
This is a summary of the book The Gifts of Imperfection by Brene Brown. This book is about how to accept oneself in order to live what Brene calls a whole-hearted life, a life of courageous authenticity.
What's the point of of overcoming shame and living courageously? The obvious answer is for your own happiness and peace of mind. If that isn't enough, Brene presents another argument centered around the difference between fitting in and belonging. Fitting in is defined by trying to be something other than what you are for the sake of having a community. A person whose goal is to fit in is a person who also lives in fear that their community will reject them or leave them if they dare to reveal aspects of their true self or make mistakes. Fitting in restricts its participants to shallow connections with others. Belonging is characterized by deep and intimate connections. Belonging is defined by being a part of a community in which a person feels completely safe and accepted due to the prerequisite of being their authentic self. "Because true belonging only happens when we present our authentic, imperfect selves to the world, our sense of belonging can never be greater than our level of self-acceptance." You can only be accepted by others to the degree that you accept yourself because even the people that would fully accept you don't get the chance when you hold back. Or another way of saying the same thing, you only allow others to love and accept you as much as you love and accept yourself.
Our definition of the word "courage" has changed overtime. Early definitions of courage were "to speak one's mind by telling all one's heart." Courage was fully putting yourself out there for others to accept or reject. Shame is self-judgment that prevents you from living courageously. Courage requires letting go of what others think of you by letting go of self judgment.
An important distinction is between the concepts of guilt and shame. Guilt is feeling bad about a mistake while shame is making a character judgment based on the mistake.
Guilt: I did a bad thing
Shame: I am bad
Shame doesn't allow for the recognition of one's flaws and imperfection.
While it can be argued that shame has benefits, it's widely accepted in the world of psychology that it's more destructive than constructive. Unfortunately, that doesn't stop most people from shaming themselves and, consequently, others. Shame is a two-sided coin. Shame begets shaming - how you shame yourself correlates with how you shame others, therefore, how you judge others is a mirror into how you judge yourself. Conversely, the judgments that you fear from others are the judgments you've already placed upon yourself. Shame begets presumed judgment.
If you have an unhealthy relationship with shame, you will engage in unhealthy ways with others' shame.
Destructive ways to deal with someone else expressing shame (reflecting your own shame):
Sympathy vs empathy - Sympathy is disconnected caring ("sucks to be you bruh") while empathy is connected caring ("Yeah I've been there and it sucks"). Sympathy promotes shame because the subtext is "I can't relate to you" which supports shame.
Judgment - Agreeing that what they did is shameful.
Disappointment - Expressing that their imperfection is shameful.
Blame/ Scolding - Either response indicates your internal discomfort with their shame, which only reinforces their shame. Even scapegoating, seeking someone to blame, denies the person the opportunity to speak through their shame.
Minimizing/ Avoiding - Refusing to acknowledge their pain only results in its maintenance.
Comparing/ Competing (one upping) - Same as #4 and #5, shifting the topic away from someone's shame means they won't get the opportunity to share it and work through it.
Speaking truth in power dynamics - Telling someone they shouldn't have said or done something to a person in a position of power or influence.
Advice giving/ problem solving - See #6.
If you find yourself doing any of these it's time to start looking inward at your relationship with shame.
Recognizing a few base principles can help you work through shame.
It's universal - Everyone experiences shame.
It's scary - It's not comfortable for anyone.
The less we talk about it, the more control it has over our lives - Voicing shame to a healthy person takes away its power.
Practicing self-compassion is another way to work through shame. "When we practice generating compassion, we can expect to experience the fear of our pain. Compassion practice is daring. It involves learning to relax and allow ourselves to move gently toward what scares us" (quote by Pema Chodron). Self-compassion requires courage because you are facing your fears and moving beyond them. We will talk a bit more on how to develop self-compassion later.
"Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It's a relationship between equals."
Ten Steps to Whole Hearted Living
Cultivating authenticity: Letting go of what people think.
One thing that gets in people's way of being authentic is the perceived audacity of authenticity, the fear of being perceived as arrogant. Arrogance is a reaction to shame while the ideal form of authenticity is based on self-love, not on shame.
Cultivating self compassion: Letting go of perfectionism.
Perfectionism is a reaction to shame, specifically trying to control yourself and others' perception of you so that you never experience shame.
Perfectionism is not self-improvement. Self-improvement leaves room for imperfection, perfectionism does not.
Perfectionism is self-destructive because it's unattainable. Yes, perfectionism, like everything else, can have positive impacts. Heroin, for instance, makes people feel really fucking good. A positive result doesn't mean that it's positive overall.
Kristin Neff is a leading researcher on self-compassion. She suggests doing three things to help foster self-compassion.
Self-kindness - Being understanding and accepting towards oneself.
Common Humanity - Everyone makes mistakes, some just happen to be more impactful than others and that's okay. We all fuck up.
Mindfulness - Not over-identifying with our feelings. Feeling them and letting them go.
Cultivating a resilient spirit: Letting go of numbing and powerlessness.
Hope is not an emotion, it is a way of thinking, and it can be learned. There are three elements to cultivating hope:
You know what you want to achieve.
You have an idea of how to achieve it.
You believe in yourself.
Practice critical awareness by challenging the notion that you are alone in your experience.
Numbing or avoiding emotions is a universal behavior, but like perfectionism, that doesn't mean its net impact is positive. Humans can't selectively numb emotions. When we numb the bad, we also numb the good. If you are anything like how I used to be, you read that statement and disagreed so I'll provide an example. Have you ever had something emotionally painful happen before attending some kind of social obligation? I would assume everyone has at some point. Were you able to fully enjoy that experience? Numbing emotions doesn't get rid of them, it just makes them run in the background which will inevitably decrease the amount of happiness you can experience at any given point in time.
Cultivating gratitude and joy: Letting go of scarcity and fear of the dark.
Many people believe that fitting in will make them feel accepted which will then lead to them feeling good about themselves. Unfortunately, that approach doesn't work. The Greek word for joy is chairo. Chairo means "the good mood of the soul." Chairo is found with virtue and wisdom and its antithesis is fear. In my readings of other books and across theological and philosophical mentalities, this duality is very prominent. Fear is the ultimate destructor of joy. "The dark does not destroy the light; it defines it. It's our fear of the dark that casts our joy into the shadows." A scarcity mindset is one defined by fear, never having or being enough, what Brene describes as the primary ailment of the world in her book Daring Greatly, which I personally agree with. Most people operate from a place of deficiency in their day to day with thoughts like "I didn't get enough sleep," "I didn't get done what I wanted," or similar statements emphasizing what a person didn't get or didn't get done that day, week, month, or year. The opposite mindset is that of sufficiency. Sufficiency is a declaration that whatever was done was enough, including judgments pertaining to one's character.
Cultivating intuition and trusting faith: Letting go of the need for certainty.
Brene made her own definition of intuition based on her research: "Intuition is not a single way of knowing - it's our ability to hold space for uncertainty and our willingness to trust the many ways we've developed knowledge and insight, including instinct, experience, faith, and reason." On faith, theologian Richard Rohr said: "Many religious folks insist on answers that are always true. We love closure, resolution, and clarity, while thinking that we are people of 'faith'! How strange that the very word 'faith' has come to mean its exact opposite." Faith is belief, not surety, a hope of things, not a sure knowledge of them. In either case, the underlying problem is the need for certainty, another mirage in the oases of our delusions. Absolute certainty, based on absolute truth, doesn't exist and if it does, we certainly don't know it yet.
Cultivating creativity: Letting go of comparison.
"Comparison is all about conformity and competition." "The comparison mandate becomes this crushing paradox of 'fit in and stand out'! It's not 'cultivate self-acceptance, belonging, and authenticity'; it's 'be just like everyone else, but better.'" It takes a lot of energy to be the same as everyone else but better and it rarely, if ever, leads to happiness. As Theodore Roosevelt put it: "Comparison is the thief of joy." According to Brene, creativity is "the only unique contribution that we will ever make in this world." While not everyone may identify as creative, creativity is literally anything that you create. Creativity is described by the writer William Plomber as "the power to connect the seemingly unconnected." There are a million ways to create whether it be by writing, drawing, singing, knitting, decorating, cooking, synthesizing, etc. Find a way to cultivate your own creativity and make something that is uniquely yours.
Cultivating play and rest: Letting go of exhaustion as a status symbol and productivity as self-worth.
The title really says it all. How you can do that is to put a higher value on rest and play. Stuart Brown is a researcher on play who argues that play is not an option, it's a necessity. "The opposite of play is not work - the opposite of play is depression." "Play helps us deal with difficulties, provides a sense of expansiveness, promotes mastery of our craft, and is an essential part of the creative process. Most important, true play that comes from our own inner needs and desires is the only path to finding lasting joy and satisfaction in our work. In the long run, work does not work without play." One aspect of play is purposelessness; we play because it's fun and we want to. Play is a form of rest but getting adequate sleep plays a huge role in functioning, stability, and health beyond just feeling tired. Likewise, breaks improve efficiency and output. Here is a meta-analysis from the National Institute of Health on the subject. Next time you take a break at work let your boss know you are just trying to help the company be more productive.
Cultivating calm and stillness: Letting go of anxiety as a lifestyle.
Revisiting the commentary on fear, calm is attained by releasing fear, as is stillness. Brene defined stillness thus: "Stillness is not about focusing on nothingness; it's about creating a clearing. It's opening up an emotionally clutter-free space and allowing ourselves to feel and think and dream and question." Freeness of the mind comes from releasing ourselves of our fears.
Cultivating meaningful work: Letting go of self-doubt and "supposed to."
Thinking errors are unhealthy patterns of thinking which I go over in another post. "Shoulding" is a thinking error. Believing that you need to, must, have to, ought to, or should do something is 1) incorrect and 2) a recipe for unhappiness. The secret to finding meaningful work is to engage in cultivating our gifts and talents and then sharing them. "As it turns out, it's not merely benign or 'too bad' if we don't use the gifts that we've been given; we pay for it with our emotional and physical well-being." Moreover, no one can decide what is meaningful for anyone else. You must decide what is meaningful to you for your own sake.
Cultivating laughter, song, and dance: Letting go of being cool and "always in control."
I think the true message of this chapter is to share joy, and don't be afraid if that makes you look "uncool." Two quotes that I liked from this chapter:
"The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you're uncool." - The film "Almost Famous"
"To watch us dance is to hear our hearts speak." - Hopi Indian saying
"Real life is always tragic, and those who do not know this have never lived."
-Carl Jung
Living a real life is one that is lived in authenticity and living in authenticity will simultaneously bring ecstatic joy and crushing sadness, but that is what defines a life worth living. Is it more rewarding to live a life of conformity and face-value acceptance or to experience who you truly are? To fit in or to belong? Fear would point to the former, and whole hearted living to the latter.
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