Vulnerability

For a few months, I left this quote on our kitchen wall as a constant reminder:

Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage  ~ Lao Tzu

I believe in order to live an authentic life, we have to be vulnerable and in order to be vulnerable, we have to have courage.  To be courageous, we also need to feel safe, which is intricately connected to love  and trust.

Brené Brown has spent years doing research on vulnerability, shame, worthiness, connection and belonging. In this You tube clip she talks about moving past the critics, including the inner critic that don’t truly serve us.

Brené  quotes Theodore Roosevelt  in this talk as being pivotal  in shifting her  own perspective about critics.  The quote is poignant and sheds light on what resilience looks like and the courage it takes to keep trying.

“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 strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; 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, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
― Theodore Roosevelt

Namaste,

Shobhna