There’s an art to cussing. When used correctly, a well-placed bullshit or fuck really brings a story home. Brené Brown has polished this skill-set to doctorate level mastery.
As she brilliantly opines in her new Netflix special, she continues ownership of her space as the purveyor of vulnerability. If you’re not familiar, her books Daring Greatly and The Gift of Imperfection are desert island musts. She gets to the heart of living with her key tenant: vulnerability is where true courage begins. Our culture says the opposite: armor up, don’t show weakness, go for the throat. One of the many takeaways in this near comedy special is her riff on failure. Not being open to failing. But actual failure. I’m talking failing where you don’t know the next option, where the safety net for the safety net is gone. Where you finally realize how little control you genuinely have. In a similarly excellent read, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, Peter Scazerro references St John’s Dark Night of the Soul. The thesis of the poem is what he calls the joyful experience of being steered to God. The only light in this dark night is the one that burns in the soul and leads us to God. In other words, it’s being taken to the mat, and all the platitudes won’t pick you up. It’s the the place where you think our loving God has turned against you. That’s the vulnerability Brené is talking about. It’s where real life begins because it’s scary as fuck to be that surrendered to the outcome, which if you’re in the arena, will be bad. Some outcomes must include failure… major failure. If not, you haven’t risked beyond your means of scrappiness. I’ve failed with five businesses, and lost over $1.2M of investor capital. I planned, I followed best practices, my teams executed. The net result? Abject failure, where you wonder if your brain is pickled and your future is nothing more than a series of recapping “what the fuck happened?” I’ve questioned past decisions which made me scared to make the next ones. Ahh, but that means I’m stepping out of the arena. That’s taking a seat in the stands with the tepid souls with clean shirts and no scar tissue. As Brené reminds, staying in the arena requires continuous openness to being kicked again with no success.
But there is victory in recognition of your tribe. When you meet someone of the same ilk, there’s a gracious connection of knowing you’re from the same platoon. There’s a knowing smile and slight nod, a fist bump of confirmation that you bled and became real.
If you enjoyed this, tell some friends, and about the book. Per Brené’s advice, I have no shame in promoting I’m Not Hitler because the message needs to be read.
See ya next time. ML