Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead

Group B: “My boss, my friends, and my family know that I don’t take calls before nine A.M. or after nine P.M. If the phone rings after or before those times, it’s either a wrong number or an emergency—a real emergency, not a work issue.”

from the data. Connection: Connection is the energy that is created between people when they feel seen, heard, and valued; when they can give and receive without judgment. Belonging: Belonging is the innate human desire to be part of something larger than us. Because this yearning is so primal, we often try to acquire it by fitting in and by seekin

I remind myself, “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.” (Cribbed from Voltaire.) A twenty-minute walk that I do is better than the four-mile run that I don’t do. The imperfect book that gets published is better than the perfect book that never leaves my computer. The dinner party of take-out Chinese food is better than the elegant dinner

A sense of worthiness inspires us to be vulnerable, share openly, and persevere. Shame keeps us small, resentful, and afraid. In

The secret killer of innovation is shame. You can’t measure it, but it is there. Every time someone holds back on a new idea, fails to give their manager much needed feedback, and is afraid to speak up in front of a client you can be sure shame played a part. That deep fear we all have of being wrong, of being belittled and of feeling less than, is

brave. To love ourselves and support each other in the process of becoming real is perhaps the greatest single act of daring greatly.

Wholehearted living is about engaging in our lives from a place of worthiness. It means cultivating the courage, compassion, and connection to wake up in the morning and think, No matter what gets done and how much is left undone, I am enough. It’s going to

And the only reason I’m still standing (and sitting here writing this book) is because I’ve cultivated some pretty fierce shame resilience skills and I’m crystal clear that courage is an important value to me. I clearly saw that these comments triggered shame in me and I could quickly reality-check the messages. Yes, they still hurt. Yes, I was pis

“Oh, the twinkle light quote. It’s one of my favorites: ‘Only when we’re brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light.’”