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

Brené Brown is a bestselling author and researcher who has spent decades studying why we struggle to be brave, open and truly seen. In this Moment, Brené unpacks why vulnerability feels so dangerous, how betrayal really happens, and the surprising catalyst of true self-love. Listen to the full episode here! Spotify: https://g2ul0.app.link/7mDUjlx5w3b Apple: https://g2ul0.app.link/9LQuVQz5w3b Watch the Episodes On YouTube: ⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/c/%20TheDiaryOfACEO/videos Brené Brown: https://brenebrown.com/

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:04Steven Bartlett?

  On that point about me and vulnerability, is vulnerability important? Because there's a lot of performative vulnerability taking place.

• 0:10Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 0:11Steven Bartlett?

  Is it an important thing for my health, happiness, my future, to be a vulnerable person?

• 0:16Speaker 01

  Well, let's define it. Vulnerability is the emotion we experience when we are up against uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure. So vulnerability is what I feel. It's the cringe, the awkward, the emotion I feel in times of uncertainty, risk, or emotional exposure. So it was really interesting because I had a hard time helping people understand because we are so raised to believe that vulnerability is weakness, that it took a trip to Fort Bragg, working with special forces, to ask soldiers a question. Give me a single example of courage in your life.

• 0:59Speaker 01

  One example that you've witnessed, or you yourself have done. One example of courage that did not require uncertainty, risk, or emotional exposure. No one could answer it. Finally, a young soldier stood up and said, "Three tours." There is no courage without vulnerability. So is vulnerability important? It is if we want to be brave with our lives. If we want to be able to manage ourselves in a way that's values-aligned and courageous, we have to be able to reconcile how we feel when we're uncertain, at risk, or exposed. I mean, and really, weirdly, the next week after the trip to Fort Bragg, I was with the Seattle Seahawks, the football team, NFL team.

• 1:44Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:45Speaker 01

  Asked the players, "Give me an example of courage, on the field or off, that did not require vulnerability." They said that it's not possible. There is no courage. Like, if you're doing things in your life, in your work, and there's no risk, no uncertainty, and no exposure, then they're not brave. If you know how it's going to end,

• 2:10Speaker 01

  that is not courage.

• 2:13Speaker 01

  Courage is the willingness to show up and be all-in when you cannot predict the outcome. Courage is saying, "I love you" first.

• 2:24Speaker 01

  That's, you want to know what vulnerability is? I love you first. Have you ever said I love you first?

• 2:35Steven Bartlett?

  Uh, I'm not sure.

• 2:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:37Steven Bartlett?

  It's been a while.

• 2:38Speaker 01

  But it's hard. It's, you know.

• 2:40Steven Bartlett?

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

• 2:44Speaker 01

  Well, you'd had to go first.

• 2:45Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, we're had to go first, yeah.

• 2:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, there's this great story that I tell about,

• 2:51Speaker 01

  I gave a talk here. It was actually in LA. And afterwards, a kid came up to me, he's probably 22 or 23, and he said, "Can I tell you a story about your work and how it's really changed my life?" And I was like, "Sure." And a kind of a crowd grew around. And this is like the last time I ever got pinned, like not being able to exit a stage, because it was such a traumatic, it wasn't traumatic, but it was like, he said, "Well, I was dating this woman, and I was so crazy about her. So I took her to eat to our favorite restaurant. And I waited until the dessert came, because we love this chocolate volcano. And I ordered it, and I said,

• 3:27Speaker 01

  "I love you."

• 3:29Speaker 01

  And she looked at me and she said, "I think you're awesome.

• 3:35Speaker 01

  And I think we should date other people."

• 3:40Speaker 01

  And then she Ubered home.

• 3:44Speaker 01

  And so I was like, "God damn, this is the worst story I've ever heard." "This is not a good story." And he said, "So I got in my car, and I drove home, and the whole way home, I just kept saying to myself, over and over, 'Fuck Brene Brown. Fuck Brene Brown.'"

• 4:03Speaker 01

  When does this, when's the turn on the story, you know? And he said, "I got home, and I walked into my apartment, and I pushed the door open. And both my roommates were wired in, and they were on their computers. They looked up and said, 'Dude, what's going on?'" And he said, "I told her I loved her, and she told me I was awesome. And one of my roommates looked at me and said, 'Whoa, who was that fuck with you?'" That's not how it works. When you are going toward them, they go away. So you're always kind of going away. So they come towards you. And he goes, oh, oh, no. No, I don't want to, I don't want to be that dude.

• 4:45Speaker 01

  I was daring greatly. And he said, both of his roommates just got teary eyed and went, right on, man. Right on. Like, there is no courage without vulnerability. How can you say you're brave if you're not putting yourself out there?

• 5:04Steven Bartlett?

  So many people have been through things which have made it very, very difficult for them to be vulnerable. I was speaking to someone yesterday who was cheated on, a bunch of attachment issues in their early childhood. And funnily enough, when I was talking to her about, I was asking her questions about, because I'm a very deep person, like this carries over into my personal life. I was asking her questions about the things, you know, she'd been through, whatever else. She just shuts down and she told me that she, she, um, what were the exact words? She said that she finds vulnerability to be a form of intimacy that she tries to stay away from because she needs to really, really, really trust the person before she opens up. And I think this is a trend you see across a lot of people.

• 5:49Steven Bartlett?

  They, they won't open up enough to form a connection because they've been hurt before by opening up. And it feels too scary to do that. And that results in them being single, alone, unhappy, so on and so on.

• 6:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I think there's, there, what you said was so loaded with so many things. So first of all, there's, there, there's this very interesting relationship between vulnerability and trust. And how does that work? And people always ask me, what comes first, trust or vulnerability? Do I trust you first, then I'm vulnerable? Or am I vulnerable first and then I trust you? And I think it's a very slow stacking. We get to know each other. I share a little bit. I don't, I don't share, hey, nice to meet you, Stephen. Here's my darkest, horrible, most painful trauma. You know, because that, that is actually, that kind of litmus testing is actually a form of armor. I'm going to throw something at you. That our relationship in no way has been built long enough to hold. You're going to go away.

• 6:51Speaker 01

  And I'm going to use that as verification that vulnerability is dangerous. Like that's litmus testing. Let me prove to you that you're not trustworthy. Da na na na, na na na na na. Oh, I see you're backing away. That's what I thought. I'm backing away because we haven't built a relationship that can bear the weight of this story. Can we start? Can we start small?

• 7:12Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 7:13Speaker 01

  Vulnerability, trust, vulnerability, trust, vulnerability, trust. I think in my work, we call that like the smash and grab. Like I'm gonna, I'm gonna hit you with something really big and then watch you go away and use it as evidence. Yeah. And it takes a really skilled person to say, yeah, I'm really, I'm taking in what you told me. I want to be respectful and honor that. And I don't have a way to file it right now because I don't know you well enough. So I appreciate the share. I mean, we also call it spotlighting. So like if I had a military grade spotlight that they use in the wilderness, I work with the military a lot. And I, I picked it up and put it in your face right here.

• 7:58Speaker 01

  What would you do physically? That's what, that's our reaction to too much vulnerability too fast.

• 8:04Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 8:04Speaker 01

  Like, yeah, I don't know, I don't know you. So you're talking about the slow stacking of courage and vulnerability and trust. And then you're also talking about that when, when we've had a lot of hard things happen to us. I think this is where I really believe the democratization of coaching and therapy. That a lot of times we have to work with people, like we have to get help to be able to open up and take off some of the armor that we put on. Because sometimes that armor that we put on is fricking survival. I mean, and you want to start adding, you want to start adding variables like race, gender, like, you know.

• 8:48Speaker 01

  Any, anything where there's social systems also at play, that's survival. Like telling me right now in my career, like, hey, you should be vulnerable with your new team and, and talk about your previous failures, you know? Well, of course I could do that and I would do it. Everybody would clap and they'd think, ah, man, she's so brave. And take the new person who's a young black woman or the new first LGBTQ person on a team and say, hey, tell, tell everybody, don't, don't tell anybody shit. Develop trust first. Develop, uh, see how, how, trust your own instincts about the accountability of this group to hold themselves accountable for their behavior.

• 9:28Speaker 01

  Like vulnerability is not more necessary for any of us than anybody else, but certainly more difficult for other, for, for some people, for sure. And I think what's hard about that, what's so painful, probably the most painful part of my career is that regardless of why the armor is on, without vulnerability, you cannot access the experiences that are the most meaningful in life. Love. To love someone is to be vulnerable from the time you wake up to the time you go to bed. You know that you're in a relationship to love is to be vulnerable, right? And have you ever buried someone you loved? Like I lost my mom two years ago.

• 10:13Speaker 01

  Like my kids, it's like having your heart live outside of your body. Like to love is to be vulnerable because it's to risk grief and losing. Belonging is vulnerable. The most, the most vulnerable human emotion? Joy. Joy is so vulnerable that when some of us get close to it, we dress rehearse tragedy to prepare for disappointment. Like it's so vulnerable that we don't even let ourselves feel joy because we're so afraid someone's gonna rip it away and we're gonna get sucker punched by disappointment. Yes or no?

• 10:51Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 10:52Speaker 01

  Like, people choose to live disappointed rather than to feel disappoint, risk feeling disappointed and get excited about something. You know, it's like the first time my kids shared with me when they were young. Certainly not the way I was raised, but you know, I really, really wanna make this team, Mom. And I said, I wanna pause you for a second and tell you how brave it is to talk openly about something you want so much when you don't have control over whether you get it or not. I want, I want it for you because you want it, but regardless of what happens, I admire your courage for wanting something and sharing out loud that you want it.

• 11:33Speaker 01

  Because if you don't get it, I'll know that it was a crushing blow. But that's so great because I'll be here for you when that happens either way. So we, and I'm really, I'm a really, we call it foreboding joy. That joy is so good, just waiting for the other shoe to drop. And people who have trauma histories are really like that. Like for me, because of the way I was raised, when something good happens, I'm like, oh God, now what's gonna happen? Statistically, bad shit's gonna roll around any second now. And it's interesting because the group of people that we researched, the only group of people that could take that, you know, there's a bodily quiver, right? A vulnerability. Have you felt it?

• 12:17Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 12:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. The only people that can really lean into joy consistently are people who use that vulnerability quiver as a reminder to be grateful, to be able to practice gratitude in that second. So gratitude is a huge enabler of joy.

• 12:38Steven Bartlett?

  Is that automatic or can one train that?

• 12:40Speaker 01

  No, it's a training. Oh shit, no, I had to, I mean, standing at my front door, watching my 16-year-old daughter walk down the sidewalk with her boyfriend in high school and get in his truck for, for prom, right? And I'm standing there and I'm like, oh God. And you know, what am I worried about? You know, prom night, like car wreck, right? Of course, when I tell the story, the military is always like, pregnancy. I'm like, no, no, no, no, car wreck. And so I just remember staying there and she gets in and I'm staying next to Steve and Charlie. My, my son's, you know, at this time he's 10. And I'm like, I'm so grateful. I'm so grateful. I'm grateful for this moment. I'm grateful that I'm a part of it.

• 13:25Speaker 01

  I'm grateful that they did the corsage and the boutonniere over here. I'm grateful that I got to help pick out the dress. I'm so grateful. And Charlie goes, looks at Steve, what's wrong with mom? And Steve goes, she's, she's practicing gratitude. Let her do it. Otherwise she's going to get on a crazy train and it's going to be all hell. And you know, like, because part of me wants to say, oh, God, oh, God. Like so beautiful and so joyful. And get in your truck and follow them right now. If he's speeding, I want to know about it. If he's not stopping fully to stop sign, follow them until this date is over. You know, that's, that's what I want to do. Because I'm afraid. Because that, the joy of that moment was just too much for me. Too vulnerable.

• 14:10Steven Bartlett?

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

• 14:16Speaker 01

  No, I'm overcoming.

• 14:17Steven Bartlett?

  Overcoming?

• 14:18Speaker 01

  No, I'm not over, I have not overcome.

• 14:20Steven Bartlett?

  Have you overcome anything?

• 14:22Speaker 01

  Yes, the belief that I will overcome anything. I've overcome the belief that, I have overcome the belief that I will ever arrive. I am grateful for the skills that I have, that are new skills, that keep me more aligned with the person, the mom, the partner, the leader that I want to be. But I, I am mindful all the time. I try to stay very mindful that I am scary when I'm scared, that I catastrophize very, very easily. And that's painful for everybody around me. And I don't need to be liked. I just need to be myself.

• 15:04Speaker 01

  Like, but those are things, because I will, I will sit down like two days ago and be like, oh, my God, it'd be so fricking easy to be liked here. I was like, this will be, this would be a piece of cake. And I'm like, shit, I don't do that anymore. Bummer.

• 15:17Steven Bartlett?

  Two days ago?

• 15:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:19Steven Bartlett?

  Ahead of what?

• 15:20Speaker 01

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

• 15:24Steven Bartlett?

  And you made the choice to just be yourself?

• 15:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:27Steven Bartlett?

  Why?

• 15:29Speaker 01

  Because now the person I'm going to betray last is me.

• 15:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, I hope I see you again, but not that important.

• 15:41Steven Bartlett?

  Some people might find that somewhat demoralizing to know that they they too might never cure

• 15:48Steven Bartlett?

  parts of themselves that they're desperate to change. I think people, you know, they often come to podcasts like this or read books like yours, looking for fixes to not liking myself, to the way that I react to my emotions. They want to fix it. Because if they can fix it, then they can be happy.

• 16:04Speaker 01

  I don't think that's in the consideration set for a very

• 16:10Speaker 01

  beautiful reason.

• 16:13Speaker 01

  That if we could fix it

• 16:17Speaker 01

  and never have to wrestle with it again, we would be so short on grace for other people

• 16:26Speaker 01

  that we would be tired.

• 16:31Steven Bartlett?

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

• 16:34Speaker 01

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

• 16:55Steven Bartlett?

  But you like yourself now?

• 17:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, I do. I

• 17:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, I do.

• 17:15Speaker 01

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

• 17:23Steven Bartlett?

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

• 17:38Speaker 01

  I think the hardest is...

• 17:42Speaker 01

  Maybe one of the biggest findings of my research over the last 25 years is it's not fear that gets in the way of us being brave with our lives and our work. It's armor. Everybody's afraid. It's okay to be afraid. What's dangerous is the armor that we reach for to self-protect when we're afraid. And how that armor moves us away from love, connection, and our values. And so I think the hardest work is, for me, constantly being aware of what is my armor? What am I grabbing for when I'm afraid?

• 18:24Speaker 01

  What am I grabbing for when I want to protect my sense of self-worth? My ego? And how heavy that shit is? You know, at some point, I had to wear it. Because that was survival for me, growing up. But this is the big... This is the big

• 18:46Speaker 01

  developmental milestone of middle age, which you are squarely entering. Which is kind of when the universe grabs you by the shoulders and pulls you really close. And says, "I'm not fucking around anymore. They gave you gifts.

• 19:06Speaker 01

  Choosing not to grow into them is not benign.

• 19:12Speaker 01

  There's a consequence for that. And your armor is getting in the way.

• 19:17Speaker 01

  You're a grown-ass person now.

• 19:20Speaker 01

  You have different choices. Let go of what doesn't serve."

• 19:27Speaker 01

  And that is the big milestone, I think, that we have to wrestle with in midlife.

• 19:33Speaker 01

  What no longer serves, that's preventing us from growing into who we want to be.

• 19:38Steven Bartlett?

  And is that where vulnerability comes into the picture?

• 19:40Speaker 01

  Oh, for sure. Because all the armor, all the armor is about vulnerability.

• 19:47Steven Bartlett?

  It requires a huge amount of, I was gonna say self-awareness.

• 19:52Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 19:52Steven Bartlett?

  That some people just don't, could probably never accomplish. I mean.

• 19:58Speaker 01

  That's why I think metaphor is helpful.

• 20:02Speaker 01

  I mean, most of us can understand, if you back me into an emotional corner,

• 20:09Speaker 01

  what are you going to get? Like, as a leader, I know my armor: perfectionism, micromanagement. I get super intensive. I get recklessly decisive. I know my armor, and my team knows my armor.

• 20:26Speaker 01

  I think my armor in my personal life, especially when it comes to my kids, when I get, when I feel vulnerable, is control, control, control. Take over all the chess pieces.

• 20:42Steven Bartlett?

  But that's not a good idea.

• 20:44Speaker 01

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

• 21:01Speaker 01

  fear.

• 21:05Steven Bartlett?

  Is fear the opposite of courage? Or is it?

• 21:09Speaker 01

  No, I think the opposite of courage is armor.

• 21:12Steven Bartlett?

  Armor, okay.

• 21:13Speaker 01

  I think the opposite of courage is self-protection.

• 21:16Steven Bartlett?

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

• 21:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, this was research that emerged like 15 years ago, and I was really, really nervous because I'm a grounded theory researcher. I'm a qualitative researcher. So a grounded theory is only as good as its ability to work new data. So you develop a hypothesis or a theory based on data. And then as you collect more data, does the hypothesis hold? And, you know, this, we collected that data pre pandemic, you know, pre, pre a lot of things. And so I was really worried about the four skill sets of courage, which are identifying, understanding your core values. I would love to do this exercise with you sometime.

• 22:06Speaker 01

  Two, understanding what gets in the way of you wrestling with vulnerability, kind of owning it and moving through it constructively. Three, how to build trust and how to become, super important, trustworthy to yourself, self-trust. Because one of the first casualties of failure or disappointment or setback is we lose our, our ability to trust ourselves, our ability to make good decisions, our ability to take care of ourselves. And the last one, which is my favorite, because it can really, I've seen it really change in organization, is how to get back up after failure and disappointment.

• 22:46Speaker 01

  How to reset, how to be, how to manage your own bounce when hard shit happens. So those are the four skill sets of courage. Again, evidence-based, observable, measurable and teachable. We've taken 165,000 people through this work across 45 countries, collected data on all of it. It's so exciting. And it withstood all of the complex changes over the last five years, including AI organizationally, because this is where we do our work. I don't, I'm not a therapist or clinician. I don't work with like families or individuals. I mean, I have a therapist, but I'm not one. So I think.

• 23:29Speaker 01

  You can develop courage skills.

• 23:32Steven Bartlett?

  The third point is braving trust.

• 23:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:35Steven Bartlett?

  And I've heard about your marble jar theory. So I've got a jar of marbles.

• 23:38Speaker 01

  I saw that.

• 23:40Steven Bartlett?

  Could you explain to me what your marble jar? Look at how excited you are.

• 23:43Speaker 01

  I know.

• 23:45Speaker 01

  So this comes, you know, where is, where do I get my information? Ellen's in fourth grade, my oldest. She comes home from school. The front door closes. She slides down the door into a heap, sobbing. Oh, my God, Ellen, are you OK? Are you hurt? What's going on? She says that something hard happened. She shared it like very confidentially with one or two of her friends during recess. When she got back to the classroom, they had told everybody in her class, all 30 kids. Everybody was laughing and pointing and making fun of her. And she said, I will never trust anyone again. And my response immediately to my, in my mind, was damn straight, no fucking person.

• 24:29Speaker 01

  You trust your mama and that's it. Like, that was my response. But again, that's not the right thing to do, right? You want a kid who can develop trust with others. So I said, trust is really hard. She said, I don't understand it. And her teacher at the time, Mrs. Baucham, had a marble jar. And when the team, when the, when the class would collectively make good decisions, she would put marbles in this empty jar. And when it got full, they'd have an extra recess and party. And so immediately what came to me, because I'm describing trust, which is a hard concept, to a fourth grader, I said, trust is the marble jar. She's like, what do you mean? And I said, every time you share somebody, something with someone that's confidential and they don't share it, they get a marble.

• 25:15Speaker 01

  Every time you build trust, when you want to share something really private and personal, you look for a friend whose jar is full of marbles. Do you have any marble jar friends? She's like, not the ones I shared with today. And I said, who are your marble jar friends? And she said Hannah and Lorna. And I said, tell me something they do to earn marbles. Oh, well, like if I get to my tray late at lunch and there's no place to sit, Lorna will scoot over and give me half her seat and we just share one seat and I can sit at the table. And then the other day, when I had strep throat, Hannah was worried about me. So remember her mom called and said Hannah's worried about Ellen. Why wasn't she at school? But then the biggest thing that Hannah did was the other day, Oma and Opa, my parents, my mom and her husband,

• 25:59Speaker 01

  came to my soccer game and Hannah looked over and goes, oh, my God, your Oma and Opa are here. And I said, why was that a big deal? And she goes, because everybody's divorced and remarried and I've got eight, you know, four sets of people and she remembered their names. And what was shocking to me is that Ellen was conveying that these marbles were being earned on these very small. She knew my grandparents' name. She gave me a seat to sit at. She checked on me when I was missing school. And so it made me start thinking about the literature on trust. So I immediately go to the Gottmans. Have you had the Gottmans on here? Oh, twice, yeah. Yeah, I mean, just like, yeah. So I go to the Gottmans research on trust.

• 26:44Speaker 01

  And I read right off the bat where Gottmans say, trust is earned in small moments every day. He tells a story. It's my favorite story that he tells and I've had them on my podcasts and I've done blurbs for their books and written forewords. They're just great. So he tells a story about how he's also a mystery lover like me. He's on the second to last page of his mystery. He's like, oh, my God, oh, my God, like, who did it? And he jumps up to go brush his teeth. And he gets, gets, walks to the bathroom and he sees his wife crying and brushing her hair. He's like, shit, don't look. Everything's good. Just go to the bathroom and get back in your, get back to your book. And he's like, that's a sliding door moment. I can, I have a choice in that moment

• 27:28Speaker 01

  to build trust and stop and say what's going on or to build betrayal and pretend like I don't see her hurting. So I stop, I take the brush out of her hand. I start brushing her hair and say, what's going on? That's a sliding door moment that we have all the time. Right. And so to me, trust is built slowly over time, a marble at a time. And that's how, that's how we teach trust to the most senior leaders in Fortune 100 companies. That trust is a marble jar. It's earned. Leaders believe, and you're a leader, so you know, you know, the temptation. Leaders believe that in the middle of a crisis,

• 28:13Speaker 01

  you know, you put the numbers together and there's a fever dream in the United States and there's new tariffs and you wake up and you know, you're, you've got a revenue line that's in crisis and then you can just look at your people and say, hello, everyone, this is like back to the, the executive presence. Trust me, here's what we're gonna do. And it means nothing to people. What matters is a leader that walks past you in the morning and says, hey, good to see Stephen, how's your mom's chemo going? Marbles, marbles. Then when the crisis happens, you don't need to say, trust me. You just need to say what's on your mind. They trust you.

• 28:51Steven Bartlett?

  The other thing I think has often plagued my mind is as a leader, sometimes you say things and those things can't happen. For whatever reason, things change.

• 28:57Speaker 01

  Right.

• 28:58Steven Bartlett?

  And, um, and I think leaders sometimes think that trust is always being correct, always predicting everything correctly, always being right.

• 29:09Speaker 01

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

• 29:49Speaker 01

  Yes or no?

• 29:50Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, and in the blame and responsibility often rear their heads.

• 29:53Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 29:54Steven Bartlett?

  For better or for worse.

• 29:55Speaker 01

  Go like this, eyelash or something.

• 29:57Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, no, one marble. There you go.

• 29:58Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Is that a marble?

• 30:00Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, it is, yeah.

• 30:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:02Steven Bartlett?

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

• 30:13Speaker 01

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

• 30:19Steven Bartlett?

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

• 30:26Speaker 01

  Oh, that's good.

• 30:29Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 30:30Speaker 01

  That's, that's like a, that's like a, that's a...

• 30:37Speaker 01

  Right?

• 30:37Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 30:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's a good metaphor, though, right?

• 30:40Steven Bartlett?

  Mm-hmm.

• 30:41Speaker 01

  The trust in the marble jar has been very helpful for us.

• 30:44Steven Bartlett?

  Hmm.

• 30:44Speaker 01

  And let me tell you, there are behaviors, this is plastic, there are behaviors in relationships where you take this whole thing and just slam it on the ground.

• 30:53Steven Bartlett?

  Cheating.

• 30:55Speaker 01

  I think that's an obvious one.

• 31:04Speaker 01

  There's one that's more, has a more ragged edge of grief and distrust than even cheating, which is just slowly disengaging.

• 31:19Steven Bartlett?

  Emotionally disengaging.

• 31:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:24Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, gosh.

• 31:25Speaker 01

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

• 31:38Steven Bartlett?

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