I’ve recently discovered a neat little hack to discover new books. It is to spend an hour or so every week on ted.com. This would be about watching 3-4 videos. You can discover some really interesting researchers and their books this way.
One such talk I bumped into was the power of vulnerability by Brené Brown. I don’t think I’ve ever connected with an idea so quickly before. She talks about how our inability to be vulnerable prevents us from making true connections and experience real belonging. In her research on shame and vulnerability, she came across some people who do go through their lives feeling a deep sense of love and belonging. She calls these people to be living ‘wholeheartedly’ and her book is in a way trying to understand how they are different from the rest and how we can live like them. I am going to focus on 4 lessons from her book, Daring Greatly, that I found to be most valuable.
Connection and belonging
Human beings are hardwired for seeking connection and belonging. Be it a parent and child, a leader and her team, or a salesperson and a prospect, every interaction is an attempt to connect. Most of us cannot make real authentic connections.
According to Dr. Brown, people who felt a deep sense of love and belonging are people who believe they are worthy of love and belonging. Their feeling of self worthiness comes from two simple ideas.
- Shame resilience – This is the courage to be imperfect and compassion to be kind to yourself. People who are resilient to shame make connections as a result of authenticity. They are not constantly trying to avoid shame or second guess themselves, they seem more authentic and real than the rest of us.
- Embrace vulnerability – These people know and believe that what makes them vulnerable, also makes them beautiful. They open themselves up to being vulnerable and that makes people around them do the same.
Shields of vulnerability
Opening yourself up to shame and vulnerability is much easier said than done. Almost everyone has been conditioned to avoid the feeling of a shame since childhood. There are specific ways in which we avoid being vulnerable. Three shields that we use regularly are as follows.
Foreboding joy – Whenever we experience moments of joy, a weird ‘this will not last’ or ‘danger is lurking around the corner’ feeling begins to haunt us. We think giving into joy is inviting disaster or setting ourselves up for disappointment. We do this to avoid being vulnerable. It is better to feel fear all the time than to be disappointed when something bad happens. We think joyful moments are scarce and that we will run out of them and finally, are worthy enough to enjoy a moment. Do we deserve it? There are some ways to counter this feeling.
- Enjoy the small moments – joy comes to us in small packages. When we enjoy these ordinary moments, we savor life more.
- Be grateful for what you have – don’t take what you have for granted. Being grateful is one of the surest ways to avoid foreboding joy. In fact, gratefulness can itself fuel joy.
- Don’t squander joy – internalize that one can’t prepare for every eventuality. When we turn every opportunity for joy into a potential disaster, we break our resilience. We have limited resilience and we should conserve it for real adversities and not imaginative ones.
Perfectionism – This idea of self-perfection is largely fuelled by the insecurity of coming in short. It is not the holy grail that leads to the creation of great apps or customer-centric designs or an immensely profitable new venture. It is in fact handing over your self-worth to others and being able to live up to their standards. It is quite a different take on how we perceive perfection and probably requires one to think about for a bit. Think of how many times you shot down your good enough ideas because you thought you needed to do better vs you think others would expect better of you.
Numbing – We are by far the most obese, stressed out, and overworked generation on this planet. How many times have you picked up a glass of wine and heard yourself say ‘to take the edge off’. When we try and numb certain feelings or elevate the others, we essentially numb out all the good stuff too. More people in the US today overdose on prescription drugs than meth and crack put together. The way to handle numbness is to take it out of the equation and treat your own self with compassion. Self-compassion requires practice and putting things in perspective. Dr Kristen Neff’s research on self compassion is a good way to start accepting our shortcomings and not beating ourselves up when we are down.
Mind the gap
The gap between espoused values and practiced values is what causes disengagement in families, schools, and companies. I will talk about disengagement more in the next section in detail. The values we tell the world we follow are usually the aspirational values and not really the values we uphold in our daily life. Our actions regularly conflict with these values and what we practice becomes the general way of doing things. This gap highlights the hypocrisy and spreads disengagement. This is true of the way we teach our kids and run companies.
Being open to vulnerability and letting people question our actions can let a leader, remain accountable to values and also show that its ok to be wrong as long as you are willing to correct your own behavior.
Disengagement
Disengagement in schools and companies is basically the same concept. It is borne out of three simple problems.
- Scarcity – when we make people feel they are not enough, they will close down and disconnect. One way we can make people feel they are worthy is by giving them feedback based on their strengths. That does not mean we don’t acknowledge problems or shortcomings, we do but we focus on strengths and how they can be leveraged. Most of the discussions we do at work happen ‘across the table’. We need to be on the same side of the table, talking about how we can work together and build on the strengths of the individual.
- Shame – shaming is used in classrooms as much in workplaces. Berating people in public leads directly to disengagement. Our physiological reaction to being shamed is the same as being physically abused. Some leaders and teachers believe and swear by public shaming. They think it works in pushing people. It might in the short run but it also leads to disengagement and slowly creates a toxic culture. Shame has a tendency to roll down. Leaders practice what they experience and this creates a never-ending cycle of shaming from top to bottom.
- The gap between espoused and practiced values – this gap is directly responsible for creating a feeling of general hypocrisy and trust issues. When leaders don’t walk, trust issues creep in. People think what else are they saying but not doing or what else are they doing that they are not telling us.
This book has a dedicated chapter to parenting. The key point was that love between parents and children is unconditional. Kids need to hear this. It is about telling your kids that they are worthy and will always find belonging to the family irrespective of whether their actions are as per parents’ expectations. This doesn’t mean you don’t point out or correct their bad behaviors, you do but you underscore that there is a difference between a bad child and a child that did a bad thing. I highly recommend reading this book.
I run a startup called Harmonize. We are hiring and if you’re looking for an exciting startup journey, please write to jobs@harmonizehq.com. Apart from this blog, I tweet about startup life and practical wisdom in books.