Book #3: Daring Greatly by Brene Brown

Already I'm reading (listening to) more audiobooks than actual books this year. I have a feeling that audiobooks are going to be the way for me to go this year--I'm even thinking of splurging on an Audible membership once the baby comes, since I won't be able to read as easily but listening to things comes easily while nursing. I listened to this one while at the gym this week and I feel very accomplished having finished it. I tried reading this a few years ago and got a few pages in and was COMPLETELY not interested. Like, couldn't bother to finish the paragraph. I kept trying to skim and find the point but it just seemed super psycho-babble-y. But I think listening to it was a good format because it forced me to listen to every word instead of getting bored with a paragraph and skimming to get ahead.

Brown writes about vulnerability and how being vulnerable allows us to connect with other and create relationships, and how if we refuse to be vulnerable we don't allow ourselves to progress or move forward. She ends up also talking a lot about shame (since she is a shame researcher) and how shame stunts our growth and keeps us from accepting vulnerability. I can see that there are some places where I could/should be more vulnerable, and I definitely accept her thesis that being vulnerable is GOOD for our relationships and our growth as individuals, even though it is so uncomfortable. I liked a few of the points she made about things we do to protect us from our vulnerability--like "foreboding joy", or literally imagining every bad thing that could happen to our loved ones or to prevent us from being happy (I'm glad I'm not the only one who has that problem)--and the things she warns us to be careful of, like making sure that your words and actions match up. I wish that her book actually had more tips or strategies to actually help us change the way we "live, love, parent, and lead" like it says in the subtitle--it wasn't totally obvious what she wants us to change if we want to become more shame-resilient, like she talks about. Obviously, I want to avoid using shame in parenting (guilt has good outcomes, helping people to make positive changes, but shame has negative outcomes; guilt = you're a good person making bad choices, shame = you're a bad person) but I don't feel like she was very clear about how to do that.

The best part of this book, I think, is the quote that the title comes from, by Teddy Roosevelt: "It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." This quote was also in a recent other book I read and I love it. I'm going to put it on our bulletin board, I think.