I’m learning that recognizing and leaning into the discomfort of vulnerability teaches us how to live with joy, gratitude and grace.
Brené Brown
Joy, Gratitude and Grace
Topic: Joy & Happiness
To love someone fiercely, to believe in something with your whole heart, to celebrate a fleeting moment in time, to fully engage in a life that doesn’t come with guarantees—these are risks that involve vulnerability and often pain. But, I’m learning that recognizing and leaning into the discomfort of vulnerability teaches us how to live with joy, gratitude and grace.
Dr. 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. Additionally, she serves as a visiting professor in management at The University of Texas at Austin McCombs School of Business. Brown's academic roles are extensions of her deeper mission to explore the themes of courage, vulnerability, shame, and empathy. Her research is not just data and theories; it's an invitation to engage with the very elements that make us human.
Brown has spent two decades contributing to our understanding of emotional and social dynamics through her research and writing. She is the author of five books that have risen to the top of the New York Times bestseller list: "The Gifts of Imperfection," "Daring Greatly," "Rising Strong," "Braving the Wilderness," and "Dare to Lead." These works offer pragmatic insights into the nature of human connection. They encourage the reader to embrace their own vulnerabilities, pointing out that it's often in these spaces of uncertainty and risk that we discover our capacity for love and belonging.
Beyond the page, Brown expands her reach through various platforms. Her TED talk, "The Power of Vulnerability," has been viewed more than 50 million times worldwide. She also hosts two podcasts, "Unlocking Us" and "Dare to Lead," providing a space for ongoing discussions about the complexities of the human experience. In 2019, she broke new ground with her Netflix special, "The Call to Courage," becoming the first researcher to present a filmed lecture on the streaming service. Through all these avenues, Brown underscores the need for a heart-centered approach to life, one that makes room for both the challenges and the beauty of our shared human journey.
The Gifts of Imperfection
Brene Brown. The Gifts of Imperfection : Let Go of Who You Think You’re Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are. Center City, Minn., Hazelden, 2010.
Brené Brown
Theme: Joy
About Brené Brown’s Quote on Joy, Gratitude & Grace [Commentary]
Brené Brown writes, “I’m learning that recognizing and leaning into the discomfort of vulnerability teaches us how to live with joy, gratitude and grace.” In her broader reflection, she describes the kinds of risks that make vulnerability unavoidable: “to love someone fiercely, to believe in something with your whole heart, to celebrate a fleeting moment in time, to fully engage in a life that doesn’t come with guarantees.” These moments, she acknowledges, often involve pain. Yet it is precisely this discomfort that becomes the teacher. By “leaning into the discomfort of vulnerability,” rather than avoiding it, Brown affirms that we are opened to joy.
Brown does not separate vulnerability from the life we hope to live. She writes that these risks—loving, believing, celebrating, engaging—are part of a life without guarantees. Choosing to recognize and stay present to the discomfort involved is what teaches us to live with “joy, gratitude and grace.” Her emphasis on the learning process—“I’m learning”—reveals that this is not a once-and-for-all mastery but an ongoing movement. In Brown’s view, vulnerability is not a problem to be solved, but a way to stay connected to joy even when life remains uncertain.
By joining “gratitude and grace” with joy, Brown points to the fuller fruit of vulnerability. It is through daring to love and believe without assurance of the outcome that we find a gratitude for life’s fleeting moments and a grace that meets imperfection. Brown’s words show that joy is not a product of control or certainty, but a gift that grows from recognizing and leaning into the full experience of life, however tender or difficult it may be.
Brené Brown on Happiness, Gratitude, and Joy
Brené Brown on Living Wholeheartedly [Excerpts]
Wholehearted people share the following qualities: courage, compassion, and connection. Courage isn’t about being brave but telling the story of who you are with your whole heart. The wholehearted have the courage to be imperfect.
“Spirituality emerged as a fundamental guidepost in Wholeheartedness. Not religiosity but the deeply held belief that we are inextricably connected to one another by a force greater than ourselves―a force grounded in love and compassion. For some of us that’s God, for others it’s nature, art, or even human soulfulness. I believe that owning our worthiness is the act of acknowledging that we are sacred. Perhaps embracing vulnerability and overcoming numbing is ultimately about the care and feeding of our spirits.”
―Brené Brown, Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead.
Brené Brown on Spirituality [Excerpts]
I recorded an audio program for Sounds True titled, Rising Strong as a Spiritual Practice. Spirituality emerged as an important theme in the data I collected for Rising Strong…
“Spirituality is recognizing and celebrating that we are all inextricably connected to each other by a power greater than all of us, and that our connection to that power and to one another is grounded in love and compassion. Practicing spirituality brings a sense of perspective, meaning, and purpose to our lives.”
This definition was first published in The Gifts of Imperfection. For some people, that power greater than us is God; for others, it’s fishing. Some are reminded of our inextricable connection by faith; others by expressions of shared humanity. Some find that religion is the best expression of inextricable human connection that is guided by love and compassion, and others believe that no entity has done more to corrode that connection than organized religion.
While diverse in practice, the definition of spirituality and the importance of it to the concepts of wholeheartedness and rising strong has withstood the test of new data. In Grounded Theory, a theory is only as good as its ability to work new data. This one has stood the test of time and emerged again as an important variable in the research on true belonging that I write about in Braving the Wilderness.
—Brené Brown [Defining Spirituality—brenebrown.com (March 27, 2018)].
“And so when I started to look at belonging, what I realized is that it is a spiritual practice, and it’s the spiritual practice of believing in ourselves and belonging to ourselves so fully that we find what’s sacred in not only being a part of something, like our DNA calls us to be, but also, we find sacred the need, on occasion, to stand alone in our values, in our beliefs, when we’re called to do that, as well. And so, to me, this idea of true belonging is a type of belonging that never requires us to be inauthentic or change who we are, but a type of belonging that demands who we are—that we be who we are—even when we jeopardize connection with other people, even when we have to say, “I disagree. That’s not funny. I’m not on board.””
—Brené Brown [Strong Back, Soft Front, Wild Heart—On Being with Krista Tippett].
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