Beginning to “Dare Greatly”

So, I’ve begun reading one of my gifts from a friend. The book “Daring Greatly” by Brene Brown. It may or may not have been suggested to me that I record my observations and reflections on it, and I take it to heart when these things are suggested. This will be me trying my best, chapter by chapter, to reflect, and ponder, and maybe be able to draw some useful conclusions.

Tonight, I read the foreword and the introduction. I don’t know much about the author, or rather I didn’t, beside what I have been told by my friends who have read her work and listened to her TED talks and such. I knew she was very knowledgeable on things that are very relevant to my personal journey, shame, emotion, vulnerability. This was enough, but upon reading the introduction and learning a bit about Brown, I find myself feeling quite seen and understood. She’s not just a researcher of these things, she’s a sufferer of them, in many ways that feel very close to my own experiences. Let me explain…

Im reading about her speaking in Houston, then her segment being featured, then going viral, and the discomfort this brought her. The simplest statement in that excerpt hit me like a freight train: when she said she’s never watched her TED talk. Something of great relevance here, not a shameless plug, but I’ve got several recordings on my YouTube channel of me singing, a bit of fun that a few people seem to enjoy. It brings me great joy to share things with the world, stories, songs, anything I can muster… but it brings me a lot of discomfort. I don’t know what most of them sound like. I don’t listen to myself sing, it makes me feel awful. I can’t hear what other people seem to hear. In my head I sound different, in my opinion far better, and the “truth” of hearing my own voice, recorded, almost makes me physically responsive it’s so jarring.

So if you can imagine my great surprise at hearing this PhD-holding, TED Talk-doing, published quite a few times author, social worker, and researcher pull a disconnection page right out of my own “regular dude” playbook, right in front of me, and just casually own it, I applaud your vivid mind’s eye. It was… honestly quite fuckin’ validating. Hell, if someone that’s “an authority in their field” has the same insecurity with putting herself out there as I do, then it’s not something that has to derail me. Clearly it can be overcome, and its existence doesn’t make me “lesser than,” either. Shit can happen to any of us, and isn’t a reflection of our worth.

Ive got a long way to go, not just with this book, but with figuring out myself, and learning to be me in the ways I choose, the ways that bring me joy.

I’ve been taking the time to tell myself “I am worth it, we are worth it,” on a regular basis. It seems that this is a very similar thought to one the author has regarding our need to see our self-worth. I believe she used the words “I am enough” in a similar way, but I can’t remember verbatim. I did catch the similarity there, and it was encouraging to see that this “silly coping mechanism” I was working with was right in line with what someone who knows what they’re talking about has to say on the matter.

All in all, after the introduction and foreword, it is clear that this book was not recommended and gifted to me lightly. These concepts of vulnerability, shame, etc. are things that are a heavy weight within me, and I can see that this is a journey I’m taking with a person who knows what it’s like to see things from a place I recognize.

Well, until next (first) chapter, I’ll leave it there, but it’s been nice to ponder “aloud” a bit, and I think I’ll enjoy this process.

I feel like this was anticipated, but I do not want to give anyone the satisfaction of having been so astute in their assignment of “homework.”

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