She delivered a talk that became the 4th most watched TED video in the world, generating over 23 million views and 1800 comments. She is the author of three New York Times Bestsellers: Rising Strong, Daring Greatly and The Gifts of Imperfection. Yes, I’m talking about Brené Brown – the research professor at the University of Houston that has spent the past 13 years studying vulnerability, courage, worthiness, and shame.
You might have heard about and enjoyed her TED talk on vulnerability but it’s quite unlikely to have discovered another amazing speech of hers on criticism, given at 99 Conference.
I find this talk a valuable piece of work because Brené managed to assemble artfully personal storytelling with scientific research that led to powerful ideas on how to deal with external and inner critics.
If you constantly find yourself in situations where you wonder: “Shall I publish this post?”, “Shall I speak up about this?”, “Is it a good idea to write on a public blog?”, then you struggle with self-doubt and often times, may lead to severe self-criticism that does nothing else but keep us play small.
I don’t know about you, but I’m very familiar with this and when I first stumbled upon this speech, it gave me a sense of belonging and release on the topic of (self)criticism, and often times her thoughts came back to me in challenging moments. There are many people who struggle with contradictory thoughts that come from the fear of being exposed and ridiculed, criticized, or misunderstood. Brené not only that shares her own battles with shame, scarcity and comparison, but also gives tools on how to cope with them in order to keep doing courageous work.
I hope you’ll make 20 minute time to listen to the speech, and if you do so, at the end you may reflect upon this wise quote mentioned, that belongs to Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th president of the United States:
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; (….) who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.”
Brené Brown: Why Your Critics Aren’t The Ones Who Count from 99U on Vimeo.
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