#100: Brené Brown on Vulnerability and Home Run TED Talks

Dr. Brené Brown (@BreneBrown https://twitter.com/Bren%C3%A9Brown) is a research professor at the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work. Brené's 2010 TEDx Houston talk, The Power of Vulnerability http://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability?language=en, has been viewed more than 20 million times and is one of the top five most viewed TED talks in the world. She has spent the past 13 years studying vulnerability, courage, worthiness, and shame. Brené http://www.brenebrown.com is the author of two #1 New York Times bestsellers: Daring Greatly http://www.amazon.com/Daring-Greatly-Courage-Vulnerable-Transforms/dp/1592407331/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20 and The Gifts of Imperfection http://www.amazon.com/The-Gifts-Imperfection-Supposed-Embrace/dp/159285849X/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20. Her brand-new book is titled Rising Strong http://www.amazon.com/Rising-Strong-Bren-Brown/dp/0812995821/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20. In it, she writes, "If we are brave enough, often enough, we will fall. This is a book about what it takes to get back up." She is also the Founder and CEO for The Daring Way™, an organization that brings her work on vulnerability, courage, shame and worthiness to organizations, schools, communities, and families. For all links, show notes, resources from this episode, please visit http://fourhourworkweek.com/podcast https://rss.libsyn.com/shows/52710/destinations/fourhourworkweek.com/podcast This podcast is brought to you by Vimeo Pro https://vimeo.com/business, which is ideal for entrepreneurs. In fact, a bunch of my start-ups are already using Vimeo Pro https://vimeo.com/business. WealthFront https://www.wealthfront.com/ uses it to explain how it develops personalized investment portfolios. TaskRabbit https://www.taskrabbit.com/ uses it to tell the company's story. Twitter uses it to showcase Periscope https://www.periscope.tv/. Why are they using it instead of other options out there? Vimeo Pro https://vimeo.com/business provides enterprise level video hosting that typically costs thousands of dollars for a tiny fraction of the cost. Features include: Gorgeous high-quality playback with no ads Up to 20 GB of video storage every week Unlimited plays and views A fully customizable video player, which can include your company logo, custom outro, and more You get all this for just $199 per year (that's only $17 per/mo.) https://vimeo.com/business There are no complicated bandwith calculations or hidden fees. Just go to Vimeo.com/business https://vimeo.com/business to check it out. If you like it, you can use the promo code "Tim" to get 25% off https://vimeo.com/business. This is the deepest discount you will find anywhere for Vimeo Pro https://vimeo.com/business. This podcast is also brought to you by Wealthfront https://wealthfront.com/tim. Wealthfront is a massively disruptive (in a good way) set-it-and-forget-it investing service, led by technologists from places like Apple and world-famous investors. It has exploded in popularity in the last 2 years, and now has more than $2.5B under management. In fact, some of my good investor friends in Silicon Valley have millions of their own money in Wealthfront. Why? Because you can get services previously limited to the ultra-wealthy and only pay pennies on the dollar for them, and it's all through smarter software instead of retail locations and bloated sales teams Check out wealthfront.com/tim https://wealthfront.com/tim, take their risk assessment quiz, which only takes 2-5 minutes, and they'll show you—for free--exactly the portfolio they'd put you in. If you want to just take their advice and do it yourself, you can. Or, as I would, you can set it and forget it. Well worth a few minutes: wealthfront.com/tim https://wealthfront.com/tim. Mandatory disclaimer: Wealthfront Inc. is an SEC registered Investment Advisor. Investing in securities involves risks, and there is the possibility of losing money. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Please visit Wealthfront dot com to read their full disclosure. Enjoy!

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• 0:01Speaker 00

  At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start to shake. Can I answer your personal question?

• 0:08Tim Ferriss?

  No, it would seem inappropriate to me.

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• 0:23Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Vimeo Pro, which is the ideal video hosting platform for entrepreneurs. And in fact, a bunch of my startups already use Vimeo Pro, including Wealthfront, who uses it to explain how Wealthfront works. TaskRabbit uses it to tell their company's story. And there are many other names you would recognize among their customers, Airbnb, Etsy, etc. Why do they use it? Well, Vimeo Pro provides enterprise-level video hosting for a fraction of the usual cost. Features include gorgeous, high-quality playback with no ads, up to 20 gigabytes of video storage every week, unlimited plays and views, and a fully customizable video player, which can include your logo, custom outro, etc. You also get VIP support. And you get all of this for just $1.99 per year.

• 1:05Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:31Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Wealthfront, and this is a very unique sponsor. Wealthfront is a massively disruptive, in a good way, set-it-and-forget-it investing service, led by technologists from places like Apple and world-famous investors. It has exploded in popularity in the last two years, and they now have more than $2.5 billion under management. In fact, some of my very good friends, investors in Silicon Valley, have millions of their own money in Wealthfront. So the question is, why? Why is it so popular? Why is it unique? Because you can get services previously reserved for the ultra-wealthy, but only pay pennies on the dollar for them. And this is because they use smarter software instead of retail locations bloated, say... Teams, etc. And I'll come back to that in a second. I suggest you check out wealthfront.com/tim.

• 2:16Tim Ferriss?

  Take the risk assessment quiz, which only takes two to five minutes, and they'll show you for free exactly the portfolio they'd put you in. And if you just want to take their advice, run with it, do it yourself, you can do that. Or, as I would, you can set it and forget it. And here's why. The value of Wealthfront is in the automation of habits and strategies that investors should be using on a regular basis, but normally aren't. Great investing is a marathon, not a sprint. And little things that you may or may not be familiar with, like automatic tax loss harvesting, rebalancing your portfolio across more than 10 asset classes, and dividend reinvestment add up to very large amounts of money over longer periods of time. Wealthfront, as I mentioned, since it's using software instead of retail locations, etc., can offer all of this at low costs that were previously completely impossible.

• 3:02Tim Ferriss?

  Right off the bat, you never pay commissions or account fees. For everything, they charge 0.25% per year on assets above the first $15,000, which is managed for free if you use my link, wealthfront.com/tim. That is less than $5 a month to invest a $30,000 account, for instance. Now, normally, when I have a sponsor on this show, it's because I use them and recommend them. In this case, it's a little different. I don't use Wealthfront yet because I'm not allowed to. Here's the deal: They wanted to sponsor this podcast, but because of SEC regulations, companies that invest your money are not allowed to use client testimonials. So I couldn't be a user and have them on the podcast. But I've been so impressed by Wealthfront that I've invested a significant amount of my own money, at least for me, in the team and the company itself.

• 3:48Tim Ferriss?

  So I am an investor and hope to soon use it as a client. Now, back to the recommendation. As a Tim Ferriss Show listener, you'll get $15,000 managed for free if you decide to open an account. But just start with seeing the portfolio that they would suggest for you. Take two minutes, fill out their questionnaire at wealthfront.com/tim. It's fast, it's free, there's no downside that I can think of. Now, I do have to read a mandatory disclaimer. Wealthfront, Inc. is an SEC-registered investment advisor. Investing in securities involves risks, and there is the possibility of losing money. Past performance is no guarantee of future. ...results, please visit wealthfront.com to read their full disclosure. So, check it out, guys. This is one of the hottest, most innovative companies coming out of Silicon Valley, and they're killing it. They've become massively popular.

• 4:32Tim Ferriss?

  Just take a look, see what portfolio they would create for you, and you can use that information however you want. Wealthfront.com/Tim. Hello, my friends, you muscular little Oompa Loompas. Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show. My name is Tim Ferriss, and my job is to deconstruct world-class performers, people who are the best at what they do, and to tease out the habits, routines, findings that you can apply to your own life, whether they are people like Arnold Schwarzenegger, chess prodigies like Josh Waitzkin, directors like Jon Favreau or Robert Rodriguez, and hedge fund managers, military strategists, everyone in between.

• 5:12Tim Ferriss?

  Today, we have a researcher, Dr. Brené Brown, and you can say hi to her on Twitter, @BrenéBrown. Is a research professor at the University of Houston Graduate School of Social Work, and her 2010 TEDx talk, "The Power of Vulnerability," has more than 20 million views. It is one of the top five most viewed TED Talks in the world, which is very hard to pull off. She has other talks with millions and millions of views. So, once you're lucky, twice you're good. She is very good. She has spent the past 13 years studying vulnerability, courage, worthiness, and shame. All of my favorites. Brené is the author of two number-one New York Times bestsellers, "Daring Greatly" and "The Gifts of Imperfection."

• 5:56Tim Ferriss?

  Her brand-new book is titled "Rising Strong," and in it, she writes, "If we are brave enough, often enough, we will fall." This is a book about what it takes to get back up, and she interviews some very interesting folks, top performers in the corporate world, startup world, military world, and gathers data to support the recommendations and conclusions in these books. So, I have a copy of "Rising Strong" and encourage you to check it out. She is also the founder and CEO for The Daring Way, which is an organization that brings her work to organizations, schools, communities, and families. And without further ado, I want to let you enjoy this wide-ranging conversation that touches on some sensitive topics, you might say, with Dr. Brené Brown.

• 6:46Tim Ferriss?

  Renee, welcome to the show.

• 6:48Brené Brown?

  Thank you. I'm excited to talk to you.

• 6:50Tim Ferriss?

  And my fans are excited to hear all of your wisdom and dig into your research. And I suppose we could, we could start with some context for those people who are not familiar with your work. When you are asked the question, what do you do? How do you answer that?

• 7:08Brené Brown?

  It really, I actually have two answers. I, one, if I want to keep talking and one if I don't. So if I don't want to keep talking, I usually will just say, I'm a shame researcher and that scares people.

• 7:21Brené Brown?

  And then they usually go on, they usually say, so what do you think about the Texans this season or something? And then if I'm in a normal conversation, I'll say that I study vulnerability and courage, shame and worthiness.

• 7:33Tim Ferriss?

  And

• 7:34Brené Brown?

  That's, that's kind of terrible, isn't it? That I do that?

• 7:37Tim Ferriss?

  I don't think it's terrible. I think that you can do kind of a reverse George Costanza when you don't want to talk to someone if you're trapped on a plane or something. So, so instead of saying, you know, picking the most interesting thing to get them to admire you and say you're an architect. You can be like, oh yes, no, I'm a, you know, you could bring up something extremely awkward, right? Like, you know, I, I research, you know, off color sex trafficking or something. And then depending on who you're sitting next to, I suppose it could be a good character check, right?

• 8:07Brené Brown?

  It's a totally, it's a total character check because if they launch in after they hear I study shame, then that kind of bites me on the ass a little bit, but it's works pretty well.

• 8:16Tim Ferriss?

  You're like, you're not following the script, pal. You're, you're off script. So, so speaking of script and I am not the only one who's been impressed with your presenting ability. But it seems like one of the ways that you really hit the mainstream map was through TED. And specifically, I guess it would have been the, the power of vulnerability. Although that, that has more than 21 million views now and some of your other presentations have more than five million views. So certainly, you know, once you're lucky, twice you're good. You are good at this. Could you give people an overview of?

• 8:57Tim Ferriss?

  The components that make a hit speech or TED Talk because you're clearly good at it. It's not a one hit wonder. How did the power of vulnerability come to be? How did you decide on that, on the content and rehearse it and so on? Just the genesis story, I think, would be very interesting.

• 9:17Brené Brown?

  Yeah, I'd love to share because it's been a huge learning for me. So the TEDx talk was kind of a combination of an accident and an experiment. The curators of TEDx Houston asked me to open their first event and they called and they were really excited. And I asked, I said, sure, I'd love to. I was really excited. And Javier Fadul is the curator and I said, what do you want me to talk about? And, you know, when you study things like shame and vulnerability, people can get very prescriptive about what they want you to say and what they don't want you to say. And it really has no bearing actually on what I do say, but they like to think in the beginning that they're going to control some of that. And so I said, you know, do you have any thoughts?

• 10:02Brené Brown?

  And his answer was be awesome, have fun. And the day before the, yeah, which is, you would think it's liberating and, but it's also kind of terrifying.

• 10:14Tim Ferriss?

  Right, right.

• 10:15Brené Brown?

  And so, yeah.

• 10:16Tim Ferriss?

  The blessing and the curse of no constraints.

• 10:18Brené Brown?

  Exactly, exactly. And so I was on a flight home the night before, a long flight with my husband and kids. And I looked at Steve and I was like, I think I'm gonna experiment tomorrow. And my husband looked at me and he said, that sounds like a terrible idea. And I said, yeah, and I said, no, I think I'm going to actually be really vulnerable while I'm talking about vulnerability. And he said, you know, again, not sure that's a great idea. So I went to the TED event and I experimented. I really kind of put myself out there. I talked about my own breakdown, spiritual awakening. I talked about having to go to therapy and how much I really hated that.

• 11:02Brené Brown?

  And I kind of thought it was bullshit, but like I had to do it. And I really put myself out there and I remember driving home and thinking, I will never do that again.

• 11:13Brené Brown?

  I mean, I literally had, I literally had what I thought was one of the worst vulnerability hangovers of my career.

• 11:22Brené Brown?

  And I was so grateful, you know, I have to tell you, I was so grateful that there were only 500 people there and that it was recorded at University of Houston where I've taught for 20 years. So, most people kind of are like, "Oh yeah, that's Brene." I don't have any memory of that being recorded. And I, and I'm pretty, I'm pretty sure, maybe the universe just aligned and thought, you know, "Let's not let her know that this is being recorded." So, when it came out on the TEDx, you know, on the TEDx site, I was pretty mortified. And Steve's, you know, Steve's like, "No one's gonna watch it, don't worry." And then several months later, Chris Anderson called and said,

• 12:02Brené Brown?

  "Hey, we're, we don't usually put the TEDx talks up, but we really, we love your talk and we want to put it up." And I, I think the conversation went like this, which is an interesting form of leadership. I think I said, "No, I'm flattered, but no, thank you." And he said, "I think December 23rd will be great." And then that was that. And so, it went up on December 23rd. And again, Steve was like, "Don't worry, Brene. I don't think that, I mean, people are not gonna see it." And it went like, "One, two, one million, one million, one, three million." And I was like, "Oh." And so, if I look back, so my learning, my takeaway from that experience was this.

• 12:40Brené Brown?

  If I'm not a little bit nauseous when I'm done, I probably did not show up like I should have shown up.

• 12:52Tim Ferriss?

  That's great. That's, that's, that's, that echoes advice from, I believe it's Neil Gaiman in the commencement speech, "Make Good Art," where he talked about, you know, when you feel like you're walking down the street naked and extremely uncomfortable, maybe you're starting to get it right.

• 13:09Brené Brown?

  Yeah.

• 13:09Tim Ferriss?

  I'm paraphrasing, of course, but that's a, that's a really good, that's a really good point. And how did you, I mean, your delivery was so spot on. How did you rehearse? Or did you? I mean, maybe you're just, maybe that is a language that you're naturally fluent in, presentation, that is. But how did you prep for it?

• 13:31Brené Brown?

  I don't rehearse at all. In fact, rehearsing is really, so when I rehearse, in the traditional way we think about rehearsing, it's about what I'm gonna say and what I'm gonna say it and how I'm gonna say it. And so, if I do that, what ends up happening, and I've tried it a couple of times...

• 13:49Brené Brown?

  I get so like prefrontal cortex, I get so

• 13:55Brené Brown?

  wrapped up and, oh, wasn't I supposed to pause here and wasn't I supposed to do this there? That I am not, I'm not connecting. And so for me, it is use images as the arc, understand what image, every image means to me, and what I want to wrap around that image, and then require that the house lights are on so I can see people's faces.

• 14:21Tim Ferriss?

  That's a good rule. That's a really good rule.

• 14:24Brené Brown?

  Yeah, so that thing where they're, you know, and I rarely, rarely allow any of my presentations to be videotaped.

• 14:32Brené Brown?

  Very, very rarely, because one, if they're taping you, you have to be super hot under the lights and the audience has to be dark. And then it's performance, not connection for me. And then secondly, I don't feel like it's anyone's business what happens between me and an audience at any given moment. I mean, I just really feel like that's, that's a moment.

• 14:57Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, and I think that comes, I mean, I'm speculating here, but from a lot of experience teaching, right? Being in, in front of students as opposed to viewing yourself as being in front of an audience. Which, which I think enables a very different relationship with the people you're trying to communicate to, or communicate with. And to provide perhaps a little bit of connective tissue for people who are curious about your research.

• 15:26Tim Ferriss?

  You mentioned vulnerability, you mentioned shame.

• 15:31Tim Ferriss?

  How should we define these terms, just for the purposes of this conversation? And so people can understand, and how did you research them?

• 15:42Brené Brown?

  You know, I think the best place to start when we're talking about kind of what words mean, at least the way I use them in my work, is to really start with vulnerability. Because I think if you can get your head and heart wrapped about around vulnerability, the others make a lot more sense. So to me, I don't know how you were raised and how the listeners were raised, but I was raised to believe that vulnerability is weakness. That you wake up in the morning, you armor up, you go out into the day, you kick some ass, you don't let people see your emotions, you mitigate uncertainty and risk as much as you can, and that's the way you live. And so, from the very earliest stages of my research, you know, 13 years ago,

• 16:25Brené Brown?

  that is not how vulnerability emerged in the data. Vulnerability emerged as not weakness, but probably our best measure of courage. So when we asked people, you know, what is vulnerability? They would say things like, "It's the first date after my divorce." "It's trying to get pregnant after my second miscarriage." "It's sitting with my wife who has stage four breast cancer and making plans for our three-year-old and five-year-old." "It's starting my own business." "It's taking my business public." "It's getting fired. It's firing someone."

• 17:01Brené Brown?

  "It's getting promoted. It's missing the promotion." And so, it became very clear to me early on that the simplest definition for vulnerability is really uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure. Vulnerability is about the willingness to show up and be seen when you have zero control over the outcome.

• 17:30Brené Brown?

  And I think if you ask people to close their eyes and think about the last time they saw someone doing something truly brave.

• 17:45Brené Brown?

  It is very easy to see how vulnerability underpins all acts of courage.

• 17:52Tim Ferriss?

  Sure.

• 17:52Brené Brown?

  And yeah, I mean, I just think it's about really,

• 17:57Brené Brown?

  it's about putting yourself out there and which is increasingly difficult to do in this very hypercritical, unforgiving kind of media culture. And so vulnerability is showing up and being seen. Courage to me, you know, I love the word courage because the root of the word is cur and the Latin for cur is heart. And when courage first came into the English language, the original definition was to tell the story of you are of who you are with your whole heart. That was an act of courage. So to me, courage is really about choosing what's right over what's easy, practicing your values, not just professing them, and choosing to be brave over being comfortable.

• 18:41Tim Ferriss?

  And these are, I love this type of contextual prelude. It's not a prelude, but it's defining because I think it's so important for any important conversation and certainly, I think for most conversations to make sure that the people in the conversation are talking about the same thing, right?

• 19:05Brené Brown?

  Oh, it's the key to everything, right?

• 19:07Tim Ferriss?

  Right. And that starts with defining very, very, and I've noticed, for instance, even in my own relationships, something as seemingly clear as honesty, I want you to be honest, say, in intimate relationships, are actually can can have, no pun or no allusion intended, but you know, Fifty Shades of Grey, right? I mean, there are, it can mean something very different, you know, is is omission a lie? Or are we talking about a misrepresentation of truth, right? And it's, it's, it's really critical. And I like your description because courage, I remember thinking when you were, when you were walking us through this.

• 19:50Tim Ferriss?

  Customato, who was Mike Tyson's primary trainer, who brought him to the pinnacle of his success, would tell Mike, who was terrified before going into the ring, in the dressing room and so on, that the hero and the coward feel the same thing. It's how the hero responds that makes him different. And you can't be courageous unless you are exposing yourself to a perceived risk, which by definition makes you vulnerable, even if you're thinking about it in a very literal kind of physical sense. So I'd love to segue to shame, because

• 20:31Tim Ferriss?

  I was reading one of your alumni publications, and you can correct this certainly if it's not accurate, but a quote of yours came up that I thought was really insightful and worth exploring a bit. And it said, "Shame hates to have words wrapped around it. If we talk about it, it loses its grip on us." And I was hoping maybe you could elaborate on that and help us to then understand shame.

• 21:02Brené Brown?

  Yeah, and I think that quote is so powerful because it's so true. Like, I often, when I talk about shame, I often like to personify it and say, you know, shame is a very formidable foe. You know, shame is this intensely painful belief or experience that something is wrong with us, that we are flawed, and that we are unworthy of love and belonging. And we all know it. Everyone knows that warm wash that comes over you that makes you feel like you're not enough. We have 50 years of data that really show us, in my mind unquestionably,

• 21:47Brené Brown?

  that the only people who don't experience shame are people who don't have a capacity for connection, who people who don't have a capacity for empathy. So if we are capable of having connection, we know shame, because shame is the fear that we're not worthy of connection. And so...

• 22:07Brené Brown?

  The thing about shame that makes it so difficult is it needs three things to thrive in our lives. If you take a Petri dish and you put shame in a Petri dish and you douse it with secrecy, silence, and judgment, it grows exponentially. It will, it will grow into every corner and crevice of our lives. If you have the same amount of shame in a Petri dish and you douse it with empathy, shame can't survive empathy. Empathy is a very hostile environment for shame. And so, to understand shame, I think what resonates mostly with people are the two kind of tapes that shame drives. The first is, you're not

• 22:49Brené Brown?

  enough, and you can fill in the blank. You're not thin enough, pretty enough, strong enough, powerful enough, rich enough, promoted enough, loved enough, awesome enough, you know, you're not enough. And then if we can somehow get a handle on that and say, you know, like, okay, I've got, you know, I have this big presentation and you've got this shame gremlin in your ear saying, you're not enough, you're not smart enough, there are going to be like a hundred MBAs in that room, what do you know about business, you're not enough. If you can wrestle that thing down. The other tape that shame drives is, who do you think you are? So it creates this amazing vice that our self-worth gets caught in and just squeezes

• 23:34Brené Brown?

  us from both sides. And so, shame, shame is really visceral. I mean, if you, if you just say the word to people, people can feel it.

• 23:47Tim Ferriss?

  No, definitely. And you mentioned you have a fear of disconnection. I mean, I wrote down when I was doing some research before this call, you know, being shunned, question mark. And I'd love to ask you

• 24:00Tim Ferriss?

  Because a question that came from some of my listeners was, you know, what is the evolutionary need of shame? Or why did that develop in human beings? And it seems to me like shame can serve a useful purpose, right? If you are ashamed of the fact that you think about molesting a child, that serves a societal function, right?

• 24:25Brené Brown?

  I would argue no.

• 24:26Tim Ferriss?

  You would argue no?

• 24:28Brené Brown?

  I would argue no, absolutely not.

• 24:29Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, all right. Well, I'd love for you to expand on that because

• 24:36Tim Ferriss?

  that's, that's, that's an interesting viewpoint. So could you, could you expand on that?

• 24:42Brené Brown?

  So shame, I think if you look at shame from an evolutionary biological perspective,

• 24:51Brené Brown?

  I think it did absolutely serve a function. So Tim, you lead the dinosaur back to the cave. It eats my entire family and my whole clan. This is the second time you've done that. So we are literally going to shun you from our collective, which means you'll be alone, which means death, right? And so, because you're dangerous. I'm just not, not unlike if we see even in the animal world today, some pack animals, if there's a sick animal among them, will literally, you know, approach it as a group and back it off a cliff for the sake of the pack, right? So, so that makes sense.

• 25:34Brené Brown?

  As we've evolved, as we've evolved neurobiologically, as we've evolved, shame becomes a very, a profoundly dangerous tool for people who have the emotional understanding that we have. So now what we see is you can change a behavior sometimes, especially with children on a dime with shame. But it's like hitting a thumbtack with a 500 pound anvil. You are going to crush that thumbtack in the process of doing that. So what we see now is we see shame highly, highly correlated with addiction, depression, aggression, violence,

• 26:20Brené Brown?

  suicide, eating disorders, very highly correlated.

• 26:26Brené Brown?

  What we see as the inverse is we see guilt.

• 26:33Brené Brown?

  And shame and guilt are very different. Shame is, I am a bad person. Guilt is, I did something bad. So you go out on Thursday night, you get wasted, you're so hungover on Friday, you sleep through your alarm clock, you miss a really important meeting, you get to work late on Friday, and your self-talk is, Jesus, I'm a loser. I'm an idiot. I'm such a loser. That's shame.

• 26:57Brené Brown?

  If you get to work on Friday, same scenario, and your self-talk is, dude, I cannot believe I did that. That was such a lame thing to do. That was such a stupid thing to do. The difference is, shame is a focus on self. Guilt is a focus on behavior. People who are very guilt prone, who say, you know what, I got a bad grade. I'm not a loser, but that was a loser idea to not study and go out last night.

• 27:24Brené Brown?

  They have, their relationship with addiction, depression, violence, suicide, bullying, is inverse, meaning the higher the level of guilt, the less likely it is to experience these outcomes. So the most dangerous, if you look at shame and guilt in a criminal population, the most dangerous people have the highest levels of shame-proneness

• 27:56Brené Brown?

  and the lowest levels of guilt-proneness.

• 27:58Tim Ferriss?

  That makes perfect sense.

• 28:00Brené Brown?

  Does that make sense?

• 28:01Tim Ferriss?

  It makes perfect sense.

• 28:03Brené Brown?

  So guilt is holding up something we've done against who we want to be, or something we've done, thought about doing, or failed to do, up against our values, who we want to be, what we think is right. And guilt is the psychological discomfort created by the cognitive dissonance between our behavior and who we want to be. And it's healthy and adaptive.

• 28:27Tim Ferriss?

  That makes perfect sense. I was having a conversation with Josh Waitzkin, who's been on this podcast as well. He was the basis for Searching for Bobby Fischer. So he was known as a chess prodigy as a child.

• 28:37Brené Brown?

  Oh, yeah.

• 28:39Tim Ferriss?

  He is a tremendous dad, a really amazing parent as a young boy. And he has a very particular parenting style. And he always focuses on rewarding effort and not labeling his son "smart." So for instance, he'll say, "That was a really good job. You worked really hard. You did A, B, and C that resulted in D." As opposed to, "Wow, you got a great grade. You're so smart." Because then when the kid gets a bad grade, it's viewed as this unsolvable, unfixable, personal failing. And it seems to correlate to the difference between shame, i.e. "I am flawed. I'm a broken toy that cannot be fixed," versus guilt,

• 29:23Tim Ferriss?

  like, "Wow, I really fucked that up. Bad on me, but next time I'll do something different."

• 29:28Brené Brown?

  Hugely different. And you know, the thing is, think about this. I have a 16-year-old and a 10-year-old. You know, they get caught being dishonest with me. And I say, "You know what? You're a liar, and you're grounded." When you tell somebody they're a liar, that's a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you're a liar, if I, Brene Brown, am a liar, what option is there for growth or change?

• 29:56Tim Ferriss?

  Well, not only that.

• 29:57Brené Brown?

  That's who I am.

• 29:58Tim Ferriss?

  Right. Not only that, but what incentive is there not to lie if you're branded as such? Right.

• 30:04Brené Brown?

  So when you talk about the person who is thinking about committing violence or assault on a child, do I want that person to be more ashamed? No, because I have a feeling. I mean, there's, you know, in your example, I guess there's pedophilia, which can be an organic real issue. But the majority of what we see are people who are so deeply shame-based.

• 30:28Brené Brown?

  Committing horrific crimes. So, look, if I thought shaming people, no matter how, I mean, I hate to say this, but I'll just be honest. If I thought shaming people, no matter how hurtful and painful it is, if I thought that kept people safer, I'd be all for it. It just doesn't.

• 30:43Tim Ferriss?

  Right, right. Well, it's, you know, it's interesting because I've been training a rescue pup for the last few weeks, a brand new rescue pup. And she was at a kill shelter in South Carolina and suffered a lot of abuse, but really got into looking at mammalian training and looking at everything from dolphin training to polar bear training to dog training. And the fact of the matter is, you know, negative reinforcement or punishment-based training doesn't work that well, or at least at the very best, it's very slow compared to a lot of the positive reinforcement-based training, you know, whether it's using, you

• 31:24Tim Ferriss?

  know, clickers for conditioning and so on, because you can only reinforce a behavior that has, that has, that has occurred, right? And when you, I think that the, the shame just seems to tie to me in an interesting way to not understanding what is malleable and what is not. And I'd love to

• 31:46Brené Brown?

  Yeah.

• 31:47Tim Ferriss?

  Come back to the "I am enough," because in your, your book, one of your several books, but "The Gift of Imperfection," one of the best book titles of all time, by the way, so well done on that.

• 31:59Brené Brown?

  Thank you.

• 32:00Tim Ferriss?

  Has been described as the lifelong journey from what will people think to "I am enough." Now, what I'm so curious to hear about, and then I'll leap forward to daring greatly, and I'll just read this, this quote, from which I believe that the title was, was adapted. So, this is Theodore Roosevelt. "There's not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how strong, 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 at the best knows in the end of the triumph of high achievement, and who at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly."

• 32:44Tim Ferriss?

  Now, what I have had as an internal conflict for a very long time, and this was brought to the surface. Most noticeably, the last year and a half through meditation. So I practice transcendental meditation in the mornings and have friends who practice Vipassana, transcendental, different types of meditation. And these are type A driven competitive people. And we've, I've had the conversation repeatedly, the same conversation with different people about whether that removes a competitive edge. And the reason being that you decide, I am enough, you're content, therefore you do

• 33:25Tim Ferriss?

  not have discontent driving you to achieve big things that are, for most of us, pretty high on Maslow's hierarchy of needs, right? It's like, we have shelter, we have food. So in reality, like in almost every capacity, we have enough, we are enough. So how do you balance the, the, the well-being of having a mindset of I am enough versus the, at least with a lot of my, my peers and friends in Silicon Valley, the kind of discontent that seems to drive so many of those people to accomplish great things?

• 34:07Brené Brown?

  So I would go back to your really important insight from the beginning of our conversation about defining terms. And I'd also go back to kind of the insights that you're learning from doing your training with your rescue pup, which is, does, to me, I am enough.

• 34:27Brené Brown?

  I mean, I'm a competitive type A person too, which probably doesn't come as a surprise. The oldest of four, you know, very ambitious and, you know, I'm, I'm that person too, in many ways.

• 34:43Brené Brown?

  I think the soul or the center of my ability to keep putting myself out there and trying new things, even when I fail, and I have had some big failures. I think the soul of my healthy competitiveness and my ambition is the belief that I am enough.

• 35:08Brené Brown?

  Um, because I'm starting, and I think when I don't believe I'm enough, I engage in behaviors not to push myself, not to grow and stretch and learn, not to strive for excellence, but to prove to other people what I can do. Um, but when I start from a place that, you know what, I'm enough. I'm imperfect, I'm afraid, I'm, you know, super vulnerable, but that does not change the fact that I'm also brave and worthy of love and belonging. And when I start from that place, um, I am completely unleashed.

• 35:51Brené Brown?

  So I think one of the things that's really important to help kind of define here, because I'm not like, you know, on the couch binge watching TV five days a week, um, writing nasty ass comments on other people's accomplishments on, you know, Twitter and Facebook and saying, "Look, fuck you, I'm enough." Like, that's not what I'm talking about, you know?

• 36:15Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 36:15Brené Brown?

  I'm talking about a belief of self-worth that I am enough, not based on what I do, what I accomplish, what do I, you know, prove or produce. I am just enough. And if you start from that, that's the healthy center, I think, of most, most of the most awesome achievements we've seen. And I spend a lot of time in Silicon Valley too. And what I can tell you, and I know, I, I would bet, I wish we could have a bet right now. I would bet you a lot of money that if we listed the names of 10 people, which we're not gonna do,

• 36:54Brené Brown?

  you could tell me which of those folks are operating, and 10, 10 competitive, ambitious,

• 37:01Brené Brown?

  Just like crazy fighters out there in the arena. And we listed 10 names. You could tell me the five who are motivated from a place of being enough, but wanting to strive for excellence and learning. And the five who are trying to fill a hole in their self-worth and who are dangerous.

• 37:21Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, no, for sure. And I think, I guess, the, in my mind, when I think, I'm just imagining this list of 10 people in my head. When I imagine the people who fall into the less self-destructive category, uh, who have, who are operating from a place of, I am enough. I guess I would, in their cases, say that in the, if I could hear their sort of subconscious internal mantra, it would, it would, in, in my mind, it would seem to be, and maybe this is the same thing, but, uh, closer to, I am, I'm good, or I'm really good, but I can be better. Uh, not, I am flawed.

• 38:05Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, I need to impress everyone around me to make them validate me. Uh, but the, I guess I'm just struggling with the word enough, but I, I, I understand the, the point of it. Um, and I think it's, this is something that I struggle with, right? I mean, I'm extremely, personally, I'm very hard on myself. I mean, I have always sort of been of the mindset that, you know, second place is first loser and extremely competitive. Uh, and that has not always been the healthiest thing for, uh, me in all sorts of different capacities. Um, but I don't, the, let's, let's sort of tackle this from a slightly different angle.

• 38:50Tim Ferriss?

  So the, the daring greatly. Uh, the question that, uh, I think is raised in that, that book, among others, is, you know, have you dared greatly today? And, uh, please feel free to take this in any direction, uh, because you obviously know more about your work than I do. But how, what is a good way to evaluate that? And do you ask yourself this type of question on a daily basis? Do you have, uh, um, I'll leave it at that. I could, I could make this a 12-part question. But how does someone determine if they've dared greatly? And is, how often would you suggest someone kind of check in and ask themselves that?

• 39:32Brené Brown?

  So I think for me, daring greatly, and you know, that quote from Theodore Roosevelt, I even got teary eyed while you were reading it. You know, it was a life changer for me. It was right after the TEDx Houston Talk had gone viral. I was kind of everywhere on the internet at that time and you know, everyone, ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, Huffington Post were all writing about this, who is this person at the University of Houston with this TED Talk going viral. And as you can imagine, all these online stories had online comments that were...

• 40:05Tim Ferriss?

  Of course.

• 40:06Brené Brown?

  Like, yeah. And so my husband and my therapist were like, don't read the comments. And so I read all the comments one day and yeah, I really, I sat down and just read them for like an hour. And I think, you know, if you ask, if you're listening to that, if you're a listener right now, you know, if you close your eyes and think about, we all have the shame triggers. We all have two or three things, we have, most of us have more, that you could overhear somebody, you could overhear someone saying about you that would be so painful and so hurtful that you don't know if you could survive it. Most of us have those things. And so for me, up until that point, you know, I, those things

• 40:49Brené Brown?

  really dictated my life. I was like, look, I'm going to engineer this career to kind of be small and safe. I'm going to play right under the radar because I am not willing to put myself out there and get criticized like I know is happening. And so the problem with staying small is it's always served up with resentment and pissed offedness. Because we're not using our gifts, we're not in our power, and there's always a price for that.

• 41:16Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 41:17Brené Brown?

  And so to me, when I read that quote, you know, when I looked at the comments, they were things like, of course she, you know, of course she embraces imperfection. What choice would you have if you look like her? I feel sorry for her husband and kids. More Botox, less research. You need to shake loose 10 pounds before you talk about being worthy. I mean, just like really shitty, hurtful stuff.

• 41:39Brené Brown?

  Um, and then I came on, I came upon that, I mean, like the next thirty minutes after reading all that, I came upon that comment. I mean, that quote from Theodore Roosevelt. And, you know, in that moment, what I realized is, you know what, I do wanna live a brave life. I do wanna live in the arena. And if you're going to live in the arena, the only guarantee is you will get your ass kicked. Um, and the second thing is that daring greatly is being vulnerable. So when you ask yourself, did I dare greatly today? The big question I ask is, did I, when I had the opportunity, did I choose courage over comfort?

• 42:20Brené Brown?

  You know, when things went sideways between Steve and I this morning over, you know, who was gonna pack the lunch for my son? Did I just go into the old pattern of rolling my eyes and walking out of the kitchen? Or did I choose courage and say, I'm sorry, I'm feeling really overwhelmed with the book launch tomorrow? And, um, I'm sorry, I really apologize, that was hurtful. Did I choose courage or did I choose comfort? And so to me, that's the question we ask, um, about daring greatly. And I think, you know, I think one of the things that you said, Tim, really, when you're talking about your friends and this idea of being enough, one of the things that really turned my life upside down, there were four or five things in the research

• 43:05Brené Brown?

  that had taken me a long time to get over and get through. And one of them was the difference between healthy striving or striving for excellence and perfectionism.

• 43:15Brené Brown?

  And I've always been perfectionistic about my stuff. And what I learned in the research was that perfectionism is very outwardly defined. It's dictated by what will people think? And healthy striving is dictated, or striving for excellence is internally motivated. And so perfectionism is really, I call it the twenty ton shield. And I think a lot of when we're talking about those ten people, five of whom work from this place of of wholeness and the other, I think what a lot of times we're talking about is the difference between perfectionism and striving for excellence. And I think perfectionism is this twenty ton shield that we carry around. And it's a defense mechanism, classically, that just says, if I live perfect, love perfect,

• 43:59Brené Brown?

  work perfect, and accomplish perfectly, I can reduce or minimize shame, blame, criticism, and judgment. And so we carry this thing around, thinking it's protecting us, but what it's really doing is keeping us from being seen. And so I think when I ask myself personally, have I dared greatly today? Sometimes for me, it is the question of, was I enough? Or am I trying to get everything perfect so that I can somehow think I'm mitigating criticism and judgment?

• 44:39Tim Ferriss?

  Right. Well, I also find, and I haven't really thought about it in these terms before, but if you if you look at, say, I think it's Barry Schwartz, Paradox of Choice, where he talks about maximizers and I think it's satisficers. But if I try to correlate that to my own experience, being, I think, very much a perfectionist, and that of my my friends, the the people who are perfectionists very often are so future focused that the perfection once achieved is viewed as the trigger that will

• 45:21Tim Ferriss?

  sort of solve their guilt, shame, discontent, et cetera.

• 45:26Brené Brown?

  Oh, yeah.

• 45:27Tim Ferriss?

  Whereas the the people who are striving for excellence excellence are better at celebrating the little wins, accepting the small defeats, and sometimes the large defeats, and tend to be a bit more present, state focused. And you mentioned, you know, vulnerability and the sort of components, right? So your facings, whether it's uncertain. Risk and so on. And I've seen it described elsewhere as stopping, controlling and predicting.

• 45:57Tim Ferriss?

  The it seems very much akin to certain tenets and say stoic philosophy of which I read a lot, whether it's Marcus Aurelius or Seneca, etc. And then there are a lot of common threads in Buddhism, of course, that would talk about how how fruitless it is and futile it is to try to eliminate suffering completely because we are almost by definition experiencers of suffering, right? And coming to terms with that, what which which thinkers, philosophers or schools of thinking

• 46:36Tim Ferriss?

  or philosophy most resonate with the insights you found in in the data in your research?

• 46:45Brené Brown?

  Ah, my God, E, all of the above. Like, I mean, it took me it took me from Marcus Aurelius to liberation theology.

• 46:53Tim Ferriss?

  What is liberation theology?

• 46:55Brené Brown?

  Oh, it's a it's a Catholic, kind of a Catholic theology of social justice that has its had its stronghold in beginning in Central America. But I mean, I think it is just one of the things about being a grounded theory researcher that I love and hate is we don't start with an existing theory and then go try to prove or disprove it. We build a theory from people's lived experiences. And then we do the literature review and see where it fits and where it doesn't fit. Because the idea between behind grounded theory is if you start with a an existing theory, you're just kind of paying homage to, they would say, the theoretical capitalist that came before you. And then it's people's lived experiences that really matter. And so

• 47:42Brené Brown?

  People often comment in my books, they're like, how is it that you're quoting, I do quote Marcus Aurelius, I think in one of my books, how are you quoting him? And then how are you quoting Pema Chodron, who's an American Buddhist nun?

• 47:52Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 47:52Brené Brown?

  And then you're quoting Disney, Pixar movie from Toy Story. And to me, I have no division and very little tolerance for like, the highbrow versus lowbrow inspiration. I think if you're paying attention, you can find truth and inspiration anywhere and everywhere. And so to me, I'm all over the place in the literature. And I think the people who really depend on polarity will hate this, but really some very strong, common themes across Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism, you know, Islam, Joseph Campbell. I mean, I think

• 48:39Brené Brown?

  I end up finding myself in some just profound truths from a lot of, I mean, I was reading something yesterday in the data, and it made me pull out my book by Cabran. So I think it's Rumi, Mary Oliver, Neil Peart,

• 49:02Brené Brown?

  the drummer for Rush. Like, I was, as something came up, and I was like, yeah, I was like, I didn't know if you knew, so I had to put it in there. But I was like, this is, when you choose, when you choose, when you don't make a choice, when you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.

• 49:21Brené Brown?

  And I think, I don't know that anyone says it more eloquently than Rush, you know? I don't know what to say.

• 49:26Tim Ferriss?

  Neil, yeah, just as a side note, if people want to see just a beast of a drummer, then you can, you can search on YouTube for some videos of this guy. Oh, my goodness, what a just monster on the kit. But

• 49:40Brené Brown?

  And a poet, you know, so I find my inspiration kind of everywhere.

• 49:43Tim Ferriss?

  And let's, let's talk about misinterpretations of vulnerability for a second. And I think maybe I'm getting a little, I'm probably projecting my own prejudices here, but is it vulnerability? There, I think there's some people who misinterpret

• 50:03Tim Ferriss?

  Being vulnerable and the benefits derived from being vulnerable with incessant oversharing of emotions or inner dialogue or doubt. What would you say to those, what would you say to those people? Maybe my diagnosis is off, off base, but there's some, there are a lot of people who just kind of pour out every concern, worry, fault, mistake, and, and okay it with the, the label of vulnerability. So I'd just love to hear your thoughts on that word salad that I just dropped on you.

• 50:48Brené Brown?

  I love it. And I'm tracking 100% because I, yeah, it's, you know, there's a very simple formula in my head. Vulnerability minus boundaries is not vulnerability. It can be desperation, it can be oversharing, it can be manipulation, it can be a lot of different things, but it's not vulnerability. We always have to hold awareness of boundaries and roles in our minds around vulnerability. We share with people who've earned the right to hear our story and we stay mindful all the time of the role we're in. So one of the great examples I can give you is I'm with 50 CEOs from Silicon Valley and we've spent a long weekend together.

• 51:29Brené Brown?

  And toward the end of maybe the first day, one of them says, I came here thinking that I would never, you know, believe in vulnerability or accept it, but I am 100% on board. So I want to make sure I understand that I should stand up in front of, you know, my investors, my VCs, you know, and say, look, I am in over my head. We are bleeding money and I do not know what to do next.

• 51:57Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 51:58Brené Brown?

  And I said, you know, only if you don't want another round of funding, should you do that? I mean, no, that's, that's super, that's not appropriate. But let me, you know, let me ask you this.

• 52:11Brené Brown?

  If you had, you know, if you had, I don't know, $50,000 invested with this leader, wouldn't you be praying to God that he's sitting across from someone saying that?

• 52:24Tim Ferriss?

  Sure, definitely.

• 52:26Brené Brown?

  Right, right. I don't care if it's whether it's his therapist, a mentor, an advisor, because what the, what the alternative is, if he's really drowning in over his head and bleeding money and doesn't know what he's doing, is to just keep grinding harder and harder on the same things he's doing

• 52:47Brené Brown?

  and not ask for help.

• 52:48Tim Ferriss?

  Right, right. Totally agreed.

• 52:51Brené Brown?

  Yeah, and so when people say, you know, live tweeting your bikini wax, that is not vulnerability.

• 52:58Tim Ferriss?

  I'm sorry about that. It was only once.

• 53:00Brené Brown?

  Yeah, I mean, if, so if you could hold back a little bit, Tim, we'd really all appreciate it. Now, or sharing intimate details of your children's reaction to your impending divorce on Facebook, that is not vulnerability. Vulnerability is the birthplace of intimacy, trust, connection, creativity, innovation. For leaders, it's the birthplace of trusted influence.

• 53:28Brené Brown?

  But it's not permission to overshare.

• 53:30Tim Ferriss?

  Right, right. Well, I mean, the, I thought the investor example was great because the, if a, if a CEO or founder gets up and says, provides the confession that you gave us an example in front of a room that will almost inevitably respond by, say, yanking funding, it's not a, it's not a constructive use of that confession, if that makes sense. And it's, I live in San Francisco most of the time and it's, it's this, this sort of, this...

• 54:07Tim Ferriss?

  Misinterpretation of vulnerability as oversharing is very common among the kind of Burning Man, spiritual atheist sect. And it's, I think it's massively problematic. I think it creates, it appears to create many more problems than it solves. And let me use that as a segue to the opposite. I was interviewing a well-known strength coach named Pavel Tsatsoulin, who's originally from, I think, the Ukraine. In any case, former Soviet Union. And one of the questions I asked him on the podcast was, what do

• 54:49Tim Ferriss?

  you write in your personal journal that you don't often talk about with other people? And his answer was, "Well, Tim, that is a very personal question." And he proceeded to tell me that, and he proceeded to tell me that oversharing is a big problem in the United States. And I was like, "Well, you know, that's actually, I feel like that's a fair response." And so I wanted to ask you a question that's based on input from a number of listeners of this podcast. And the, here's the lead, and I'd be very curious to hear your thoughts. So, there's lots of chatter about over feminization of boys.

• 55:32Tim Ferriss?

  How do you, how do you, how do you have vulnerability coexist with strong masculine virtues/traits? And I'm paraphrasing here. And I'll just give another sort of contextual example that may or may not be interesting to comment on. So there's an expression in some military training that is suffer in silence. And the idea is, if you're going through hell week for the Navy SEALs or something like that, and you're carrying logs around and laying down in the freezing cold water, climbing under barbed wire, doing all these just nausea and fear inducing things, if you complain, like, "My foot hurts," this,

• 56:17Tim Ferriss?

  that, and the other thing, it will trigger more suffering in the people around you, which I happen to agree with in that context. So-

• 56:29Tim Ferriss?

  That's a lot at once, but, but what is your thinking on the, the so-called sort of over feminization of boys and masculine virtues slash traits versus vulnerability? I mean, how, how do they coexist? And maybe that's not even the right question.

• 56:50Brené Brown?

  It's a really good question, and I, you know, I work a lot with special forces and with the military and, and with vets.

• 57:00Tim Ferriss?

  May I add one more thing?

• 57:01Brené Brown?

  Yeah.

• 57:02Tim Ferriss?

  Just so that I'm, I'm not, I, people don't think I'm representing only the male side of this.

• 57:06Brené Brown?

  Yeah.

• 57:07Tim Ferriss?

  A lot of my female friends complain to me that in a lot of urban centers in the US, San Francisco, et cetera, they can only find guys to date and they're looking for men to date. So it's not just, this is, this is a concern, not just from the male side. It seems to be coming from both sides. So, sorry to interrupt, but I just wanted to throw.

• 57:32Brené Brown?

  No, I think it's really important. So I have so much to say on it that I'm overwhelmed. I don't even know where to start. So I'm gonna just try to, I am, I'm just like busting a gut over here. Okay. So

• 57:49Brené Brown?

  these binaries of, you know, tough and tender, masculine, feminine, you know,

• 58:02Brené Brown?

  I think we have to be really careful about this because if we, when we start to talk about, also talk about in, in the context of my work, you got me really, I'm like, ah, okay. If you talk about vulnerability.

• 58:22Brené Brown?

  And vulnerability to me is courage. And so when I, when I hear women talk about their inability to be with a vulnerable man, it's, it makes tons of sense to me because, do you know, you know, I wish I could say, you know, the number one perpetrator of shame with men were all those, you know, shitty dads and terrible coaches and those buddies. But the number one perpetrator of shame with men is women. Um, and so I often say, show me a woman who can sit with a man in real fear and vulnerability. I will show you a woman who's done her own work around

• 59:03Brené Brown?

  vulnerability and doesn't derive her power or status from that man. You show me a man who can sit with a woman who's in real fear and vulnerability, and I'll show you a man who's done his own work around vulnerability and doesn't derive his power from being us, the all-knowing and all-fixing. Because what men have a tendency to do when we're feeling vulnerable, are afraid, is try to fix it because it's how we're socialized. And so I don't think, when you talk about how we're raising boys today, here's what I can tell you from 150,000 pieces of data, looking back, um, from what I've learned from men.

• 59:48Brené Brown?

  The men who were raised to be open and feeling and tender and loving and given no skills and no information on how to navigate boy culture and male culture do not do well.

• 1:00:06Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:00:07Brené Brown?

  The boys who were raised on how to navigate male culture, king of the hill.

• 1:00:15Brené Brown?

  And had no tools on how to be open and vulnerable and emotionally available, do worse, but they also don't do well. So it's about, we need to stop with these false separations between tough and tender. You know, tough and tender can coexist. And to me, that's kind of this, that's kind of the equation for badassery. And it can also exist in women, like, you know, grit and grace, tough and tender, afraid and brave. You know, this idea that we're either courageous or chicken shit is just not true because

• 1:00:58Brené Brown?

  most of us are afraid and brave at the exact same moment all day long. And so to take courage and vulnerability, to take, to not teach that to our kids, boys or girls, is not teaching them how to be emotionally available or tender either.

• 1:01:19Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:01:20Brené Brown?

  And so I think what concerns me is about the need to drive a stake through the middle of these things. Um, and I think that's what's really important. I mean, to be both.

• 1:01:38Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, no, I, and I, I agree with you. I mean, I think that they're not mutually exclusive. There's no need for a false dichotomy. It's, um, I think a lot of it comes back to sort of choosing the appropriate environment for expressing that vulnerability, if that makes sense. It's, uh, it's a toughie. It seems, it seems tough. I mean, I, uh, because you find men who have the armor plating on and can never take it off, that for what it's worth, the guys I've met who are operating at the highest level in, say, special forces, do not have that problem. They are, they, they tend not to suffer from a lot of PTSD, for instance, and they are very empathetic and emotionally attuned for them, at least in the subset of folks that

• 1:02:23Tim Ferriss?

  I've met. But they've, they've been subjected to just insane amounts of abuse and conditioning to, for mental and physical toughness, but at the same time, I see them playing with their kids or with their wives and they're extremely present. So that's, but that's. It's a tough needle to thread. So speaking of just the challenges that people have with, say, vulnerability, what are some daily practices or exercises that people can contest to help them develop more vulnerability, less shame, et cetera?

• 1:03:06Brené Brown?

  You know, I think it's interesting that you talk about, you know, daily practices, because I think vulnerability is a daily practice. And for a lot of us, you know, at least for me, when it was new, it was about trying on new ways of being and kind of testing it out. One of the things that emerged from the data is this idea of trust and the relationship between trust and vulnerability. And people always ask me, you gain trust first and then you're vulnerable with people. But the truth is, you can't really earn trust over time with people without being somewhat vulnerable. So it's a little bit of a back and forth.

• 1:03:45Brené Brown?

  It's a little bit of sharing things that are maybe not super deeply personal, but are meaningful to you and seeing how that feels to share them and be open. One thing that you said that I've never thought about until this interview, but it was such a remarkable insight from you that I want to go back to when you talk about daily practice, is when you were talking about perfectionism being future focused and also kind of presenting some struggles about staying in the now. I think that's why, and again, I'm just putting this insight together, your insight.

• 1:04:26Brené Brown?

  I think that's why a lot of people who are that super uber competitive, high-strung, overachieving, don't get the same results in their personal lives with their partners and their children as they do in their professional kind of endeavors or their recreational endeavors. Because... Our personal relationships with the people we love, those intimate relationships require a presence, a focus on now, that a lot of times professional success does not depend on that as much.

• 1:05:00Tim Ferriss?

  That's very true. Yeah, very true.

• 1:05:03Brené Brown?

  You can fly fast and if you know, if you're in a little Cessna two-seater, you gotta, you know, you're in the here and now and you gotta pay attention to every bump and every gauge and pay, you know, but if you're in a jet, you can't afford to be thinking about now, you have to be thinking about five minutes from now. And so I thought it was a really remarkable insight on your part because when I do think about those ten friends in Silicon Valley, or I think about my own life even, I think what the research has changed most is that I think it has had a huge impact on my professional success, but more than

• 1:05:41Brené Brown?

  anything, when I get home, I walk into a marriage and to a relationship with kids that is fun, that are fundamentally different than they were before I became okay with vulnerability and okay with less than perfect.

• 1:06:01Tim Ferriss?

  What is the first sixty to ninety days of, uh, sixty, ninety days, sixty to ninety minutes of your day look like? Your morning routines or rituals outside of book launch times and things like that? Let's just assume that you have control of your, your optimal day. What is the first, uh, what do your morning rituals look like? What does your first sixty to ninety minutes look like?

• 1:06:25Brené Brown?

  I wake up, um,

• 1:06:26Tim Ferriss?

  What time do you wake up?

• 1:06:27Brené Brown?

  Early, six thirty-ish. Um, I wake up, I, um, do a lot of deep breathing to stay off an absolute desperate need for a hit of data, um, from my phone or from my computer. So I try very hard not to check email or texts because I don't, I sleep with my phone downstairs. I don't sleep with any kind of computer next to me. Um, and then, you know, it's really super normal. I wake up kids, I make breakfast, I pack lunches, I go through the calendar with the day, I zip up backpacks, I drive carpool. Um, I usually go from carpool to swim. I'm a swimmer, ex-competitive swimmer, so I like to swim.

• 1:07:09Brené Brown?

  And I swim and walk. Um, and swimming is kind of the trifecta for me. It's meditation, exercise and therapy.

• 1:07:18Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:07:18Brené Brown?

  And then I usually start my day, my work day.

• 1:07:22Tim Ferriss?

  And what time, what time, what time do you finish swimming and how long is the swim session?

• 1:07:29Brené Brown?

  Um, if I run, my, my best case scenario is I run and swim. And so I don't swim fast enough anymore. I don't swim time, time swim anymore. Like, you know, 50s on every 20 or anything like I used to. So it's more, it's, it's not as cardio as it used to be. Um, so I like to run on the treadmill for 30 minutes and then I like to swim for half an hour.

• 1:07:49Tim Ferriss?

  Got it.

• 1:07:49Brené Brown?

  And if I was a bike rider, I could be a triathlete, but the bike, the, I tried it once and the bike going that fast next to that many people going that fast is really uncomfortable for me.

• 1:07:59Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I'd imagine it.

• 1:08:00Brené Brown?

  So I'm a, I'm a duathlete. A slow duathlete.

• 1:08:06Tim Ferriss?

  What, what book besides your own have you gifted to other people most? But, but what book do you, have you often given as a gift?

• 1:08:15Brené Brown?

  Oh man, I have given so many copies of The Alchemist. To people that I should get a little royalty on it.

• 1:08:25Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it's a great book. That's a great book. Uh, speaking of books, so you have a, a new book out, Rising Strong, and it seems to me like this completes a trilogy in a sense. It seems like the three books go together very well, but could you give people a, a description of the latest book and why you wrote it?

• 1:08:51Brené Brown?

  Yeah, sure. Um, I think they do go together and I, I wasn't intentional on that, but I think the gifts is be you, Darren Greatly is be all in, and this book is get your ass kicked, get up and do it again. Um, this is about. Just the physics of vulnerability, you know, if you're brave enough often enough, you're going to fall. You're going to experience heartbreak, disappointment, failure. It's going to happen. And so going into this research, the question for me was, what do men and women who experience falls and get back up and are even more courageous and more tenacious, what do they have in common? So Rising Strong is about the process that emerged from that question.

• 1:09:34Tim Ferriss?

  And can you describe your, your research method? How do you find your interviewees? What is the sort of interview format look like? What do you do with the data afterwards, et cetera?

• 1:09:49Brené Brown?

  About 70% of my interviews are individuals and more focus groups in the last data set. And so some of them, like for example, I went to West Point and sat down with, I think there were six officers who had all come back from active, you know, come back duty. So sometimes I'll do focus groups, but the majority of them are individuals. A lot of it is snowball sampling, meaning I've interviewed you, Tim, and I'm like, you know what, I'm real, this is really helpful. I would love to interview some of the folks that you know in Silicon Valley around perfectionism. Would you mind doing a warm introduction?

• 1:10:27Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:10:27Brené Brown?

  And some of them are just kind of calls, like this, this book is a lot about the power of story and the stories we tell ourselves. So I interviewed Shonda Rhimes, the showrunner for Scandal. And, and so, so some of them are just, you know, it's a lot easier to get people now than it was when I first started. And I was like, hi, my name's Brene and I would like to talk to you about shame. That was slow going. But, but now it's more that, you know, I can, now I just do mostly individual and focus groups. And so then I get the data. I, we don't record it. I take what we call in the field anthropological field notes. So I capture exact phrases and sentences during our interview.

• 1:11:12Brené Brown?

  I let participants look at them if they want to when they're done. Some say yes, some say no. And then I code what I learned against what I already know. There were patterns in saturation in the data. Meaning if I am trying to study perfectionism and entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, I'll start interviewing them and I'll know that I've reached saturation when I can predict what the next person's going to say.

• 1:11:36Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:11:36Brené Brown?

  Because one of the really tough rules of grounded theory research are we don't allow for any outliers. And so if I'm almost done and then I sit down with you and you say something and doesn't fit with the theory that I'm developing in my head about what's happening, then I have to go back to the drawing board and keep interviewing because every lived experience is real and matters.

• 1:12:02Tim Ferriss?

  Right. So it would be like interviewing a hundred people in Silicon Valley who are saying they're trying to democratize pizza ordering, democratize kitty litter delivery, democratize this. And then someone said, I'm really looking to establish a silo of command and control like a North Korean dictator for X. And you'd be like, oh, all right, then I have to keep going.

• 1:12:21Brené Brown?

  Yes. And so if that happened, then I have to question what I'm hearing. I have to question what I'm hearing from the kitty litter and the other folks.

• 1:12:34Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:12:35Brené Brown?

  And I have to figure out what, what do y'all meaning, what do y'all meaningfully say and have in common?

• 1:12:40Tim Ferriss?

  And it seems to me, Rising Strong is, it's a must have, not a nice to have, right? And I'm not saying that the be yourself, dare greatly are nice to haves, but if you don't have the resilience to recover from mistakes, you're never going to dare greatly in the first place. In some respect, it would seem, right? So if you, if, would you recommend, what order would you recommend people read your books in? I mean, understanding that this is the latest, of course, but what's sort of the ideal sequence?

• 1:13:20Brené Brown?

  Yeah, I think, you know, they go together, but they don't. I mean, I think they can each be read independently. So I think sometimes it's helpful to pick up the book based on where you are. If you're really struggling with hustling for perfection and hustling, you know, proving and perfecting and pretending, I think The Gifts is great. If you really are, you know, like the rest of us, sick and tired of being afraid, and you want to be brave, and you want to feel like, what does that look like? I think Daring Greatly is this place to start. And if you find yourself faced down in the arena, and you're thinking, "God, I just got my ass handed to me," I think Rising Strong would be a good place to start. It probably makes sense, you know, there's a sequence. So I think if you're just like, "Wow, I'm interested," I would start with Daring Great-- I mean, The Gifts.

• 1:14:04Brené Brown?

  But I think, I also think, for your audience, it's probably helpful to know that I've spent the last couple of years probably exclusively working with leaders and entrepreneurs. So Daring Greatly and Rising Strong have much more of my research from organizations and from leaders than The Gifts does.

• 1:14:21Tim Ferriss?

  Got it. No, that is helpful. Just a few more questions, and then I know we're coming up on time. So I'll ask just a couple of rapid-fire questions, but the answers don't have to be rapid. And I'm very curious about this one. When you think of the word "successful," who is the first person who comes to mind for you? And why?

• 1:14:47Brené Brown?

  You know what's so weird? I don't picture anybody. I picture the word redefine. That is such a, that has been such a dangerous word in my research. The word "successful," or "success."

• 1:15:01Tim Ferriss?

  I agree.

• 1:15:02Brené Brown?

  That I don't even use it anymore. Because what does that mean? Like, okay, so I am the CEO of this company. I make a shit-ton of money. This is my title. This is the influence and power I have. I'm on my fourth marriage and no relationship with my adult children.

• 1:15:21Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:15:22Brené Brown?

  So I, I think when I hear the word "successful," my answer is-- Be clear that your ladder is leaning against the right building.

• 1:15:30Tim Ferriss?

  Right, yeah. Bad word. Next question.

• 1:15:33Brené Brown?

  Yeah, I don't know why.

• 1:15:36Tim Ferriss?

  No, I agree with you. I think happiness is actually similar.

• 1:15:40Brené Brown?

  Oh, God, yes.

• 1:15:42Tim Ferriss?

  That's a scary, nebulous, dangerous term as well.

• 1:15:46Brené Brown?

  Totally.

• 1:15:47Tim Ferriss?

  What $100 or less purchase has most positively impacted your life in recent memory?

• 1:15:54Brené Brown?

  Oh, triathlon goggles, because I don't know, for some reason, they're softer. So that I don't have goggle marks all day.

• 1:16:02Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, really? I had no idea. What, do you know the brand of goggles offhand?

• 1:16:06Brené Brown?

  I don't, but they're like the most famous triathlon, and they're really patty and you look like, we all like swam with the Speedo Vanquisher, like little goggles that were badass. And the bigger your goggle, the goofier you were, but now it's time for the goofy goggle for me.

• 1:16:22Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I really like the Aquasphere Cayman goggles, K-A-I-M-A-N. And Laird Hamilton, who's this big wave surfer,

• 1:16:31Brené Brown?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:31Tim Ferriss?

  uses, I will look them up, goggles. I just put them, for those people interested, I put them in my latest Five Bullet Friday. You can just search my name, Five Bullet Fridays. But, yeah, it does seem like the bigger goggles coming back.

• 1:16:47Tim Ferriss?

  If you could have one billboard anywhere with anything on it, what would it say and where would you put it?

• 1:16:57Brené Brown?

  I would put it in Washington DC.

• 1:17:01Brené Brown?

  And it would say,

• 1:17:08Brené Brown?

  "Shut up and listen."

• 1:17:12Tim Ferriss?

  That's great. That's great. That could be put anywhere. I would love to put that on on the highway, you know, Highway 101 and 280 in Silicon Valley, too, because man, oh, man, are people talking a lot these days and pitching. Pitching really hard without asking many good questions.

• 1:17:29Brené Brown?

  You know what? I wouldn't say shut up because my kids would be like, oh, my God, we're not even allowed to say that word. So I would say, "Talk less, listen more."

• 1:17:37Brené Brown?

  But in my heart, I would be saying, "Shut up."

• 1:17:39Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, we could split test. It could be, that could be the hashtag. Just shut your face. What advice would you give your 30-year-old self?

• 1:17:59Brené Brown?

  It's okay to be afraid. You don't have to be so scary when you're scared.

• 1:18:04Tim Ferriss?

  Huh. Meaning what? Put on, put on airs of confidence and overconfidence?

• 1:18:12Brené Brown?

  Yes, like the 30s are so exhausting. It's like the age of, yeah, and it is at the age of perfecting, proving, pretending, and there's some liberation that can't, you know, for me that came in my fort. There was a breakdown, of course, but followed by some liberation that came in my 40s. So I would just say, you know,

• 1:18:33Brené Brown?

  you know, stop hustling.

• 1:18:35Tim Ferriss?

  Right. Yeah. The, you mentioned the breakdown, the breakthrough disguised as a breakdown.

• 1:18:42Brené Brown?

  What would you say to your 30-year-old self?

• 1:18:45Tim Ferriss?

  Start meditating and chill the fuck out. That's

• 1:18:52Tim Ferriss?

  you don't need to, you don't need to have a resting pulse of 150 beats per minute to get a lot of big things done.

• 1:19:01Brené Brown?

  They're similar messages, right?

• 1:19:03Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, very similar. I think that, well, I think it's very easy for people, and I'm sure I still do this, but to mistake the symptoms of success with the things that cause success. They're not the same, right?

• 1:19:20Tim Ferriss?

  Do you have any ask or request for all the people listening? Of course, I would highly recommend that they check out your work, including Rising Strong, the latest book, which I will link to in the show notes for everybody. But any other ask, request, or recommendation for everybody listening?

• 1:19:43Brené Brown?

  I would just say, keep being part of the conversation about these tougher, about these tougher topics, about vulnerability, about shame, about being brave. Just

• 1:19:58Brené Brown?

  Lean into some discomfort because I think these seemingly impossible problems that we have around race and homophobia and the environment and just the lack of love sometimes are not going to be solved in a comfortable way. You have to choose comfort or courage. You just can't have both. So I guess my ask would be more of a big metaphysical ask that give vulnerability a shot and give discomfort its due because I think there is a really strong relationship between your willingness, he or she who's willing

• 1:20:42Brené Brown?

  to be the most uncomfortable is not only the bravest but rises the fastest.

• 1:20:48Tim Ferriss?

  Totally agree. Well, I think the only way to ensure long-term comfort is to have continual short-term discomfort.

• 1:20:58Brené Brown?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:59Tim Ferriss?

  Well, this has been a blast. Brene, where can people say hello to you online? Where can they find out more about you, find you on the social networks?

• 1:21:09Brené Brown?

  Yeah, I am at @BrenaeBrown on Twitter and Instagram and @BrenaeBrown on Facebook. We just launched a new project that we're excited about called CourageWorks, which is bringing all of my teachings to online for individuals and leaders and organizations. And that's just courageworks.com. And so I'm in all of those places.

• 1:21:35Tim Ferriss?

  Well, I enjoy your work. I appreciate your work. And thank you so much for taking the time. Folks listening, you can find links to everything that we discussed, show notes, etc. at fourhourworkweek.com and just click on Podcast, all spelled out, fourhourworkweek.com. And please say hello to Brene on the interwebs and join the conversation. I'll also have a question of the day in the blog post that you guys can continue this conversation as Brene suggested. But Brene, thank you so much for making the time.

• 1:22:10Brené Brown?

  It was awesome. Thank you so much, Tim. I appreciate it.

• 1:22:12Tim Ferriss?

  And everybody listening, as always, thank you for listening and until next day, until next day, until next time, Tim needs more caffeine, pura vida, and face your discomfort, practice discomfort. Thanks for listening.

• 1:22:31Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:23:16Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:24:02Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:25:29Tim Ferriss?

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