Brené Brown

Plan on heartbreak ... The only people who don't have heartbreak in their careers are people who have no love or passion for their career. But heartbreak is, while miserable when you're in it, a small price... to pay for doing work that you're profoundly in love with.

True belonging is the spiritual practice of believing in and belonging to yourself so deeply that you can share your most authentic self with the world and find sacredness in both being a part of something and standing alone in the wilderness. True belonging doesn't require that you change who you are; it requires that you be who you are.

I always tell parents, you cannot control for the stories your kids will make up; the only thing you can do is provide a culture where they can go to you and say 'The story I'm making up right now is this—are you ashamed of me or for me?'

Most of the time, when we recall a memory, we are conscious that we are in the present recalling something from the past. However, when we experience something in the present that triggers an old trauma memory, we re-experience the sense of the original trauma. So, rather than remembering the wound, we become the wound.

Vulnerability, at its heart, is the willingness to show up and really be seen... when you can't control the outcome.

I would say, with very few exceptions, 99.9% of the parents who raised all of us were doing the very best they could—and probably 10 orders of magnitude better than what their parents did.

I think the key is owning the story ... As long as you deny the story, the story owns you. The story is not going anywhere. So, your choices are to pretend like it's not happening or to own the story and walk into it.

Your level of belonging will never exceed the level of courage you have to stand alone.

If you're not going to get excited and put value on your work, don't expect anyone else to get excited or put value on your work. If you're going to sit back and wait for people to knock on the door and say 'Talk to me about your work,' don't do it.

There was a lot of controversy around, when you're dealing with perpetrators of domestic violence, is that an action of power and control? And what I found in my work is that is a response to powerlessness, not power. People who feel a sense of power don't respond like that.

The belief that we have to change is that because someone didn't or couldn't love me, that makes me unlovable.

There is no bigger issue, I think... for those of us who feel like they don't belong in their families.

There's no greater and more profound danger in the human experience than powerlessness.

If I fail wholeheartedly, I can live with that. If I fail and I've been half-ass or half-hearted in my effort, that I cannot live with.