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Nashville, TN: (From the Daring Greatly Blog Read-Along - Preface and Introduction (Pages xii – 17))
I already covered the xii section of the book, Daring Greatly, by Brené Brown, as well as the how-I-came-to-find-this-book-and-what-I’m-planning-on-doing-with-it portion in another post.
Now after reading the intro and listening to the podcast, I am ready to do my first ‘official’ blog read-along post.
One thing I’ve noticed (and we’ll see if this holds true for future episodes) is that the podcast is more of a general question and answer session about overall ideas from the book instead of a more detailed description of the chapter at hand. I suppose if you are reading along like a good student, you don’t necessarily need the author to give you cliff notes of what you just reviewed. However, as I prepared to do my own recap of what I read and heard, I found it difficult to come up with a cohesive conclusion of the two versions.
So for this week’s recap (and the next seven weeks, unless she does it differently), here are the highlights – audibly and visually.
WHAT I HEARD:
I love listening to
Brené speak. She engages you in conversation and it feels like she is right there, chatting with you over a glass of wine. Plus, she uses just the right amount of curse words that makes me believe she is talking from an authentic place.
Brené says:
“We get into talking about it and we worry that people around us will hear
‘wah wah wah wah wah… vulnerability… wah wah... shame…’
and they probably do!”
I love that she addresses this right off the bat. One of my greatest fears of talking about this subject -- and really any subject that has to do with personal growth / spirituality / bettering myself -- is that people will think "Oh Lord, she's talking about that again." And that might be true. But here's the thing -- if you want to know the real me, you must know this is a huge part of who I am.
She addresses the people in our lives with whom we're trying to talk about the subject:
"I don’t need you to agree with it or sign up for it,
I’m just asking you for a conversation.
I think we're worth it."
I'm glad Brené thinks we're worth it... now it's my job to believe it for myself.
WHAT I READ:
After reading the intro, I started to wonder why Brené wrote this book. Or, in the bigger picture, why did is the study of how to live wholeheartedly so important to her? (Or important enough to write a book and carry on a blog read-along?)
Brené writes:
"It’s not an easy journey from excruciating to exquisite,
but for me it’s been worth every step.”
Perhaps the "why" is to find a way to have exquisite moments. Not just run-of-the-mill everyday occurrences. Not just living life at a comfortable 60%. But to truly live life at its fullest. To soak in all of the opportunities I'm given. To love with my whole heart, regardless of the outcome.
To quote Erma Bombeck:
"To stand before God at the end of my life,
I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say,
'I used everything you gave me.'"
So I'll tell you why the reason I'm doing all this is: simply because I want it that way.
Oh yeah - that's another thing. To know me is to know I've got a thing for
boy bands....
