A Joosr Guide to Daring Greatly by Brené Brown

You may not choose to have a weakness, but you can choose whether or not to be vulnerable about that weakness

Most of us hide behind shields and masks but resent others for doing the same

There can be no growth without discomfort

Weakness is being unable to withstand an attack or damage, and vulnerability is being open to an attack or damage. You can see that vulnerability is more about knowing where you are weak, and this knowledge allows you to fight or overcome damage in a weak spot.

We can break the culture of scarcity by becoming an example of effective vulnerability and daring. Leading the example ourselves will encourage our friends and family to embrace healthy vulnerability and dare to be different in order to achieve great things.

If you set your sights too high, as in striving for perfection, then you will always fail to close the gap. Your values should be tied into your daily routine, and you should always be trying to achieve them. When you constantly make every effort, you make it possible to fight shame. You may not always achieve your aspirational goal, but making the effort is what counts.
When you know you are making the effort to evaluate the gap and close it, you can allow yourself to be vulnerable. If you fail, you will know that you were trying your best and that there is no reason for shame because you dared to try. And you can communicate with those around you, facilitating vulnerability further and taking the power of shame out of the equation.

The conversations won’t be comfortable, no matter how many times you have them. But for feedback to be effective, it needs to be fairly constant. The trick is not to try to make the conversations comfortable, but rather to acclimatize yourself to the discomfort so that you can work through it and learn from it. There can be no growth without discomfort, and constructive feedback is the surest route to healthy development. Cultivate honest conversation within your group of people, and it will help you all to dare greatly.

These gremlins are internal voices of things we are ashamed of, and we do everything we can to hide them from the world.

The final common shield is numbing. This is evident in society today in the amount of obesity, addiction, debt, and so on, running rampant through the population. Overeating, alcoholism, drug use, and the like are simply actions that distract us from our feelings of inadequacy. We try to hide from our vulnerability in behaviors that are ultimately unhealthy. By evaluating the reason behind our behavior, we can determine whether it is a numbing technique, or something we actually enjoy. If it’s for numbing, we can choose to change our behaviors, thoughts, and emotions to get rid of anxiety.

The next shield is perfectionism. People are afraid to be criticized and to fail, so they spend every moment seeking the approval of others by striving for perfection in all things. Perfection is of course an impossible standard, which can never be reached, so it only furthers feelings of inferiority. Instead, we should evaluate ourselves to identify our imperfections and learn to appreciate them.