Living Wholeheartedly: Brené Brown TED Talk

Brené Brown at TEDxHouston

Living Wholeheartedly

or

The Price of Invulnerability

I lost count of the ah ha! moments these twenty minutes gave me.

In a nutshell:

• We're born to be connected.
• Interpersonal disconnect defines our current culture.
• What breaks interpersonal connection aka relationship?
• Shame. Guilt. 
• Why do some weather encounters with shame and guilt while others are sunk by it?
• Those who are sunk have a deep-seated sense of unworthiness while those who weather it have a pervasive sense of worthiness.
• That sense of worthiness keeps their hearts whole and resilient.

How do the wholehearted live?

• With the courage to be imperfect.
• With compassion and kindness beginning with themselves.
• With connections rooted in authenticity--able to let go of shoulds be who they are
• Believing they are enough just as they are
• Embracing vulnerability--seeing it as the source of their beauty
• With willingness to takes risks--love with no guarantees
• Releasing need to be in control
• Practicing gratitude and joy

Those without the skills of wholeheartedness attempt to escape the pain by numbing the difficult emotions through:

• Addictions
• Perfection
• Control

BUT

You cannot numb selectively.

Attempts to numb sadness, shame, grief, anger, fear...
Will also numb love, joy, peace, gratitude, hope...

Without emotions life looses meaning and purpose.

Don't be satisfied with my synopsis tho.  Listen to her presentation.  The story she tells about the course of her research is priceless.  And there are plenty of points I didn't include.  Plus I paraphrased in places.

And she's funny.

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The Ultimate Bounce Back

After falling flat on your face...What would you do?

I'm going to watch this over and over until it starts to stick:

After the fall, get back up and keep going.

Don't even bother to dust yourself off.

Just get up and GO

She actually won anyway!!!

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Open the Eyes of My Heart

Blind and Autistic Singing Praise Music

Words can add little value to this video.  Just watch.

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How Helen Keller Found Her Voice

What a YouTube Treasure!

Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan on a newsreel

demonstrating how Helen learned to speak.

Her first spoken sentence was a gem 

I have been fascinated with Helen Keller's story ever since 6th grade when I read her autobiography.  Which was long before I'd seen either of the Miracle Worker films.  Maybe visual impairment was already on my radar because of growing up watching my grandmother deal with hers but I don't have a specific memory of that being why I picked up the autobiography.

I do remember how enthralled I became with her story of coming out of a cave-dark, chaotic and silent world ruled by fear and anger into a love-bright, word-ordered world rooted in companionship, gratitude and hope.

That book may have also been the beginning of my obsession with words and language--their meaning, etymology, grammar, origins, translation, language acquisition and so on.

Imagining that little girl unable to see or hear and having no vocabulary had me thinking at age 12 about the role words have in the creation of reality.  What was a thing or an action or a thought if it had no name?

That Zen Koan I encountered much later asking if the tree falling in the forest where no ear could hear made a sound, probably had less of an impact on me after having contemplated whether things without names had any thingness at all or whether the namer and the named had a special bond or whether the namer created the thing by naming it?

Except that didn't fit the Bible story of Adam naming the animals after God created them.  But still I wondered how they could have been nameless from the moment of their creation until the moment Adam named them.  How could their creator not know their names? Which led to wondering whether God's name for them and Adam's had been the same one.  Then there was the concern that they might have their own names for themselves...

Yes, I often turn my brain into a pretzel with thoughts like these and experience it as pleasure.  Go figure.

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With Ears for Eyes..

...the World's his Symphony.

Oskar was born without eyes.  He was six weeks old when brought to his new forever home where they introduced him to toys with bells...

Just watch.  Words can't do it justice.

Then, if you're as inspired as I was, go on over to their YouTube channel and watch him grow up and have adventures with his housemate Klaus.

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Sam Burns: The Little Drummer Boy with the Big Happy

Sam Burns a 17 year old with Progeria, a snare drummer for his highschool marching band gave this TED talk last fall on the theme of his life philosophy and the huge premium he put on happiness.

I watched this over and over.  Can't get enough of it.  One of his big aspirations was to contribute in such a way as to change the world.  As I watched I was holding that hope for him as well.  Then while preparing this post, I happened to glance down at the comments on the YouTube page and saw that he'd passed away in January.

Well I expect that between all the lives that he touched during the exemplary life that he lived, this video that's gone viral and the HBO documentary about his life that aired last October he has triggered change in enough people that the cumulative ripple effect can't help but change the world.

I know I was changed by my encounter with him in this video.

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