Courage over Comfort

I was recently introduced to author, researcher & storyteller Brené Brown (by one of my friends Pia) and her research into vulnerability. Before watching her Netflix Documentary and TedTalks, I hadn't ever really thought a great deal about vulnerability and what it means. I realise now that vulnerability is such a big part of our everyday lives, whether that be taking a slight discomfort in any form of task throughout the day or actively putting yourself out there, it seems to creep up on us all the time.

Now, before I get into writing about this, I'd like to disclaim that this post is based on my interpretation of Brené's work and how it impacted me and my beliefs. Brené is a highly intelligent woman who has dedicated 20 years of her life to researching shame and vulnerability and I really really encourage anyone (and everyone) to watch her talks, they're extremely eye opening and made me laugh AND cry along the way.

Vulnerability

Brené describes vulnerability as "having the courage to show up when you can't control the outcome" * (I'm not going to cite the quotes exactly but I'll include the info on where I got the quotes at the bottom of this post if you're interested), I think the emphasis here should be on the control - or lack there of. Humans generally strive for a sense of control in their lives, it's a comfort in certainty and in some ways power, something that is absent from vulnerability (if you take Brené's definition). She argues that "vulnerability is not weakness, it's our most accurate way to measure courage"**, which got me thinking, when in our lives have we made the best personal achievements? It tends to be when you've been the most courageous or put yourself out there. Other times it's when you put the impact it can have on others before how it can impact you. For me there have been many instances where I've not been sure of what the outcome will be, yet I've still taken that leap of faith to do what it is I want to do. One that stands out for me is writing about my first year university experience, now I'm not saying by any means that was incredibly courageous of me, there's only so much courage involved when you have a screen to 'hide behind', but it was definitely a vulnerable thing to do, writing about my emotions and admitting that I wasn't happy about certain aspects of my life. Yet that blog post opened me up to so many different things, people who I'd never spoken to before reached out to me, I formed friendships from it and the majority of people who did speak to me expressed some form of gratitude in that it had helped them in some way. I learnt a lot from that, putting aside how I would be perceived because of it or how 'embarrassing' it was to talk about and focusing on how it could positively impact others, it really taught me a lot about how I want to live my life.

Brené's motto is "Courage over Comfort" and it's really something I want to stand by in life, you're very rarely going to get anywhere if you don't exit your comfort zone and more often than not when you do, yes it may be daunting, but the positive outcomes outweigh the negatives.

Another thing Brené talks about is 'letting yourself be seen', she argues that you can't fully experience love and joy if you don't let people see you in the first place. For me letting yourself be seen is embracing things about yourself, your differences, your interests and showing people these things, you can't experience a bond over interests if people aren't aware of your interests in the first place. This is where I actually like social media in that you can express your interests openly and connect with others who also share a love for these things. I think the issue here is that people let the fear of what others would think about these interests overrule the possibility of finding someone else who shares this interest because of the vulnerability involved. I've made friendships over fitness and bonded with people over the lack of interest in clubbing because I've let people know these things about me (turns out there are other people in the world who like watching training montages of muscly athletes working out and there's a whole list of hashtags based around porridge - who'd have known?!).

Ultimately, what I'm saying is, think about the things that you want to achieve in life and think about how much comfort is (or isn't) involved in obtaining those goals. I don't have masses of experience to tell you that these things have worked for me but other people do, people like Brené who have 20 years worth of research on it. Maybe ask your parents or people around you about courageous things they've done and see where it got them?

Gratitude

The last thing I want to write about is gratitude. Now, Brené talks about it much better than I do so I really recommend you watch her Netflix documentary, but she talks about a study conducted on Joy. They found out that those that could fully lean into joy all had one thing in common: they practiced gratitude. This is something that I've done for a while now and I don't think it should be an embarrassing thing to admit at all. Last year, shortly after the few bad months I'd experienced in first year, I was bought a gratitude journal for my Birthday. This journal asked me different questions each night, with three bullet points for me to write down different things I was grateful for in relation to the question. I used this diary for a whole year (sadly the journal could only be so long) and it really changed my perspective on things. It's allowed me to change how I react to and perceive negative situations, when something bad happens I look towards anything within the situation worth being grateful for, or what could have been worse, and be grateful that what happened wasn't the worse of the possible outcomes. Like Brené's research suggests, the more gratitude you implement into your life, the more joy you can experience from it. I really stand by that and recommend to anyone just to think about what they have in life to be grateful for.

Summary

That's all I'm going to write about for now, I really recommend you watch the Netflix documentary or her TedTalk on YouTube if you don't have Netflix. I'll link the TedTalk below and let me know what you think of it if you do decide to give either of the two a watch. I really stand by all of the things she talked about and want to implement these things into my life even more. If anything, I hope that this post can introduce you to Brené's incredible work (just like Pia did me) or that you can at least think about courage and gratitude and your experiences with them. Lastly, thanks again to Pia for introducing me to Brené and being the inspo behind this blog post 🧡

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I hope you enjoyed reading this, I'll be carrying on my interview series next week (looking to post my interviews every other week so it's not too repetitive) where I'll be asking my Mum questions all about her and her experiences in life!

Thanks again for all of your support, I really appreciate it and love receiving people's responses to my posts,

All my love,

Emily x

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TedTalk Link: https://youtu.be/iCvmsMzlF7o

* Netflix: Brené Brown: The Call to Courage

** Netflix: Brené Brown: The Call to Courage

Brené Brown: the Call to Courage (Netflix 2019)