothesis.
You have a guess. Okay. I think drug A will cure
disease B. Then you run an experiment to prove
or disprove your guess. You are testing a theory
you already have. Okay. So you start with the
idea and then you see if the world matches it.
Right. Grounded theory works in reverse. You
do not start with a hypothesis. You start with
zero assumptions. You start with the data. In
her case, the data is people's stories. She interviews
hundreds, then thousands of people. She asks
them these really open -ended questions like,
tell me about a time you felt disconnected. She
codes their answers, looking for patterns and
themes. The theory emerges from it is grounded
in the data. So she didn't go into her office
one day and think, I bet vulnerability is the
key to courage. Let me go prove it. Absolutely
not. In fact, if you listen to her early stories,
the data often contradicted what she wanted to
find. She has famously said she wanted to find
that competent people had everything under control
and kept their emotions locked down. Right, because
that's what we're all taught. Exactly. And the
data told her the exact opposite, that the most
competent, wholehearted people were the ones
who admitted they didn't have control. Grounded
theory forces the researcher to listen to the
lived experience of the subjects, even when it
ruins their own preconceived notions. That makes
her work feel so much more valid to me. It's
not just her opinion or her philosophy. It's
essentially a report on what thousands of human
beings have told her about their lives. It's
data with a soul. Exactly. And she guides her
social work students in this methodology now.
It's all about... Letting the reality of the
human experience dictate the conclusion rather
than trying to stuff human beings into a theoretical
box you built in a faculty lounge. Yeah. It's
incredibly rigorous because you can't fix the
patterns. If 500 people say the same thing in
different words, you have to pay attention. So
she spends the early 2000s just. doing this heavy
lifting. She's in the trenches of academia. And
she focuses on what we call the big five topics
in the source material. Yes. Courage, vulnerability,
shame, empathy, and leadership. It's like the
emotional pentathlon. Those are some big, heavy
words. They are. And her goal with all of these,
whether she's looking at shame or leadership,
is to understand human connection. How does it
work? Why does it break? And maybe most importantly,
how do we repair it when it's broken? Because
she found that connection is... It's why we're
here. It's what gives purpose and meaning to
our lives. So picture this. It's the late 2000s.
She's a respected academic. She's publishing
papers with titles like Feminist Standpoint Theory.
She's doing the work, but she's not famous. Not
at all. She's not on Oprah's speed dial. She's
just a professor in Houston grading papers. She
is working in relative obscurity. She's known
within the very specific circles of social work
research, but the general public has no idea
who she is. And then... 2010 happens. The tipping
point. The TEDx talk. The power of vulnerability.
We have to stop here because this video essentially
changed the architecture of the Internet and
the self -help world. It's like the moon landing
of social psychology. It really was. And the
context here is so important. This was a TEDx
talk. TEDx events are local. independently organized
events. Right. Not the big main stage one. Not
the big main stage TED conference in Vancouver
or Edinburgh where Bill Gates is speaking. They're
usually small community affairs. For a local
talk filmed in Houston to blow up the way this
did is completely unprecedented. The source says
it is one of the five most viewed TED talks of
all time. That puts her up there with Sir Ken
Robinson and the biggest thinkers on the planet.
Millions and millions of views. Why do you think
it hit so hard? Why this specific talk at that
specific time? Well, according to the source
material, the content was incredibly dense. It
summarized a decade of that grounded theory research
we just talked about. So the value was there.
The intellectual protein was there. But the key
was the delivery. She framed these really heavy,
scary discoveries in self -deprecating and personal
terms. Yeah, I remember watching it. She jokes
about her breakdown. She calls it a spiritual
awakening that says, you know, it felt like a
breakdown. She talks about trying to control
everything with her research and just failing.
And the shoes. She talks about buying a distinctively
uncool pair of shoes. She was just so real. That's
the magic trick. It wasn't a lecture from a professor
on a pedestal. It was confession. Reggie Ugo
from The New York Times described that talk as
the moment that gave the world a new star of
social psychology. It shifted her from being
a professor to being a public figure because
she modeled the very thing she was teaching.
She was telling us that vulnerability is strength,
and she proved it by being terrified and vulnerable
on that stage. She wasn't just presenting the
data. She was the data. Which is incredibly meta.
If you stop and think about it. And naturally,
when you have a hit of that magnitude, the world
demands a sequel. People wanted more. And she
gave them one. In 2012, she did a second talk
called Listening to Shame. And in that one, she
actually addresses the elephant in the room,
the aftermath of the first talk. Because going
viral isn't all sunshine and rainbows, right?
She does. She talks about how her life changed
after going viral, how exposed she felt. She
calls it a vulnerability hangover. I know that
feeling. Do you know that feeling when you share
too much and then you just want to hide under
the covers for a week? She had that on a global
scale. But she uses that to go deeper. she connects
shame directly to vulnerability she makes the
argument that you cannot really be vulnerable
if you are paralyzed by shame shame is the fear
of disconnection it's that fear that if people
know the truth about you they won't love you
there's another talk mentioned in the notes that
i hadn't heard of as much but when i read the
summary the concept just It just floored me.
It was from 2010 as well at TEDxKC. It's called
The Price of Invulnerability. This is such a
crucial piece of the puzzle. I'm glad you brought
it up. The core concept here is numbing. This
is the idea that you can't pick and choose what
you feel, right? Because I feel like I try to
do that all the time. I'll take the happiness,
hold the sadness, please. Correct. It's a profound
biological and psychological insight. We often
try to numb the difficult feelings. We don't
want to feel fear, shame, disappointment, or
grief. So we use numbing agents. And in our culture,
we have an endless supply of those. Alcohol,
food, endless scrolling on phones, being busy
as a status symbol, shopping. Exactly. We stay
busy so we don't have to feel. But her research
shows a terrifying correlation. You cannot selectively
numb emotion. If you numb the dark stuff, you
also numb the light stuff. Oh, wow. You numb
joy. You numb gratitude. You numb happiness.
You cannot mute the sadness without also meeting
the joy. That is. terrifyingly accurate so if
you're trying to protect yourself from pain by
staying numb you're essentially accidentally
protecting yourself from ever feeling real joy
you're just flattening your entire life that's
the price of invulnerability you become flat
and that creates this vicious cycle you feel
nothing so you look for something to make you
feel alive which often leads to more risky behavior
or more intense numbing you're just chasing a
high because you've anesthetized your soul man
That explains so much about modern burnout. We're
all just trying not to feel bad and we end up
feeling nothing at all. Precisely. And that insight
is what allows her to move from just psychology
to how we live our lives. So she's got these
talks. She's blowing up online. She has the academic
backing. Eventually, this leads to the biggest
stage of all, Netflix. Yes. In 2019, Brene Brown.
The Call to Courage debuted on Netflix. Which
is huge. I mean, usually Netflix specials are
for stand -up comedians like Dave Chappelle or
John Mulaney. Or maybe a Beyonce concert. They
don't usually give an hour to a research professor
to talk about feelings. It was a total genre
-bending moment. USA Today actually reviewed
the special and called it a mix of a motivational
speech and stand -up comedy special. That tracks.
She's funny. She has that Texas wit. She knows
how to hold a room. She does. But underneath
the humor, the core argument was deadly serious.
She posits that you must choose courage over
comfort. And here is the kicker, the equation
she lays out. You cannot be brave without being
vulnerable. They are the same thing. That's the
aha moment for me. We usually think vulnerability
is weakness. We think courage is being tough
and unshakable. She's saying, no, vulnerability
is the most accurate measure of courage. And
according to her research, doing this, choosing
courage over comfort is the only path to love.
joy and belonging. Because if you have your armor
on, nobody can see you. And if nobody can see
you, you can't be loved for who you are. You
can only be loved for who you are pretending
to be. And that is a lonely place to be. OK,
so she's conquered the Internet. She's conquered
Netflix. But we have to talk about the books
because this is a publishing empire we are looking
at. She isn't just a speaker. She is a prolific
writer. It is a juggernaut. As of 2021, she is
the author of six number one New York Times bestsellers.
Six! That is wild. Most authors dream of getting
on that list once. Let's run through them, because
I think seeing the progression of the titles
tells a story about what we as a society were
hungry for at the time. Agreed. It starts with
The Gifts of Imperfection in 2010. This was the
early breakout hit. The thesis was relatively
simple, but also pretty radical. Letting go of
who you think you're supposed to be and embracing
who you are. It introduced the concept of wholehearted
living. Which sounds simple, like a bumper sticker,
but is incredibly hard to execute. Just be yourself
is the hardest advice to follow when the world
is telling you to be someone else entirely. Then
came Daring Greatly in 2012. Now, I love the
story behind this title. It really anchors her
work in history. It's a great connection. The
title comes from a speech by Theodore Roosevelt,
right? Yes, delivered in 1910 at the Sorbonne
in Paris. It's officially called citizenship
in a republic, but it's often called the man
in the arena speech. I can almost recite it.
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. Exactly. The credit belongs to the man
who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred
by dust and sweat and blood. And she's using
that to say vulnerability is stepping into the
arena. Yes. She uses it to frame the conversation
around feedback and judgment. If you are on the
sidelines judging your opinion doesn't matter.
You're safe, but you're irrelevant. If you are
daring greatly, you are going to get your ass
kicked occasionally. That is the price of entry.
If you aren't willing to fail, you can't enter
the arena. And that book was massive. I remember
she went on Super Soul Sunday with Oprah in 2013
to talk about it, which is basically the knighthood
of the self -help world. If you are on Super
Soul Sunday sitting in the garden with Oprah,
you have arrived. Oprah was a huge champion of
this work, which just amplified it to a massive
audience. Truly. So after Daring Greatly, after
we enter the arena and get beaten up, we get
Rising Strong in 2015. Which logically follows.
If Daring Greatly is about entering the arena
and getting knocked down, Rising Strong is the
manual for how you get back up. She breaks down
the physics of resilience. She calls it the reckoning,
the rumble, the revolution. Okay. She talks about
that messy middle part of failure where you just
want to quit. I like that structure. It's not
just time heals all wounds. It's an active process
of wrestling with the failure. You have to own
the story to write the ending. Then in 2017,
we get Braving the Wilderness. This one felt
a little different to me. It felt more social,
like it was addressing the polarization in the
world. It shifted focus to the concept of belonging.
But she makes a critical distinction that I think
is one of her most important contributions. She
distinguishes between belonging and fitting in.
Wait, aren't those the same thing? In high school,
they definitely felt like the same thing. No,
and the difference is everything. Fitting in
is assessing a situation and changing yourself
so that you are accepted. You change your clothes,
your opinions, your behavior to match the group.
Okay. belonging is presenting your true self
and being accepted for it so if you fit in you
aren't really belonging because the group doesn't
know the real you they just like the mask exactly
in fact she argues that true belonging requires
the courage to stand alone it requires you to
brave the wilderness of being different you belong
to yourself first That hits home. And then in
2018, she makes that pivot we hinted at earlier.
She goes fully corporate with Dare to Lead. This
connects right back to her work at the business
school. She took all these concepts, shame, vulnerability,
empathy, the arena, and applied them specifically
to the workplace. It argues that daring leadership
is a collection of four skill sets that are 100
% teachable, observable, and measurable. That
was the genius move. She took the fluff out of
soft skills. She told executives, I can measure
this. I can teach this. This is a system. And
it gave permission for leaders to stop pretending
they had all the answers. It allowed them to
say, I don't know, which ironically builds more
trust than pretending to know everything. And
finally, the most recent big title listed here
is Atlas of the Heart in 2021. This one is fascinating.
It's almost like an encyclopedia or a dictionary.
The premise is expanding the reader's emotional
vocabulary. I have to ask the skeptics question
here. Why does she think we need a better vocabulary?
Can't I just say I'm sad or mad? Why do I need
87 different words for feelings? It's a valid
question. But her research suggests that most
people can only identify three emotions. Happy,
sad, and pissed off. The primary colors of emotion.
Right. But the human experience is an infinite
spectrum. Her argument is that language shapes
reality. If you can't name the difference between
anguish and despair or between envy and jealousy,
you can't process it effectively and you certainly
can't communicate it to someone else. Atlas of
the Heart gives people the language to understand
their own experiences. It's all about granularity.
It's like trying to paint a sunset with only
a blue crayon. You're missing all the nuance.
If I can tell you I'm feeling resentment specifically,
we can deal with that. If I just say I'm mad.
We might miss the entire point. Exactly. And
clearly people felt that lack. Because it won
the Goodreads Choice Award for Best Nonfiction
in 2022. It resonated because we are all starving
for connection. And language is the bridge. She
also does collaborations, which is worth noting.
She isn't always the solo star. No. She wrote
a chapter for Tim Ferriss' Tools of Titans. But
more importantly, she used her platform to co
-create an anthology called You Are Your Best
Thing with Tarana Burke. Tarana Burke, the founder
of the Me Too movement. Correct. That book is
a collection of essays by Black... individuals
it discusses the trauma of white supremacy but
also black love and black life it connects the
concepts of vulnerability and shame resilience
specifically to the black experience it shows
Brene Brown intentionally using her massive platform
to elevate other voices and explore the intersections
of her work with race It acknowledges that vulnerability
looks different when you don't have the same
societal privileges. It's a huge body of work.
We're talking millions of books sold, but she
didn't stop at books. We touched on Netflix,
but she has really built a multimedia empire.
She's everywhere. She has. Podcasting became
a huge avenue for her. In 2020, she started hosting
Unlocking Us and Dare to Lead. I remember when
Unlocking Us launched, it was right around the
start of the pandemic, wasn't it? It was. March
2020. The timing was accidental, but sort of
perfect. The whole world was locked down, scared,
and isolated. And here comes a podcast entirely
about connection and feelings. It was like therapy
for the whole world. I remember listening to
it on walks when I couldn't see my friends. And
she got that big Spotify deal. Yes, she signed
an exclusive deal starting in 2020. Though interesting
side note from the source material, Spotify ended
those exclusive shows amid a strategic shakeout
in January 2023. But for that peak pandemic period,
she was one of their flagship personalities.
What's the format of Unlocking Us? Is it just
her lecturing? It alternates. Sometimes she interviews
guests and sometimes she does solo episodes.
The solo ones are really intimate. It's just
her talking directly to the listener, sharing
personal stories, research learnings or summarizing
other social science work. It feels very personal,
like a phone call from a smart friend. And the
guest list is pretty star studded. Oh, yeah.
Alicia Keys, Glennon Doyle. David Kessler, who
is a legendary grief expert, and again, Tarana
Burke. It's a mix of celebrities and deep thinkers.
But won an award too, right? Yes, the iHeartRadio
Podcast Award for Best Advice or Inspirational
Podcast in 2021. And she also turned Atlas of
the Heart into a TV show. Right, on HBO Max in
2022, a five -part docu -series. So if you count
it up, she has books, podcasts, Netflix specials,
and HBO series. And company, we can't forget
The Daring Way. That's the business engine. Sure.
She is the CEO. It's a professional training
and certification program. So if you are a therapist
or a coach, you can get certified in her methodology
to help your own clients. It's a brilliant way
of scaling her impact beyond just people who
read her books. It operationalizes the research
so other people can teach it. Okay, so we have
established that she is a powerhouse, academic
heavyweight, media mogul, corporate consultant.
But I want to pivot now to segment five, the
person behind the research. Because you can't
research vulnerability for 20 years without having
a backstory. And her backstory is very much part
of her brand. She is not a blank slate. She uses
her own life as data. So looking at the bio,
she was born in San Antonio. Yes. Eldest of four
children. Her family lives in New Orleans now,
but she has settled in Houston with her husband
and two kids. She's deeply rooted in the South.
Now, she talks a lot about numbing, as we mentioned
earlier. And that isn't just theoretical for
her. That comes from personal experience. It
does. Brown is very open about her past addictions.
The source material explicitly lists alcohol,
smoking, emotional eating, and control. Control
as an addiction. That is a powerful framing.
I feel seen. It's the addiction of the perfectionist.
It is. We don't usually group control with alcohol,
but it serves the same function to manage anxiety.
But she has a specific sobriety date listed.
May 12. 1996. Which was, wait, looking at the
timeline, that was one day after she graduated
from her master's program? That timing is incredibly
poignant, isn't it? She finishes this major academic
milestone, the Master of Social Work, and the
very next day she makes this life -altering decision
to stop drinking and smoking. It's just a moment
of profound clarity. And I think this is why
her work resonates so deeply. When she talks
about the price of invulnerability or numbing,
she isn't judging the listener. She's been there.
She knows what it feels like to use a glass of
wine or a cigarette to push down a hard feeling.
She knows the cost. It adds a layer of authenticity
that you just can't fake. In the therapeutic
world, they might call her a wounded healer.
She isn't teaching from a place of perfection.
She's teaching from a place of recovery. She's
walking the path with you, not pointing at it
from a helicopter. There is also a spiritual
component to her life that she discusses, which
is interesting given how secular the academic
world usually is. She was raised Catholic, but
the source notes that she left the church. However,
she returned to faith later, joining the Episcopal
community with her husband and children two decades
later. So she has had her own wilderness journey
with faith as well? Exactly. She doesn't shy
away from the messy parts of institutions, whether
it's the church or the corporate boardroom. She
believes in finding the sacred in the ordinary.
Now, we have to touch on the cool friend vibe,
because despite the PhD and the serious topics
like shame and trauma, she just seems like someone
you'd want to hang out with. Totally. And looking
at the source material, she has some very specific
sports allegiances. She does. As a Texan, she
is a fan of the San Antonio Scurs and the Houston
Astros. That makes sense. But she is also a...
diehard supporter of liverpool fc the english
premier league soccer team that's so unexpected
the very same she even has a quote attributed
to her all good things tied to liverpool i love
that it's so random but so specific it grounds
her it reminds you she's a person who screens
at the tv on weekends and she was in a movie
a legitimate hollywood comedy wine country came
out in 2019 it stars amy poehler my rudolph tina
fey Brene Brown appeared as herself. That's when
you know you're a cultural icon, when you can
cameo as yourself in an Amy Poehler movie and
the audience gets the joke. It speaks to her
crossover appeal. She isn't just for academics
or people in therapy. She is pop culture. She
is part of the zeitgeist. So let's bring this
all together. We've gone from the classrooms
of the University of Houston to the TED stage
to Netflix to Liverpool football. What is the
synthesis here? How do we summarize this journey?
If we look at the trajectory, it's remarkable.
She started as a student studying grounded theory,
literally just listening to stories in Houston.
She followed the data where it led her, even
when it was uncomfortable. And she wrote those
stories to become a global advisor for companies
like Disney and Google and a confidant of Oprah
Winfrey. And yet, despite all the fame and the
platforms, the message hasn't really changed.
No, it hasn't. The central thesis connecting
all of it, the books, the talks, the corporate
consulting, it's simple. You cannot have courage
without vulnerability. It is a package deal to
feel joy. You have to risk feeling pain to lead.
You have to risk failure to belong. You have
to risk standing alone. It's the absolute antithesis
of the armor we talked about at the very beginning
of this deep dive. Exactly. She is telling us
to take the armor off. It's heavy. It's suffocating
and it's keeping us from the things we actually
want. And that brings us to the provocative thought
for the listener. We always like to leave you
with something to chew on. We talked about the
price of invulnerability. If Brown's research
is correct and the data says it is, then numbing
the bad effectively numbs the good. So I want
the listener to ask themselves a hard question.
Where in their own life are they choosing comfort
right now? That's a tough one. And more importantly,
is that comfort costing them their joy? Are you
staying safe but staying numb? Because according
to Brene Brown, you can be safe or you can be
brave. But you can't be both. That is a heavy
question to end on, but a necessary one. Well,
if you want to dig deeper and clearly, there
is a mountain of material here. Check the sources,
read the books, watch the talks. And maybe, just
maybe, step into the arena. Thanks for diving
in with us. Take care.