Dare to Lead

I’ve never looked so deeply into my feelings inside until I met this book written by Brené Brown. I fell in love with it immediately when I saw the quote from Theodore Roosevelt at the very beginning:

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. 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, who comes short again and again… who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.

Part 1. Rumbling with Vulnerability

Definition of the courage to be vulnerable:

The courage to be vulnerable is not about winning or losing, it’s about the courage to show up when you can’t predict or control the outcome. The only thing I know for sure after all of this research is that if you’re going to dare greatly, you’re going to get your ass kicked at some point. If you choose courage, you will absolutely know failure, disappointment, setback, even heartbreak. That’s why we call it courage. That’s why it’s so rare.

Definition of rumbling with vulnerability. It’s a foundational and core skill of courage building, and “our ability to be daring leaders will never be greater than our capacity for vulnerability”.

A rumble is a discussion, conversation, or meeting defined by a commitment to lean into vulnerability, to stay curious and generous, to stick with the messy middle of problem identification and solving, to take a break and circle back when necessary, to be fearless in owning our parts, and, as psychologist Harriet Lerner teaches, to listen with the same passion with which we want to be heard.

Section 1. The Moment and The Myths

Good practices:

1. Have the courage to show up when you can’t control the outcome

The definition of vulnerability is the emotion that we experience during times of uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure. Vulnerability is not winning or losing. It’s having the courage to show up when you can’t control the outcome.

2. Step over cheap-seat feedback and keep daring

If you are not in the arena getting your ass kicked on occasion, I’m not interested in or open to your feedback. There are a million cheap seats in the world today filled with people who will never be brave with their lives but who will spend every ounce of energy they have hurling advice and judgment at those who dare greatly. Their only contributions are criticism, cynicism, and fearmongering. If you’re criticizing from a place where you’re not also putting yourself on the line, I’m not interested in what you have to say.

Don’t grab hurtful comments and pull them close to you by rereading them and ruminating on them. Don’t play with them by rehearsing your badass comeback. And whatever you do, don’t pull hatefulness close to your heart.

3. Don’t shield ourselves from all feedback

Again, if we shield ourselves from all feedback, we stop growing. If we engage with all feedback, regardless of the quality and intention, it hurts too much, and we will ultimately armor up by pretending it doesn’t hurt, or, worse yet, we’ll disconnect from vulnerability and emotion so fully that we stop feeling hurt. When we get to the place that the armor is so thick that we no longer feel anything, we experience a real death. We’ve paid for selfprotection by sealing off our heart from everyone, and from everything-not just hurt, but love.

The six misguided myths of vulnerability:

1. Vulnerability is weakness
2. I don’t do vulnerability

Choosing to own our vulnerability and do it consciously means learning how to rumble with this emotion and understand how it drives our thinking and behavior so we can stay aligned with our values and live in our integrity. Pretending that we don’t do vulnerability means letting fear drive our thinking and behavior without our input or even awareness, which almost always leads to acting out or shutting down.

3. I can do it alone
4. You can engineer uncertainty out of vulnerability
5. Trust comes before vulnerability

We need to trust to be vulnerable, and we need to be vulnerable in order to build trust.

Trust is the stacking and layering of small moments and reciprocal vulnerability over time. Trust and vulnerability grow together, and to betray one is to destroy both.

And I like this marble jar approach:

We trust the people who have earned marbles over time in our life. Whenever someone supports you, or is kind to you, or sticks up for you, or honors what you share with them as private, you put marbles in the jar. When people are mean, or disrespectful, or share your secrets, marbles come out. We look for the people who, over time, put marbles in, and in, and in, until you look up one day and they’re holding a full jar. Those are the folks you can tell your secrets to. Those are the folks you trust with information that’s important to you.

6. Vulnerability is disclosure

Section 2. The Call to Courage

Leaders must either invest a reasonable amount of time attending to fears and feelings, or squander an unreasonable amount of time trying to manage ineffective and unproductive behavior.

1. Hunt treasures

This is when I remember Joseph Campbell’s quote, which I believe is one of the purest calls to courage for leaders: “The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.

When we are in fear or in self-protection, these are the patterns of how we assemble our armor. And they will NOT lead us to anywhere.

a. I’m not enough

b. If i’m honest about what’s happening, they will think less of me or maybe use it against me

c. No one else is going to be honest about what’s happening and so no way am I going to do that

d. They are not honest about what scares them and they’ve got a lot of issues

e. This is their fault and they are trying to blame me

f. I’m better than them

2. Serve people

When you find the courage to enter that cave, you’re never going in to secure your own treasure or your own wealth; you face your fears to find the power and wisdom to serve others.

Good practices:

1. Have a one-on-one discussion
2. Stop talking. Leave long white pauses and empty space so that we can start peeling and going deep.
3. When they start talking. Really listen.
4. When we are in tough rumbles with people, we can’t take responsibility for their emotions.
5. When rumbles become unproductive, give everyone minutes to walk around outside or catch their breath.

Section 3. The Armory

The problem is that when we imprison the heart, we kill courage. In the same way that we depend on our physical heart to pump life-giving blood to every part of our body, we depend on our emotional heart to keep vulnerability coursing through the veins of courage and to engage all of the behaviors we talked about in the prior section, including trust, innovation, creativity, and accountability.

You got to put down the weapons and show up.

As children we found ways to protect ourselves from vulnerability, from being hurt, diminished, and disappointed. We put on armor; we used our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors as weapons; and we learned how to make ourselves scarce, even to disappear. Now as adults we realize that to live with courage, purpose, and connection to be the person who we long to be-we must again be vulnerable. We must take off the armor, put down the weapons, show up, and let ourselves be seen.

Forms of armored leadership with top three as perfectionism, foreboding joy, numbing:

1. Driving Perfectionism (armored leadership) vs encouraging for healthy striving (daring leadership).

Perfectionism is not the same thing as striving for excellence. Perfectionism is not about healthy achievement and growth. Perfectionism is a defensive move.

Perfectionism is not the self-protection we think it is. It is a twenty-ton shield that we lug around, thinking it will protect us, when in fact it’s the thing that’s really preventing us from being seen.

Perfectionism is not self-improvement. Perfectionism is, at its core, about trying to earn approval. Most perfectionists grew up being praised for achievement and performance (grades, manners, rule following, people pleasing, appearance, sports). Somewhere along the way, they adopted this dangerous and debilitating belief system: I am what I accomplish and how well I accomplish it. Please. Perform. Perfect. Prove. Healthy striving is self-focused: How can I improve? Perfectionism is other-focused: What will people think? Perfectionism is a hustle.

Perfectionism is not the key to success. In fact, research shows that perfectionism hampers achievement. Perfectionism is correlated with depression, anxiety, addiction, and life paralysis, or missed opportunities. The fear of failing, making mistakes, not meeting people’s expectations, and being criticized keeps us outside the arena where healthy competition and striving unfolds.

Last, perfectionism is not a way to avoid shame. Perfectionism is a function of shame.

2. Squandering opportunities for joy and recognition (armored leadership) vs practicing gratitude and celebrating milestones (daring leadership).

3. Numbing (armored leadership) vs setting boundaries and finding real comfort (daring leadership)

We cannot selectively numb emotion. If we numb the dark, we numb the light. If we take the edge off pain and discomfort, we are, by default, taking the edge off joy, love, belonging, and the other emotions that give meaning to our lives.

4. Propagating the false dichotomy of victim or viking (armored leadership) vs practicing integration - strong back, soft front, wild heart (daring leadership)

The opposite of living in a world of false binaries is practicing integration the act of bringing together all the parts of ourselves, as we talked about earlier. We are all tough and tender, scared and brave, grace and grit. The most powerful example of integrationa practice that I wrote about in Braving the Wilderness and that I try to live by-is strong back, soft front, wild heart.

How can we give and accept care with strongback, soft-front compassion, moving past fear into a place of genuine tenderness? I believe it comes about when we can be truly transparent, seeing the world clearly-and letting the world see into us.

5. Being a knower and being right (armored leadership) vs being a learner and getting it right (daring leadership)

Having to be the “knower” or always being right is heavy armor. It’s defensiveness, it’s posturing, and , worst of all, it’s a huge driver of bullshit.

6. Hiding behind cynicism (armored leadership) vs modeling clarity, kindness, and hope (daring leadership)
7. Using criticism as self-protection (armored leadership) vs making contributions and taking risks (daring leadership)
8. Using power over (armored leadership) vs using power with, power to, and power within (daring leadership)
9. Hustling for your worth (armored leadership) vs knowing your value (daring leadership)

When people don’t understand where they’re strong and where they deliver value for the organization or even for a single effort, they hustle. And not the good kind of hustle. The kind that’s hard to be around because we are jumping in everywhere, including where we’re not strong or not needed, to prove we deserve a seat at the table. When we do not understand our value, we often exaggerate our importance in ways that are not helpful, and we consciously or unconsciously seek attention and validation of importance.”

10. Zigzagging and avoiding (armored leadership) vs talking straight and taking action (daring leadership)

Zigzagging is a metaphor for the energy we spend trying to dodge the bullets of vulnerability whether it’s conflict, discomfort, confrontation, or the potential for shame, hurt, or criticism.

When we find ourselves zigzagging-hiding out, pretending, avoiding, procrastinating, rationalizing, blaming, lying-we need to remind ourselves that running is a huge energy suck and probably way outside our values. At some point, we have to turn toward vulnerability and make that call.

Section 4. Shame and Empathy

The definition of shame:

First, shame is the fear of disconnection. As we talked about in the myths of vulnerability, we are physically, emotionally, cognitively, and spiritually hardwired for connection, love, and belonging. Connection, along with love and belonging, is why we are here, and it is what gives purpose and meaning to our lives. Shame is the fear of disconnection-it’s the fear that something we’ve done or failed to do, an ideal that we’ve not lived up to, or a goal that we’ve not accomplished makes us unworthy of connection.

Shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love, belonging, and connection.

Retreating into our smallness becomes the most seductive and easiest way to stay safe in the midst of the shame squeeze. But, as we’ve talked about, when we armor and contort ourselves into smallness, things break and we suffocate.

Behavioral cues that shame has permeated a culture:

Perfectionism; Favoritism; Gossiping; Back-channeling; Comparison; Self-worth tied to productivity; Harassment; Discrimination; Power over; Bullying; Blaming; Teasing; Cover-ups.

Shame resistance is not possible as long as we care about connection, but shame resilience is possible, learnable by all of us. We need to be empathy and self-compassion.

Shame resilience is the ability to practice authenticity when we experience shame, to move through the experience without sacrificing our values, and to come out on the other side of the shame experience with more courage, compassion, and connection than we had going into it. Ultimately, shame resilience is about moving from shame to empathy the real antidote to shame.

it’s important to understand that if we share our story with someone who responds with empathy and understanding, shame can’t survive. Self-compassion is also critically important, but because shame is a social concept-it happens between people it also heals best between people. A social wound needs a social balm, and empathy is that balm. Self-compassion is key because when we’re able to be gentle with ourselves in the midst of shame, we’re more likely to reach out, connect, and experience empathy.

The definition of empathy:

Empathy is not connecting to an experience, it’s connecting to the emotions that underpin an experience.

Empathy is a choice. And it’s a vulnerable choice, because if I were to choose to connect with you through empathy, I would have to connect with something in myself that knows that feeling. In the face of a difficult conversation, when we see that someone’s hurt or in pain, it’s our instinct as human beings to try to make things better. We want to fix, we want to give advice. But empathy isn’t about fixing, it’s the brave choice to be with someone in their darkness-not to race to turn on the light so we feel better.

If struggle is being down in a hole, empathy is not jumping into the hole with someone who is struggling and taking on their emotions, or owning their struggle as yours to fix. If their issues become yours, now you have two people stuck in a hole. Not helpful. Boundaries are important here. We have to know where we end and others begin if we really want to show up with empathy.

Empathy is at the heart of connection-it is the circuit board for leaning into the feelings of others, reflecting back a shared experience of the world, and reminding them that they are not alone.

Empathy skills:

From practical perspective, empathy is first to take the perspective of another person, second to stay out of judgment, third to understand their emotion, and fourth to communicate my understanding of their emotion.

1. To see the world as others see it, or perspective taking

Perspective taking requires becoming the learner, not the knower.

Again, it’s only when diverse perspectives are included, respected, and valued that we can start to get a full picture of the world, who we serve, what they need, and how to successfully meet people where they are.

I love what Beyoncé said in her first-person essay in the September 2018 issue of Vogue: ”If people in powerful positions continue to hire and cast only people who look like them, sound like them, come from the same neighborhoods they grew up in, they will never have a greater understanding of experiences different from their own. They will hire the same models, curate the same art, cast the same actors over and over again, and we will all lose. The beauty of social media is it’s completely democratic. Everyone has a say. Everyone’s voice counts, and everyone has a chance to paint the world from their own perspective.”

2. To be unjudgmental

Based on research, there are two ways to predict when we are going to judge: We judge in areas where we’re most susceptible to shame, and we judge people who are doing worse than we are in those areas.

3. To understand another person’s feelings
4. To communicate your understanding of that person’s feelings

Fluency in emotional conversation means being able to name at least thirty of them.

One reason emotion is difficult to identify and name is the iceberg effect.

Many of the emotions that we experience show up as pissed off or shut down on the surface. Below the surface, there’s much more nuance and depth. Shame and grief are two examples of emotions that are hard to fully express, so we turn to anger or silence.

The vast majority of us find it easier to be mad than hurt. Not only is it easier to express anger than it is to express pain, our culture is more accepting of anger. So the next time you’re shutting down or angry, ask yourself what lies beneath.

5. Mindfulness / Paying attention

Self-compassion skills

1. Maintain clear line

Do not take responsibility and ownership for the words of other people-just own your part.

Jumping into the hole with no way out is enmeshment-jumping into struggle with someone while maintaining clear lines about what belongs to whom is empathy.

2. Stop beating yourself

Talk to yourself the way you’d talk to someone you love.

Four elements of shame resilience:

1. Recognizing shame and understanding its triggers

When we have understanding and awareness around shame, we are less likelyy to default to our shame shields or the following three strategies of disconnection:

Moving away: Withdrawing, hiding, silencing ourselves, and keeping secrets. Moving toward: Seeking to appease and please. Moving against: Trying to gain power over others by being aggressive, and by using shame to fight shame.

2. Practicing critical awareness
3. Reaching out
4. Speaking shame

Section 5. Curiosity and Grounded Confidence

Dheeraj explained to me that when leaders don’t have the skills to lean into vulnerability, they’re not able to successfully hold the tension of the paradoxes that are inherent in entrepreneurship. His examples of the paradoxes that elicit vulnerability in leaders align with what we heard from the research participants: • Optimism and paranoia • Letting chaos reign (the act of building) and reining in chaos (the act of scaling) • Big heart and tough decision making • Humility and fierce resolve • Velocity and quality when building new things • Left brain and right brain • Simplicity and choice • Thinking global, acting local • Ambition and attention to detail • Thinking big but starting small • Short-term and long-term • Marathons and sprints, or marathon of sprints in business-building Dheeraj told me, “Leaders must learn the skills to hold these tensions and get adept at balancing on the ‘tightrope’ of life. Ultimately, leadership is the ability to thrive in the ambiguity of paradoxes and opposites.”

How to build skills to hold tensions of the paradoxes:

1. Rumble skills: easy learning does not build strong skills

The reality is that to be effective, learning needs to be effortful. That’s not to say that anything that makes learning easier is counterproductive-or that all unpleasant learning is effective. The key here is desirable difficulty. The same way you feel a muscle “burn” when it’s being strengthened, the brain needs to feel some discomfort when it’s learning. Your mind might hurt for a while-but that’s a good thing.

2. Curiosity

In his book Curious: The Desire to Know and Why Your Future Depends on It, Ian Leslie writes, “Curiosity is unruly. It doesn’t like rules, or, at least, it assumes that all rules are provisional, subject to the laceration of a smart question nobody has Yet thought to ask. It disdains the approved pathways, preferring diversions, unplanned excursions, impulsive left turns. In short, curiosity is deviant.”

3. Practice vulnerability, become self-aware, and engage in tough conversations

There’s an old saying that I lead by now: “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” I’ve learned one way to help people understand how much you care is to share your story.

Part 2. Living into Our Values

Values and living into our values:

A value is a way of being or believing that we hold most important. Living into our values means that we do more than profess our values, we practice them. We walk our talk-we are clear about what we believe and hold important, and we take care that our intentions, words, thoughts, and behaviors align with those beliefs.

More often than not, our values are what lead us to the arena door-we’re willing to do something uncomfortable and daring because of our beliefs. And when we get in there and stumble or fall, we need our values to remind us why we went in, especially when we are facedown, covered in dust and sweat and blood. Here’s the thing about values: While courage requires checking our armor and weapons at the arena door, we do not have to enter every tough conversation and difficult rumble completely empty-handed.

Three steps to help you know more about yourself and how to live into your values:

1. We can’t live into values that we can’t name
2. Taking values from BC to behavior
3. Empathy and self-compassion: the two most important seats in the arena

Regardless of the values you pick, daring leaders who live into their values are never silent about hard things.

“You first listen about race. You will make a lot of mistakes. It will be super uncomfortable. And there’s no way to talk about it without getting some criticism. But you can’t be silent.” To opt out of conversations about privilege and oppression because they make you uncomfortable is the epitome of privilege.

Silence is not brave leadership, and silence is not a component of brave cultures. Showing up and being courageous around these difficult conversations is not a path you can predetermine. A brave leader is not someone who is armed with all the answers. A brave leader is not someone who can facilitate a flawless discussion on hard topics. A brave leader is someone who says I see you. I hear you. I don’t have all the answers, but I’m going to keep listening and asking questions. We all have the capacity to do that. We all have the ability to foster empathy. If we want to do good work, it’s imperative that we continue to flesh out these harder conversations, to push against secrecy, silence, and judgment. It’s the only way to eradicate shame from the workplace, to clear the way for a performance in the arena that correlates with our highest values and not the fearmongers from the stands.

The biggest challenge we face when it comes to values is the necessity to give feedback and receive feedback. You have to know when you are ready to give feedback and be good at receiving feedback.

1. Understand their values

You don’t really know people until you take the time to understand their values.

2. Daring leaders assume the best about people’s intention and assume they are doing the best they can. Leaders struggling with ego, armor, and/or a lack of skills do not make that assumption.

What is the foundational skill of assuming the best in people? Setting and maintaining boundaries. What’s the fundamental belief underpinning the assumption of positive intent? That people are doing the best they can.

The people who are the most generous in their assumptions of others have the clearest boundaries. The most compassionate and generous people I’ve interviewed in my career are the most boundaries. It turns out that we assume the worst about people’s intentions when they’re not respectful of our boundaries: It is easy to believe that they are trying to disappoint us on purpose. However, we can be very compassionate toward people who acknowledge and respect what’s okay and what’s not.

In addition to boundaries, an assumption of positive intent relies on the core belief that people are doing the best they can with what they’ve got, versus that people are lazy, disengaged, and maybe even trying to piss us off on purpose. Sure, we’re all capable of change and growth, but assuming positive intent requires the belief that people are really trying in that moment.

Assuming positive intent does not mean that we stop helping people set goals or that we stop expecting people to grow and change. It’s a commitment to stop respecting and evaluating people based solely on what we think they should accomplish, and start respecting them for who they are and holding them accountable for what they’re actually doing. And when we’re overwhelmed and struggling, it also means turning those positive assumptions toward ourselves: I’m doing the very best I can right now.

Part 3. Braving Trust

Importance of talking about trust:

Because talking about trust is tough, and because these conversations have the potential to go sideways fast, we often avoid the rumble. And that’s even more dangerous. First, when we’re struggling with trust and don’t have the tools or skills to talk about it directly with the person involved, it leads us to talk about people instead of to them. It also leads to lots of energy-wasting zigzagging.

To measure individual level of trustworthiness, you can refer to the following seven behaviors - BRAVING inventory:

Boundaries: You respect my boundaries, and when you’re not clear about what’s okay and not okay, you ask. You’re willing to say no. Reliability: You do what you say you’ll do. At work, this means staying aware of your competencies and limitations so you don’t overpromise and are able to deliver on commitments and balance competing priorities. Accountability: You own your mistakes, apologize, and make amends. Vault: You don’t share information or experiences that are not yours to share. I need to know that my confidences are kept, and that you’re not sharing with me any information about other people that should be confidential. Integrity: You choose courage over comfort. You choose what is right over what is fun, fast, or easy. And you choose to practice your values rather than simply professing them. Nonjudgment: I can ask for what I need, and you can ask for what you need. We can talk about how we feel without judgment. We can ask each other for help without judgment. Generosity: You extend the most generous interpretation possible to the intentions, words, and actions of others.

Unpacking Vault:

When I walk into a co-worker’s office and spill, there might be a moment of connection, but it’s counterfeit connection. The second I walk out, that colleague is likely thinking, “I should be careful about what I tell Brené; she’s got no boundaries.”

Unpacking nonjudgment:

We are afraid of being judged for a lack of knowledge or lack of understanding, so we hate asking questions.

We asked a thousand leaders to list marble earning behaviors-what do your team members do that earns your trust? The most common answer: asking for help. When it comes to people who do not habitually ask for help, the leaders we polled explained that they would not delegate important work to them because the leaders did not trust that they would raise their hands and ask for help.

Trust is built in small moments. If you struggle with reliability, make small and doable promises to yourself that are easy to fulfill, until you get a flywheel of reliability going again. If you struggle with boundaries, set small ones with your partner-like you will not be responsible for both cooking and cleaning up dinner-until you are adept at putting boundaries into action in a more meaningful way. That’s how you fill your own marble jar. And never forget-we can’t give people what we don’t have.

Part 4. Learning to Rise

We can’t expect people to be brave and risk failure if they’re not prepped for hard landings.

Here’s the bottom line: If we don’t have the skills to get back up, we may not risk falling. And if we’re brave enough often enough, we are definitely going to fall. The research participants who have the highest levels of resilience can get back up after a disappointment or a fall, and they are more courageous and tenacious as a result of it. They do that with a process that I call Learning to Rise. It has three parts: the reckoning, the rumble, and the revolution.

Three steps process for learning to rise:

When we have the courage to walk into our story and own it, we get to write the ending. And when we don’t own our stories of failure, setbacks, and hurt-they own us.

1. The Reckoning

The reckoning is as simple as that: knowing that we’re emotionally hooked and then getting curious about it.

The ego doesn’t own stories or want to write new endings; it denies emotion and hates curiosity. Instead, the ego uses stories as armor and alibi. The ego says “Feelings are for losers and weaklings.”

The most effective strategy for staying with emotion instead of offloading it is something I learned from a yoga teacher. And from a few members of the military Special Forces. It’s breathing.

Breathing is also the key to another strategy for reckoning with emotion, and one of the most underrated leadership superpowers: practicing calm.

I define calm as creating perspective and mindfulness while managing emotional reactivity.

Calm is a superpower because it is the balm that heals one of the most prevalent workplace stressors: anxiety.

2. Rumble: conspiracies, confabulations, and shitty first drafts

If the reckoning is how we walk into a tough story, the rumble is where we go to the mat with it and own it.

The rumble starts with this universal truth: In the absence of data, we will always make up stories. It’s how we are wired. Meaning making is in our biology, and when we’re in struggle, our default is often to come up with a story that makes sense of what’s happening and gives our brain information on how best to self-protect. And it happens a hundred times a day at work.

In our SFDs, fear fills in the data gaps. What makes that scary is that stories based on limited real data and plentiful imagined data, blended into a coherent, emotionally satisfying version of reality, are called conspiracy theories. Yes, we are all conspiracy theorists with our own stories, constantly filling in data gaps with our fears and insecurities.

Confabulation has a really great and subtle definition: A confabulation is a lie told honestly. To confabulate is to replace missing information with something false that we believe to be true.

Confabulation shows up at work when we share what we believe is factual information, but it’s really just our opinion.

Gottschall writes, “Conspiracy is not limited to the stupid, the ignorant, or the crazy. It is a reflex of the storytelling mind’s compulsive need for meaningful experience.” The problem is that rather than rumbling with vulnerability and staying in uncertainty, we start to fill in the blanks with our fears and worst-case-scenario planning. I love this line from Gottschall: “To the conspiratorial mind, shit never just happens.”

The three most dangerous stories we make up are the narratives that diminish our lovability, divinity, and creativity.

The reality check around our lovability: Just because someone isn’t willing or able to love us, it doesn’t mean that we are unlovable.

The reality check around our divinity: No person is ordained to judge our divinity or to write the story of our spiritual worthiness.

The reality check around our creativity: Just because we didn’t measure up to some standard of achievement doesn’t mean that we don’t possess gifts and talents that only we can bring to the world. And just because someone failed to see the value in what we can create or achieve doesn’t change its worth or ours.

When we own a story and the emotion that fuels it, we get to simultaneously acknowledge that something was hard while taking control of how that hard thing is going to end. We change the narrative. When we deny a story and when we pretend we don’t make up stories, the story owns us. It drives our behavior, and it drives our cognition, and then it drives even more emotions until it completely owns us.

3. The Revolution

I’m not afraid of the word revolution, I’m afraid of a world that’s becoming less courageous and authentic. I’ve always believed that in a world full of critics, cynics, and fearmongers, taking off the armor and rumbling with vulnerability, living into our values, braving trust with open hearts, and learning to rise so we can reclaim authorship of our own stories and lives is the revolution. Courage is rebellion.

Revolution might sound a little dramatic, but in this world, choosing authenticity and worthiness is an absolute act of resistance. Choosing to live and love with our whole hearts is an act of defiance. You’re going to confuse, piss off, and terrify lots of people-including yourself. One minute you’ll pray that the transformation stops, and the next minute you’ll pray that it never ends. You’ll also wonder how you can feel so brave and so afraid at the same time. At least that’s how I feel most of the time … brave, afraid, and very, very alive.

Own the fear, find the cave, and write a new ending for yourself, for the people you’re meant to serve and support, and for your culture. Choose courage over comfort. Choose whole hearts over armor. And choose the great adventure of being brave and afraid. At the exact same time.