Excerpts-

• From the cover One
  
  The Physics of Vulnerability
  
  When it comes to human behavior, emotions, and thinking, the adage “The more I learn, the less I know” is right on. I’ve learned to give up my pursuit of netting certainty and pinning it to the wall. Some days I miss pretending that certitude is within reach. My husband, Steve, always knows I’m mourning the loss of my young-­researcher quest when I am holed up in my study listening to David Gray’s song “My Oh My” on repeat. My favorite lyrics are:
  
  What on earth is going on in my head?
  
  You know I used to be so sure.
  
  You know I used to be so definite.
  
  And it’s not just the lyrics; it’s the way that he sings the word def.in.ite. Sometimes, it sounds to me as if he’s mocking the arrogance of believing that we can ever know everything, and other times it sounds like he’s pissed off that we can’t. Either way, singing along makes me feel better. Music always makes me feel less alone in the mess.
  
  While there are really no hard-­and-­fast absolutes in my field, there are truths about shared experiences that deeply resonate with what we believe and know. For example, the Roosevelt quote that anchors my research on vulnerability and daring gave birth to three truths for me:
  
  I want to be in the arena. I want to be brave with my life. And when we make the choice to dare greatly, we sign up to get our asses kicked. We can choose courage or we can choose comfort, but we can’t have both. Not at the same time.
  
  Vulnerability is not winning or losing; it’s having the courage to show up and be seen when we have no control over the outcome. Vulnerability is not weakness; it’s our greatest measure of courage.
  
  A lot of cheap seats in the arena are filled with people who never venture onto the floor. They just hurl mean-­spirited criticisms and put-­downs from a safe distance. The problem is, when we stop caring what people think and stop feeling hurt by cruelty, we lose our ability to connect. But when we’re defined by what people think, we lose the courage to be vulnerable. Therefore, we need to be selective about the feedback we let into our lives. For me, if you’re not in the arena getting your ass kicked, I’m not interested in your feedback.
  
  I don’t think of these as “rules,” but they have certainly become guiding principles for me. I believe there are also some basic tenets about being brave, risking vulnerability, and overcoming adversity that are useful to understand before we get started. I think of these as the basic laws of emotional physics: simple but powerful truths that help us understand why courage is both transformational and rare. These are the rules of engagement for rising strong.
  
  1. If we are brave enough often enough, we will fall; this is the physics of vulnerability. When we commit to showing up and risking falling, we are actually committing to falling. Daring is not saying, “I’m willing to risk failure.” Daring is saying, “I know I will eventually fail and I’m still all in.” Fortune may favor the bold, but so does failure.
  
  2. Once we fall in the service of being brave, we can never go back. We can rise up from our failures, screwups, and falls, but we can never go back to where we stood before we were brave or before we fell. Courage transforms the emotional structure of our being. This change often brings a deep sense of loss. During the process of rising, we sometimes find ourselves homesick for a place that no longer exists. We want to go back to that moment before we...

About the Author-

• Brené Brown is a research professor at the University of Houston, where she holds the Huffington Foundation–Brené Brown Endowed Chair at the Graduate College of Social Work. She is also a visiting professor in management at the University of Texas at Austin’s McCombs School of Business. Brown has spent the past two decades studying courage, vulnerability, shame, and empathy and is the author of six #1 New York Times bestsellers: Atlas of the Heart, The Gifts of Imperfection, Daring Greatly, Rising Strong, Braving the Wilderness, and Dare to Lead, which is the culmination of a seven-year study on courage and leadership. With Tarana Burke, she co-edited the bestselling anthology You Are Your Best Thing: Vulnerability, Shame Resilience, and the Black Experience. She hosts the Unlocking Us and Dare to Lead podcasts, and her TEDx talk, “The Power of Vulnerability,” is one of the top five most-viewed TED talks in the world with more than 50 million views. Her Netflix special, The Call to Courage, is the first filmed lecture by a researcher on the streaming service. Brené Brown lives in Houston, Texas, with her husband, Steve. They have two children, Ellen and Charlie.

Reviews-

• Brené Brown's latest book continues her focus on growing stronger from tough life experiences. She narrates it with a steady sense of urgency that dominates the listening, even when the themes have a lighter, more optimistic tone. But these are weighty issues, especially if you're recovering from difficulties and, overall, they are served well by the drama in the author's performance. Highly personal stories and Brown's gut-wrenching honesty contribute to the intensity and work well to illustrate her step-by-step formula for rising above shame and hurt. She has a remarkably nuanced understanding of how pain makes us internalize blame, avoid personal truths, and lose our openness to life's rewards. This is an invaluable resource that sounds as close to psychotherapy as an audio can be. T.W. © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine

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