The (Wo)Man in the Arena
This month we are reading Daring Greatly by Brené Brown. This book and its follow up, Daring Leadership, are undoubtedly much of the source of what helped me to cultivate a change in my work/life to live more authentically. It led to a shift in me physically, emotionally and had a positive ripple effect on my family. Every day we share what we are thankful for at the dinner table- and every day our gratitude reflects what I share with you below.
Brené Brown is a researcher, professor, and prolific author who launched into the spotlight with her smash-hit TED talk on The Power of Vulnerability. Since then, her research has explored powerful questions like:
“What do wholehearted people have in common?”
This book will appeal to the most woo-woo of us, as well as those that need to see the numbers and the evidence behind the wellbeing focused suggestions. Brené Brown is at the heart of this book and shows the science behind the storytelling! She shares that most people are held back by shame and let a fear of vulnerability limit their potential. But after studying these topics for years, Brené began to notice outliers. There was a group of people who did things differently.
Brené calls these outliers “the wholehearted.”
To answer that question, we need to simplify wholehearted living by deconstructing it into its component parts. Fortunately, Brené’s research revealed what she calls the 10 Guideposts for Wholehearted Living.
What are the 10 Guideposts for Wholehearted Living?
Brene Brown’s 10 Guideposts for Wholehearted Living are as follows:
Cultivating Authenticity and Letting Go of What Other People Think
Cultivating Self-Compassion and Letting Go of Perfectionism
Cultivating Your Resilient Spirit, Letting Go of Numbing and Powerlessness
Cultivating Gratitude and Joy, Letting go of Scarcity and Fear of the Dark
Cultivating Intuition and Trusting Faith, Letting Go of the Need for Certainty
Cultivating Creativity and Letting Go of Comparison
Cultivating Play and Rest, Letting Go of Exhaustion as a Status Symbol and Productivity as Self-Worth
Cultivating Calm and Stillness and Letting Go of Anxiety as a Lifestyle
Cultivating Meaningful Work, Letting Go of Self-Doubt and Supposed-To
Cultivating Laughter, Song, and Dance. And Letting Go of Cool and Always in Control
Each guidepost is like a coin with two sides. On one side, it shares what to cultivate. And on the other, it instructs what to let go of.
The two work hand-in-hand.
Cultivating is about creating something positive. It’s moving you forward by putting your oars in the water to row your boat on the sea of life.
Letting go is about removing resistance. It’s detaching the anchors from your boat so you make effective progress when you row.
Without creating the positive, you won’t move forward. And without releasing what weighs you down, your progress is limited, slow, and painful.
The term “guidepost” also signifies that wholeheartedness is a way of travel, not a destination.
“Wholeheartedness is like a North Star. You can never get there. But you know when you’re heading the right way.”
In the book Daring Greatly, Brené reminds us of these Wholehearted signposts early on then helps us to use them as a launching off point of authenticity, because only when we are truly authentic can be prepared to understand why
“everyone feels vulnerable & innovation arrives when shame leaves.”
Brene starts this book by sharing the stimulus behind the phrase ‘Daring Greatly’ - an empowering speech by Theodore Roosevelt in 1910
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 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 and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for 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 he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.
— Theodore Roosevelt
