Brene Brown

Shame is the most powerful, master emotion. It's the fear that we're not good enough.

I think our capacity for wholeheartedness can never be greater than our willingness to be broken-hearted. It means engaging with the world from a place of vulnerability and worthiness.

Men walk this tightrope where any sign of weakness illicits shame, and so they're afraid to make themselves vulnerable for fear of looking weak.

I hesitate to use a pathologizing label, but underneath the so-called narcissistic personality is definitely shame and the paralyzing fear of being ordinary.

I'm not a parenting expert. In fact, I'm not sure that I even believe in the idea of 'parenting experts.' I'm an engaged, imperfect parent and a passionate researcher. I'm an experienced mapmaker and a stumbling traveler. Like many of you, parenting is by far my boldest and most daring adventure.

I've learned that men and women who are living wholehearted lives really allow themselves to soften into joy and happiness. They allow themselves to experience it.

Vulnerability is basically uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure.

We're hardwired for connection. There's no arguing with the bioscience. But we can want it so badly we're trying to hot-wire it.

As unique as we all are, an awful lot of us want the same things. We want to shake up our current less-than-fulfilling lives. We want to be happier, more loving, forgiving and connected with the people around us.

When the people we love stop paying attention, trust begins to slip away and hurt starts seeping in.

As a vulnerability researcher, the greatest barrier I see is our low tolerance for vulnerability. We're almost afraid to be happy. We feel like it's inviting disaster.

Kids who have an understanding of how and why their feelings are what they are are much more likely to talk to us about what's happening, and they have better skills to work it out.

My husband's a pediatrician, so he and I talk about parenting all the time. You can't raise children who have more shame resilience than you do.

I think if you follow anyone home, whether they live in Houston or London, and you sit at their dinner table and talk to them about their mother who has cancer or their child who is struggling in school, and their fears about watching their lives go by, I think we're all the same.

Ironically, parenting is a shame and judgment minefield precisely because most of us are wading through uncertainty and self-doubt when it comes to raising our children.

We judge people in areas where we're vulnerable to shame, especially picking folks who are doing worse than we're doing.

It's hard to practice compassion when we're struggling with our authenticity or when our own worthiness is off-balance.

Many people think of perfectionism as striving to be your best, but it is not about self-improvement; it's about earning approval and acceptance.

We use work to numb out. We can't turn off our machines because we're afraid we're going to miss something.

Live-tweeting your bikini wax is not vulnerability. Nor is posting a blow-by-blow of your divorce . That's an attempt to hot-wire connection. But you can't cheat real connection. It's built up slowly. It's about trust and time.

To me, constructive criticism is when people take ownership of their ideas. That's why I don't listen to anything that's anonymous. But it's hard; when there's something hurtful out there, I still want to read it over and over and memorize it and explain my point of view to the person.