I went to hear Brene Brown speak last week
It was a secular sermon at Conway Hall
in London town.
Thanx to my ticket provider for getting in quick -
it was a sell out.
What she says and writes collides with me.
It often draws me into deeper thinking about all the
Emotional Intelligence/ Inner Life/Level Five stuff I work in and write about here.
Especially we collide in the NUMBING experiences.
She comes at it all from an academic study, different than me which I love,
whilst I come at it from working with offenders, young people having it tough
and urban/inner city life.
She comes at it from academia and a personal emotional breakdown
I come at it from studies into gang life and being battered in frontline Youth Work.
If you have read my book, first one - GUTTER FEELINGS, first published in 1985 and topped up last year with more recent stories and reflections. It is here I first explored the numbing of the soul to survive in tough situations - mine being the inner city.
Brene comes at this understanding from her studies and application to family life and personal and workplace relationships. Her books are good and the TED talk which brought her to a mainstream audience.
Her books dig into shame, connection, human communication and if you are interested and want to dig, like me, in spiritual and social and emotional communication - have look at the book
'The Gifts of Imperfection'.
I do what I do because I want to encourage/foster/facilitate humans in their development.
Their chosen 'self determined' development.
Especially those who are angry and downtrodden.
Those who are living life on the edge.
I believe that this whole area is foundational to living life - developing in life = becoming ......
There are so many deprivations.
The big one ......
The undergirding one is all about the spiritual/social and emotional it seems to me.
Seemingly not understood at all by politicians who who want to teach children to pass exams by memorising rather than caring about the 'whole person' development - not just the academic.
She was good in the talk and I heard also on BBC Woman's Hour being interviewed, sadly, for only a few minutes.
Join me on this journey of understanding all this stuff. Please pass on to me all your experiences and any understanding about this stuff. I am thirsty.
Here she in a short interview.
Vulnerability sounds like truth and feels like courage.
—Brené Brown
Our culture teaches us that the courageous are invincible and only the weak are vulnerable.
But that state of indestructibility doesn’t exist, argues Dr Brown.
It’s a damaging myth. In this profound and playful sermon, she’ll help us see why the ability to live with vulnerability is the “most accurate measure of courage”.
It is, she argues,
“the core of all emotions and feelings. To feel is to be vulnerable. To believe vulnerability is weakness is to believe that feeling is weakness. To foreclose on our emotional life out of a fear that the costs will be too high is to walk away from the very thing that gives purpose and meaning to living.”
To be open to uncertainty and hurt, and honest about our flaws, takes guts.
But without it we would never have the bravery to take risks.
We’d miss out on the depth of hope, joy and discovery that comes from living life wholeheartedly.
