When we fail to set boundaries and hold people accountable, we feel used and mistreated. This is why we sometimes attack who they are, which is far more hurtful than addressing a behavior or a choice.
Bren BrownRead
Perfectionism is a twenty-ton shield that we lug around thinking it will protect us when, in fact, it's the thing that's really preventing us from taking flight.
Interpretation
Perfectionism can hinder personal growth and progress rather than protect us.
BrenΓ© Brown's quote reflects the idea that the pursuit of perfection is not a safeguard against failure or inadequacy; instead, it creates a burden that can stifle creativity and personal development. The 'twenty-ton shield' symbolizes how our desire for perfection can become a heavy obstacle, preventing us from taking risks, embracing vulnerability, and ultimately achieving our true potential.
In practice
During a workshop on creativity, I shared this quote to encourage participants to embrace imperfection.
When we fail to set boundaries and hold people accountable, we feel used and mistreated. This is why we sometimes attack who they are, which is far more hurtful than addressing a behavior or a choice.
Social media has given us this idea that we should all have a posse of friends when in reality, if we have one or two really good friends, we are lucky.
What we know matters but who we are matters more.
Authenticity is the daily practice of letting go of who we think we're supposed to be and embracing who we are.
Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change.
Nostalgia is also a dangerous form of comparison. Think about how often we compare our lives to a memory that nostalgia has so completely edited that it never really existed.
When envoys are sent with compliments in their mouths, it is a sign that the enemy wishes for a truce. If the enemy's troops march up angrily and remain facing ours for a long time without either joining battle or removing demands, the situation is one that requires great vigilance and circumspection. To begin by bluster, but afterward to take fright at the enemy's numbers, shows a supreme lack of intelligence.
He that would be superior to external influences must first become superior to his own passions.
Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper.
Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb nail.
[T]hat I could find company and consolation and hope in an object pulled almost at random from a bookshelf--felt akin to an instance of religious grace.
The children would remember for the rest of their lives the august solemnity with which their father, devastated by his prolonged vigil and by the wraith of his imagination, revealed his discovery to them: 'The world is round, like an orange.
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