Blog Post 6: Brené Brown

About a week ago, we watched two Ted Talks by Brené Brown. The titles were The power of vulnerability and Listening to shame. I really enjoyed listening to her (so much that I now follow her on every social media network possible). I think part of the reason I enjoyed her Ted Talks so much was because she was discussing two topics, vulnerability and shame,  that people are afraid to talk about. Our society shuns these topics from conversations and people tend to avoid them as much as possible.

The first Ted Talk she did, The power of vulnerability, talks about human connection, love, and belonging. She states that connection only can happen when we are seen. She discussed that people who feel a strong connection to love and belonging believe they are worthy to feel love and belonging and are not fearful and shameful of feeling worthy. She found that people who believe they are worthy are whole-hearted people who have the courage to be imperfect, the compassion to be kind to themselves before others, and feel connection as a result of authenticity. She found that all of these people fully embraced vulnerability. Brené discussed how we numb vulnerability in our lives and try to avoid confronting our feelings of vulnerability. She concluded that when we numb the bad emotions and feelings we are afraid to face then we prevent joy from happening within our lives. After listening to this, it emphasized to me that it is ok to not perfect everything in our lives. It also made me realize it is ok to admit we are vulnerable because we have be vulnerable to feel joy and happiness. 


In Brené's talk, Listening to shame, she discusses what happens when people confront shame head-on. She begins talking about how vulnerability is not weakness and is an act of courage. She discusses all the different areas in our lives that we cannot address without realizing our feelings of shame. Shame is what causes us to think we are not good enough. It was interesting when she talked about how shame is organized by gender. For women shame is conflicting expectations about what we are supposed to be and for men shame is to not appear as weak. Both of these talks made me realize that we should address vulnerability and shame. Addressing these topics will help us be more honest with others and ourselves.

Observation:

Last week for one of my class, we participated in the SNAP challenge. I realized from my own and classmates experiences how hard and difficult it can be to live off of a certain amount of money.