Transcript of Most Replayed Moment: Brené Brown on Vulnerability, Self Esteem and The Four Skillsets Of Courage New

On that point about me and vulnerability, is vulnerability important? Because there's a lot of performative vulnerability taking place. For sure. Is it an important thing for my health, happiness, my future, to be a vulnerable person?

Well, let's define it. Um, vulnerability is the emotion we experience when we have— when we are up against uncertainty. Risk, and emotional exposure. So vulnerability is what I feel. It's the cringe, the awkward, the thing that I, the emotion I feel in times of uncertainty, risk, or emotional exposure. So it was really interesting because I had a hard time helping people understand because there's, we are so raised to believe that vulnerability is weakness that it took a trip to Fort Bragg working with special forces to ask I asked soldiers a question, "Give me a single example of courage in your life. One example that you've witnessed or you yourself have done. One example of courage that did not require uncertainty, risk, or emotional exposure." No one could answer it. Finally, a young soldier stood up and said, "Three tours." There is no courage without vulnerability. So is vulnerability important? It is if we want to be brave with our lives. If we want to be able to manage ourselves in a way that's values-aligned and courageous, we have to be able to reconcile how we feel when we're uncertain, at risk, or exposed. I mean, and really weirdly, the next week after the trip to Fort Bragg, I was with the Seattle Seahawks, the football team, NFL team.

Yeah.

Asked the players, Give me an example of courage on the field or off that did not require vulnerability. They said that it's not possible. There is no courage. Like, if you're doing things in your life, in your work, and there's no risk, no uncertainty, and no exposure, then they're not brave. If you know how it's going to end, that is not courage. Courage is the willingness to show up and be all in when you cannot predict the outcome. Courage is saying, "I love you first." You want to know what vulnerability is? I love you first. Have you ever said, "I love you first"?

I'm not sure. Yeah.

It's been a while. But it's hard. It's, you know—

So I need to give context. It's been a while since I've been in that situation.

Well, you've had to go first.

Yeah, where I've had to go first.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's this great story that I tell about— I gave a talk here. I was actually in LA. And afterwards, a kid came up to me. He was probably 22 or 23. And he said, can I tell you a story about your work and how it's really changed my life? And I was like, sure. And a kind of a crowd grew around. And this is like the last time I ever got penned, like not being able to exit a stage. Because it was such a traumatic— it wasn't traumatic, but it was like, he said, well, I was dating this woman and I was so crazy about her. So I took her to eat to our favorite restaurant and I waited until dessert came because we love this chocolate volcano. And I ordered it and I said, I love you. And she looked at me and she said, I think you're awesome. And I think we should date other people. And then she Ubered home. And so I was like, goddamn, this is the worst story I've ever heard.

This is not a good story.

And he said, so I got in my car and I drove home and the whole way home, I just kept saying to myself over and over, fuck Brené Brown. Fuck, morning. I was like, when does this— when's the turn on the story, you know? And he said, I got home and I walked into my apartment and I pushed the door open and both my roommates were wired in and they were on their computers and they looked up and said, dude, what's going on? And he said, I told her I loved her and she told me I was awesome. And one of my roommates looked at me and said, what the fuck were you thinking? That's not how it works. When you are going toward them, they go away. So you're always kind of going away so they come towards you. And he goes, oh, oh, no, no, I don't want to. I don't want to be that dude. I was daring greatly. And he said both of his roommates just got teary-eyed and went, right on, man. Right on. Like, There is no courage without vulnerability. How can you say you're brave if you're not putting yourself out there?

So many people have been through things which have made it very, very difficult for them to be vulnerable. I was actually speaking to someone yesterday who was cheated on, a bunch of attachment issues in their early childhood. And funnily enough, when I was talking to her about— I was asking her questions about— because I'm a very deep person, like this carries over into my personal life. I was asking her questions about the things, you know, she'd been through, whatever else. She just shuts down. And she told me that she, she, um, what were the exact words? She said that she finds vulnerability to be a form of intimacy that she tries to stay away from because she needs to really, really trust the person before she opens up. And I think this is a trend you see across a lot of people. They they won't open up enough to form a connection because they've been hurt before by opening up, and it feels too scary to do that. And that results in them being single, alone, unhappy, so on and so on.

Yeah, I mean, I think there's— there, what you said was so loaded with so many things. So first of all, there's, there, there's this very interesting relationship between vulnerability and trust. And how does that work? And people always ask me what comes first, trust or vulnerability? Do I trust you first, then I'm vulnerable? Or am I vulnerable first and then I trust you? And I think it's a very slow stacking. We get to know each other. I share a little bit. I don't share, "Hey, nice to meet you, Stephen. Here's my darkest, horrible, most painful trauma," you know, 'cause that is actually— that kind of litmus testing is actually a form of armor. I'm gonna throw something at you that our relationship in no way has been built long enough to hold. You're going to go away, and I'm going to use that as verification that vulnerability is dangerous. Like, that's litmus testing. Let me prove to you that you're not trustworthy. Da-na-na-na, na-na-na-na-na. Oh, I see you're backing away. That's what I thought. I'm backing away because we haven't built a relationship that can bear the weight of this story. Can we start? Can we start small?

Okay. Vulnerability, trust, vulnerability, trust, vulnerability, trust. I think, in my work, we call that like the smash and grab. Like, I'm going to hit you with something really big and then watch you go away and use it as evidence. Yeah. And it takes a really skilled person to say, yeah, I'm really I'm taking in what you told me. I want to be respectful and honor that. And I don't have a way to file it right now because I don't know you well enough. So I appreciate the share. I mean, we also call it spotlighting. So like if I had a military-grade spotlight that they use in the wilderness, I work with the military a lot and I picked it up and put it in your face right here. What would you do physically? Oh, that's what— that's our reaction to too much vulnerability too fast. Yeah, like, yeah, I don't know. I don't know you. So you're talking about the slow stacking of courage and vulnerability and trust. And then you're also talking about that when, when we've had a lot of hard things happen to us. I think this is where I really believe the democratization of coaching and therapy, that a lot of times we have to work with people like we have to get help.

To be able to open up and take off some of the armor that we put on. Because sometimes that armor that we put on, it's frickin' survival. I mean, and you want to start adding— you want to start adding variables like race, gender, like, you know, any— anything where there's social systems also at play, that's survival. Like telling me right now, my career, like, "Hey, you should be vulnerable with your new team and talk about your previous failures," you know, well, of course I could do that. And I would do it and everybody would clap and they'd think, "Oh man, she's so brave." And take the new person who's a young Black woman or the new first LGBTQ person on a team and say, "Hey, tell everybody—" Don't tell anybody shit. Develop trust first. Develop, see how, Trust your own instincts about the accountability of this group to hold themselves accountable for their behavior. Like, vulnerability is not more necessary for any of us than anybody else, but certainly more difficult for other— for some people, for sure. And I think what's hard about that, what's so painful, probably the most painful part of my career, is that regardless of why the armor is on, Without vulnerability, you cannot access the experiences that are the most meaningful in life.

Love. To love someone is to be vulnerable from the time you wake up to the time you go to bed. You know that. You're in a relationship. To love is to be vulnerable, right? Mm-hmm. And have you ever buried someone you loved? No. Like, I lost my mom 2 years ago. Like, my kids, it's like having your heart live outside of your body. Like, to love is to be vulnerable 'cause it's to risk grief and losing. Belonging is vulnerable. The most vulnerable human emotion? Joy. Joy is so vulnerable that when some of us get close to it, we dress rehearse tragedy to prepare for disappointment. Like, it's so vulnerable that we don't even let ourselves feel joy. Because we're so afraid someone's going to rip it away and we're going to get sucker punched by disappointment. Yes or no? Like, people choose to live disappointed rather than to feel disappointed, risk feeling disappointed and get excited about something. You know, it's like the first time my kids shared with me when they were young, certainly not the way I was raised, but, you know, "I really, really want to make this team, Mom." And I said, I wanna pause you for a second and tell you how brave it is to talk openly about something you want so much when you don't have control over whether you get it or not.

I want, I want it for you because you want it. But regardless of what happens, I admire your courage for wanting something and sharing out loud that you want it. Because if you don't get it, I'll know that it was a crushing blow. But that's so great because I'll be here for you when that happens either way. So we— and I'm really, I'm a really— we call it foreboding joy. That joy is so good, just waiting for the other shoe to drop. And people who have trauma histories are really like that. Like for me, because of the way I was raised, when something good happens, I'm like, oh God. Now what's gonna happen? Statistically, bad shit's gonna roll around any second now. And it's interesting 'cause the group of people that we research, the only group of people that could take that, you know, there's a bodily quiver, right? Of vulnerability. Have you felt it? Yeah. Yeah. The only people that can really lean into joy consistently are people who use that vulnerability quiver as a reminder to be grateful. To be able to practice gratitude in that second. So gratitude is a huge enabler of joy.

Is that automatic or can one train that?

No, it's a training. Oh, shit. No, I had to— I mean, standing at my front door, watching my 16-year-old daughter walk down the sidewalk with her boyfriend in high school and get in his truck for prom. Right? And I'm standing there and I'm like, oh, God. And you know, what am I worried about? You know, prom night, like car wreck, right? Of course, when I tell the story, the military is always like, pregnancy! I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, car wreck. And so I just remember standing there and she gets in and I'm standing next to Steve and Charlie, my son's, you know, at this time he's 10. And I'm like, I'm so grateful. I'm so grateful. I'm grateful for this moment. I'm grateful that I'm a part of it. I'm grateful that they did the corsage. And the boutonniere over here. I'm grateful that I got to help pick out the dress. I'm so grateful. And Charlie goes, looks at Steve, what's wrong with Mom? And Steve goes, she's practicing gratitude. Let her do it. Otherwise, she's gonna get on a crazy train. It's gonna be all health. And you know, like, because part of me wants to say, oh God, oh God, like so beautiful and so joyful.

And get in your truck and follow them right now. If he's speeding, I want to know about it. If he's not stopping fully at a stop sign, follow them until this date is over. You know, that's, that's what I want to do because I'm afraid, because that the joy of that moment was just too much for me, too vulnerable.

It appears you've overcome various traits of old Brené Brown.

No, I'm overcoming. Overcoming. No, I'm not over— I have not overcome.

Have you overcome anything?

Yes, I believe that I will overcome anything. I've overcome the belief that I have overcome the belief that I will ever arrive. I am grateful for the skills that I have that are new skills that keep me more aligned with the person, the mom, the partner, the leader that I want to be. But I am mindful all the time. I try to stay very mindful that I am scary when I'm scared. That I catastrophize very, very easily. And that's painful for everybody around me. And I don't need to be liked. I just need to be myself. Like, but those are things because I will, I will sit down like 2 days ago and be like, oh my God, it'd be so freaking easy to be liked here. I was like, this will be, this would be a piece of cake. And I'm like, shit, I don't do that anymore. Bummer. 2 days ago?

Yeah. Out of what?

Just with a group of people that I knew what it would take to be liked.

And you made the choice to just be myself.

Yeah. Why? Because now the person I'm going to betray last is me. Yeah, I hope I see you again, but not that important.

Some people might find that somewhat demoralizing to know that they too might never cure parts of themselves that they're desperate to change. I think people, you know, they often come to podcasts like this or read books like yours looking for solutions, fixing to not liking myself, to the way that I react to my emotions. They want to fix it. Because if they can fix it, then they can be happy.

I don't think that's in the consideration set for a very beautiful reason. That if we could fix it and never have to wrestle with it again, we would be so short on grace for other people, that we would be tyrants.

So you think it creates a form of empathy for others?

Yeah, I mean, like, I'm not gonna— I have like really serious boundaries. I'm a very boundary person. But when I see someone behaving a certain way, I was like, oh, my asshole sees your inner asshole right here. I get it. I get what you're doing. I'm not going to tolerate it. I'm going to set a boundary around it. But I'm not really judging you for it.

It's just that behavior is not okay right here. But you like yourself now?

Yeah, yeah, I do. I, I, yeah, I do. I do. I can, I can, I can think I can say that pretty— I like what I'm becoming.

And for anyone that doesn't like themselves, what work has had to go into getting to the point where you like what you're becoming?

I think the hardest is Maybe one of the biggest findings of my research over the last 25 years is it's not fear that gets in the way of us being brave with our lives and our work. It's armor. Everybody's afraid. It's okay to be afraid. What's dangerous is the armor that we reach for to self-protect when we're afraid and how that armor moves us away from love, connection, and our values. And so, I think the hardest work is, for me, constantly being aware of what is my armor? What am I grabbing for when I'm afraid? What am I grabbing for when I want to protect my sense of self-worth, my ego? Like, and how heavy that shit is. You know, at some point I had to wear it because that was survival for me growing up. But this is the big, this is the big developmental milestone of middle age, which you are squarely entering, which is kind of when the universe grabs you by the shoulders and pulls you really close. And says, I'm not fucking around anymore. I gave you gifts. Choosing not to grow into them is not benign. There's a consequence for that.

And your armor is getting in the way. You're a grown-ass person now. You have different choices. Let go of what doesn't serve. And that is the big milestone, I think, that we have to wrestle with in midlife. What no longer serves that's preventing us from growing into who we want to be.

And is that where vulnerability comes into the picture?

Because— oh, for sure. Because all the armor, all the armor is about vulnerability.

It requires a huge amount of, um, I was gonna say self-awareness. Yes. That some people just don't, could probably never accomplish.

I mean— That's why I think metaphor is helpful. I mean, most of us can understand if you back me into an emotional corner, what are you going to get? Like, as a leader, I know my armor, perfectionism, micromanagement. I get super intensive. I get recklessly decisive. I know my armor, and my team knows my armor. I think my armor in my personal life, especially when it comes to my kids, when I get— when I feel vulnerable, is control, control, control. Take over all the chess pieces.

But that's not a good idea.

It's not possible. It's just, it's just pretend. That's called anxiety. Like pretending that you can control the chessboard of other people's lives, your own, much less other people's lives. But I think I do it out of fear.

Is fear the opposite of Courage? Or is it—

No, I think the opposite of courage is armor. Armor, okay. I think the opposite of courage is self-protection.

To be courageous in this context, whether it's as a leader or in another environment, you talk about these 4 steps to courage. You talk about it in Strong Ground.

Yeah. This was research that emerged like 15 years ago, and I was really, really nervous because I'm a grounded theory researcher. I'm a qualitative researcher. So a grounded theory is only as good as its ability to work new data. So you develop a hypothesis or a theory based on data. And then as you collect more data, does the hypothesis hold? And, you know, this— we collected that data pre-pandemic, you know, pre, pre a lot of things. And so I was really worried about the 4 skill sets of courage, which are identifying and understanding your core values. I would love to do this exercise with you sometime. Um, 2, 1, understanding what gets in the way of you wrestling with vulnerability, kind of owning it and moving through it constructively. 3, how to build trust and how to become— super important— trustworthy to yourself. Self-trust. Because one of the first casualties of failure or disappointment or setback is we lose our ability to trust ourselves, our ability to make good decisions, our ability to take care of ourselves. And then the last one, which is my favorite, because it can really— I've seen it really change an organization, is how to get back up after failure and disappointment, how to reset, how to be— how to manage your own bounce when hard shit happens.

So those are the 4 skill sets of courage. Again, evidence-based, observable, measurable, and teachable. We've taken 165,000 people through this work across 45 countries. Collected data on all of it. It's so exciting. And it withstood all of the complex changes over the last 5 years, including AI organizationally, 'cause this is where we do our work. I don't, I'm not a therapist or clinician. I don't work with like families or individuals. I mean, I have a therapist, but I'm not one. Um, so I think you can develop SCIRT courage skills.

The third point is braving trust. Yeah. And I've heard about your marble jar theory. So I got a jar of marbles. I saw that. Could you explain to me what your marble jar— look at how excited you are.

I am. So this comes, you know, where do I get my information? Ellen's in fourth grade, my oldest. She comes home from school. The front door closes. She slides down the door into a heap sobbing. Oh my God, Ellen, are you okay? Are you hurt? What's going on? She says that something hard happened. She shared it, like, very confidentially with one or two of her friends during recess. When she got back to the classroom, they had told everybody in her class, all 30 kids. Everybody was laughing and pointing and making fun of her. And she said, I will never trust anyone again. And my response immediately to my— in my mind was, damn straight, not a fucking person. You trust your mama and that's it. Like, that was my response. But again, that's not the right thing to do, right? You want a kid who can develop trust with others. So I said, trust is really hard. She said, I don't understand it. And her teacher at the time, Mrs. Bauckham, had a marble jar. And when the class would collectively make good decisions, she would put marbles in this empty jar. And when it got full, they'd have an extra recess and party.

And so immediately what came to me, because I'm describing trust, which is a hard concept to a fourth grader, I said, trust is the marble jar. She's like, what do you mean? And I said, every time you share somebody— something with someone that's confidential and they don't share it, they get a marble. Every time you build trust, when you want to share something really private and personal, you look for a friend whose jar is full of marbles. I said, "Do you have any marble jar friends?" She's like, "Not the ones I shared with today." And I said, "Who are your marble jar friends?" And she said, "Hannah and Lorna." And I said, "Tell me something they do to earn marbles." "Oh, well, like, if I get to my tray late at lunch and there's no place to sit, Lorna will scoot over and give me half her seat, and then we just share one seat and I can sit at the table. And then the other day, when I had strep throat, Hannah was worried about me." So remember, her mom called and said, "Hannah's worried about Ellen. Why wasn't she at school?" But then the biggest thing that Hannah did was the other day, Oma and Opa, my parents, my mom and her husband, came to my soccer game.

And Hannah looked over and goes, "Oh my God, your Oma and Opa are here." And I said, "Why was that a big deal?" And she goes, "Because everybody's divorced and remarried. And I've got 8, you know, 4 sets of people." And she remembered their names. And what was shocking to me is that Ellen was conveying that these marbles were being earned on these very small— she knew my grandparents' name, she gave me a seat to sit at, she checked on me when I was missing school. And so, it made me start thinking about the literature on trust. So I immediately go to the Gottmans. Have you had the Gottmans on here? Oh, twice, yeah. Yeah, I mean, just like, yeah. So I go to the Gottmans' research on trust, and I read right off the bat, where Gottman say trust is earned in small moments every day. He tells a story, it's my favorite story that he tells, and I've had them on my podcast and I've done blurbs for their books and written forwards. They're just great. So he tells a story about how he's also a mystery lover like me. He's on the second to last page of his mystery.

He's like, oh my God, oh my God, like who did it? And he jumps up to go brush his teeth and he gets, walks to the bathroom and he sees his wife crying and brushing her hair. He's like, "Shit, don't look. Everything's good. Just go to the bathroom and get back in your— get back to your book." And he's like, "That's a sliding door moment. I can— I have a choice in that moment to build trust and stop and say what's going on, or to build betrayal and pretend like I don't see her hurting. So I stop, I take the brush out of her hand." I start brushing her hair and say, "What's going on?" That's a sliding door moment that we have all the time, right? And so to me, trust is built slowly over time, a marble at a time. And that's how we teach trust to the most senior leaders in Fortune 100 companies, that trust is a marble jar. It's earned. Leaders believe And you're a leader, so you know the temptation. Leaders believe that in the middle of a crisis, you put the numbers together and there's a fever dream in the United States and there's new tariffs and you wake up and you've got a revenue line that's in crisis.

And then you can just look at your people and say, "Hello, every—" This is like back to the executive presence. "Trust me, here's what we're going to do." And it means nothing. To people. What matters is the leader that walks past you in the morning and says, "Hey, good to see you, Steven. How's your mom's chemo going?" Marbles, marbles. Then when the crisis happens, you don't need to say, "Trust me." You just need to say what's on your mind.

They trust you. The other thing I think has often plagued my mind is, as a leader, sometimes you say things and those things can't happen for whatever reason. Things change. Right. And I think leaders sometimes think that trust is always being correct, always predicting everything correctly, always being right.

No, trust is, "Man, did I think we had nailed this. I thought this was how this was going to happen. We were wrong. You've been working your asses off for 6 months on this, and I've got to deprioritize it today, standing right here in front of you." But I'm not going to bullshit you. You've been working your ass off on a priority that literally does not exist today. I want to stop and say thank you. I saw what you were doing. I want to be completely transparent about why the priority has shifted. And then I'm going to ask you for the same level of work on the new priority. Yes or no? Yeah.

And in there, blame and responsibility often rear their heads. That's right.

For better or for worse. That's right. Go like this. Eyelash or something.

Oh no, one marble. There you go.

Oh yeah, is that a marble?

Yeah, it is. Yeah, yeah, because you didn't have to say that, you know. I think that sometimes people say you got some shit on your shirt, I'm like, that's— thank you so much, because it would have been much easier for you not to point out the bogey on my face or whatever, you know what I mean?

I don't trust somebody that doesn't do that, so I guess it is a marble.

Hmm. Someone said to me a couple of weeks ago on the podcast, they said, I trust people who say things in public that is against their near-term interests.— and I thought, "Hmm." Oh!

Ah! That's good! Yeah. That's like a— that's like a— that's a— right? Yeah. Yeah. It's a good metaphor though, right? Mm-hmm. It's the trust in the marble jar has been very helpful for us. And let me tell you, there are behaviors— this is plastic— there are behaviors in relationships where you take this whole thing and just slam it on the ground. Cheating. I think that's an obvious one. There's one that's more— has a more ragged edge of grief and distress than even cheating, which is just slowly disengaging.

Emotionally disengaging. Yeah. Mm. Yeah. Gosh. That's a ragged—

that's a ragged-edged break on that marble jar. And it just happens over time. And every— the other people think that they're nuts, and it makes them question their own judgment.

What you just listened to was a most replayed moment from a previous episode. If you want to listen to that full episode, I've linked it down below. Check the description.

Thank you.