By Brene Brown
Fill your mind with the people who inspire you.
Learn more about bell hooks (Gloria Jean Watkins), Ed Catmull, Shonda Rhimes.
Own your pain, and learn empathy and compassion so that you can spot hurt in yourself and around you.
Belong to yourself.
We're all "inextricably connected". For true belonging, we need to ensure this understanding (and practice of) this connection is not broken. We're all humans, bound by this fundamental need of shared trust, respect, and love.
Four elements of true belonging:
- People are hard to hate up close. Move in.
- Speak truth to bullshit. Be civil.
- Hold hands. With strangers.
- Strong back. Soft front. Wild heart.
It's OK to stand alone in our decisions and beliefs. Even in the face of fear, criticism, etc.
True belonging is being the wilderness. The wilderness as a metaphor for being present, being one with yourself, being who you are in all your strengths and faults. It is at once a place of danger and vulnerability, and a place of emotional respite and reflective solitude.
True belonging is knowing who you are, and being this person in challenging, uncomfortable situations.
Seven elements of trust that can be applied to others, and more importantly yourself:
- Boundaries
- Reliability
- Accountability
- Vault
- Integrity
- Nonjudgment
- Generosity
The paradox, and navigating them, is a spiritual value that can combat the rampant disconnect that we are experiencing today.
The world is in a state of crisis; a crisis where people are blaming others and scared instead of coming together to share in our trauma.
Enter bit about how we're all living and entrenched in social bubbles.
Good skill to have: to identify when one is lonely.
Why? Cause research shows that living with lonliness is deadlier than living with air pollition, obesity, and excessive drinking.
Fear got us here.
Race, gender, and class are the three biggest divides in the United States.
Stay 'zoomed in' to the local, to see people around you for who they are based on your lived experience. Don't pre-categorize them based on higher-level abstractions that make things appear this or that.
Pain is another thing to be able to recognize and learn to live with. Pain can manifest as different feelings that make it easier to avoid addressing the pain: addiction, violence toward others, escapism, hate. Pain can only heal when we recognize it and learn to process it.
Anger, as a manifestation of pain, is only a secondary emotion. Anger hides other feelings, and we are required to transform anger into something else for it to be useful.
It's hard to stay kind-hearted when you feel people are taking advantage of you or threatening you.
There are boundaries to how much tolerance we give to behavior.
- Physical safety
- Emotional safety (dehumanizing language and behavior)
Dehumanization (a topic to read more on) is a process that degrades our ability to trust, listen, communicate, and empathize. It creates sides, and puts people on the other side.
Categorization of groups of people (profiling based on race, gender, or class for example) is a gateway to dehumanizing. These 'othering' techniques, if successful, result in moral exclusions. A perception that 'others' are less than human, and thus are out of scope for moral code (of conduct). Then typically after grouping as 'other', language follows (name calling).
Reject language and discussion that makes people subhuman.
This dehumanization happens everywhere, today. On both sides of the political left/right spectrum. It can be a challenge to, at the same time, support folks (educate to re-humanize behavior) who are part of each end of these spectrums.
Dehumanizing language and behavior, is the gateway to physical violence.
Conflict resolution more as conflict transformation. This means coming away from a hard conversation (conflict or disagreement) with the outcomes of more shared understanding, respect, connection, and yet still disagree. Tactically, the key to this is understanding each others intent, focusing first on the shared present, moving to the shared future, and opening up to say 'tell me more' when you might want to 'counter' in an argument.
Loss of curiosity, and asking questions as a sign of weakness, are at the root of why there is so much bullshit. Bullshit isn't anti-truth, it simply dismisses truth. If you don't know, don't pretend, and say you don't know. Be curious.
The either/or framing (with me or with the enemy) is a false choice made by those trying to bullshit others. See it, and resist it by thinking beyond the false two choices that these situations present. But be civil about it.
Bullshit behavior:
The truth doesn't matter, what I think matters.
Resisting bullshit takes much more energy than making bullshit.
Two tactics to increase effectiveness against bullshit:
- Be curious and generous with the person
- Be civil (find common ground, don't disrespect, listen beyond your own preconceptions, and teach others the same behavior)
Note that even techniques of being civil can be weaponized against others.
Belief in our connected humanity is what we need to ensure we maintain.
To do this, we must:
Show up for collective moments of joy and pain so we can actually bear witness to inextricable human connection.
Showing up is generally called collective effervescence or collective assembly.
Common enemy intimacy is fake connection. It's a shared dialogue at the expense of another's humanity.
People on the extremes of both (political) spectrums are more alike to each other than the people they think they represent. This is because they are using that common enemy intimacy - the dehumanization of the 'other' - to band together. This is born out of their own pain and fear. Some of this can be seen at marches, where a set of more extreme people will rally behind "here's what we hate" compared to "here's what we believe in".
Research is clear: face-to-face contact is essential for believing in intrinsic connection (true belonging). Social media and technology can develop community, but are only as good in building true belonging as they allow us to achieve this face-to-face contact.
Courage requires vulnerability.
Basically, know who you are and what you stand for so you can speak your truth. Yet maintain an ability to be vulnerable and open to others as this is how you ensure your strength comes from love, not fear.
Practice gratitude, it is a common trait among those who have joy.