"I see the cultural messaging everywhere that says an ordinary life is a meaningless life. . . . I know the yearning to believe that what I'm doing matters and how easy it is to confuse that with the drive to be extraordinary. I know how seductive it is to use the celebrity culture yardstick to measure the smallness of our lives. And I also understand how grandiosity, entitlement, and admiration-seeking feel like just the right balm to soothe the ache of being too ordinary and inadequate."

"Cruelty is easy, cheap and rampant."

"Understanding the difference between healthy striving and perfectionism is critical to laying down the shield and picking up your life. Research shows that perfectionism hampers success. In fact, it's often the path to depression, anxiety, addiction, and life paralysis."

"I define connection as the energy that exists between people when they feel seen, heard, and valued; when they can give and receive without judgment; and when they derive sustenance and strength from the relationship."

"Rather than risking feeling disappointed, they're choosing to live disappointed."

"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."

"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."

"After doing this work or the past twelve years and watching scarcity ride roughshod over our families, organizations, and communities, I'd say the one thing we have in common is that we're sick of feeling afraid. we want to dare greatly. We're tired of the national conversation centering on "What should we fear" and "Who should we blame?" We all want to be brave."

"The willingness to show up changes us, It makes us a little braver each time."

"When we are experience shame we are often thrown into crisis mode...In this mode, the neocortex is bypassed and our acess to advanced, rational, calm thinking and processing of emotion all but disappears...we find ourselves becoming aggressive, wanting to run and hide and feeling paralyzed..."

"If we are going to find our way out of shame and back to each other, vulnerability is the path and courage is the light. To set down those lists of *what we're supposed to be* is brave. To love ourselves and support each other in the process of becoming real is perhaps the greatest single act of daring greatly."

"The reckoning is how we walk into our story; the rumble is where we own it. The goal of the rumble is to get honest about the stories we're making up about our struggles, to revisit, challenge, and reality-check these narratives."

"What separates privilege from entitlement is gratitude."

"Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it. Embracing our vulnerabilities is risky but not nearly as dangerous as giving up on love and belonging and joy-the experiences that make us the most vulnerable. Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light."

"When you look away from a homeless person, you diminish their humanity and your own."

"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."

"If you trade your authenticity for safety, you may experience the following: anxiety, depression, eating disorders, addiction, rage, blame, resentment, and inexplicable grief."

"Daring to set boundaries is about having the courage to love ourselves, even when we risk disappointing others."

"Vulnerability is the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, courage, empathy, and creativity. It is the source of hope, empathy, accountability, and authenticity. If we want greater clarity in our purpose or deeper and more meaningful spiritual lives, vulnerability is the path."

"Given the dark fears we feel when we experience loss, nothing is more generous and loving than the willingness to embrace grief in order to forgive. To be forgiven is to be loved."

"If you're thinking, 'Great! I just need to be a superhero to fight perfectionism,' I understand. Courage, compassion, and connection seem like big, lofty ideals. But in reality, they are daily practices that, when exercised enough, become these incredible gifts in our lives. And the good news is that our vulnerabilities are what force us to call upon these amazing tools. Because we're human and so beautifully imperfect, we get to practice using our tools on a daily basis. In this way, courage, compassion, and connection become gifts - the gifts of imperfection."

"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."

"Everyone wants to know why customer service has gone to hell in a handbasket. I want to know why customer behavior has gone to hell in a handbasket."

"The uncertainty of parenting can bring up feelings in us that range from frustration to terror."

"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."

"I don't have to chase extraordinary moments to find happiness - it's right in front of me if I'm paying attention and practicing gratitude."

"There is no question that engagement requires sacrifice, but that's what we signed up for when we decided to become parents."

"There is no innovation and creativity without failure. Period."

"If you own this story you get to write the ending."

"When you judge yourself for needing help, you judge those you are helping. When you attach value to giving help, you attach value to needing help. The danger of tying your self-worth to being a helper is feeling shame when you have to ask for help. Offering help is courageous and compassionate, but so is asking for help."

"Authenticity is a collection of choices that we have to make every day. It's about the choice to show up and be real. The choice to be honest. The choice to let our true selves be seen."

"Numb the dark and you numb the light."

"What we know matters but who we are matters more."

"When shame becomes a management style, engagement dies. When failure is not an option we can forget about learning, creativity, and innovation ."

"Compassion is not a virtue -- it is a commitment. It's not something we have or don't have -- it's something we choose to practice."

"Nostalgia is also a dangerous form of comparison. Think about how often we compare ourselves and our lives to a memory that nostalgia has so completely edited that it never really existed."

"I only share when I have no unmet needs that I'm trying to fill. I firmly believe that being vulnerable with a larger audience is only a good idea if the healing is tied to the sharing, not to the expectations I might have for the response I get."

"We can't pack down hurt, nor can we off-load it to someone else while maintaining our authenticity and integrity. Most of us have been on the receiving end of one of these outbursts. Even if we have the insight to know that our boss, friend, colleague, or partner blew up at us because something tender was triggered and it's not actually about us, it still shatters trust and respect. Living, growing up, working, or worshipping on eggshells creates huge cracks in our sense of safety and self-worth. Over time, it can be experienced as trauma."

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

"In many ways, September feels like the busiest time of the year: The kids go back to school, work piles up after the summer's dog days, and Thanksgiving is suddenly upon us."

"Fitting in is about assessing a situation and becoming who you need to be to be accepted. Belonging, on the other hand, doesn't require us to change who we are; it requires us to be who we are."

"Women most often experience shame as a web of layered, conflicting, and competing social-community expectations. The expectations dictate who we should be, what we should be, how we should be."

"Shame hates it when we reach out and tell our story. It hates having words wrapped around it- it can't survive being shared. Shame loves secrecy. When we bury our story, the shame metastasizes."

"Maybe stories are just data with a soul."

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

"I never talk about gratitude and joy separately, for this reason. In 12 years, I've never interviewed a single person who would describe their lives as joyful, who would describe themselves as joyous, who was not actively practicing gratitude."

"Waking up every day and loving someone who may or may not love us back, whose safety we can't ensure, who may stay in our lives or may leave without a moment's notice, who may be loyal to the day they die or betray us tomorrow - that's vulnerability."

"Vulnerability is not knowing victory or defeat, it's understanding the necessity of both; it's engaging. It's being all in."

"The rising strong reckoning has two deceptively simple parts: (1) engaging with our feelings, and (2) getting curious about the story behind the feelings--what emotions we're experiencing and how they are connected to our thoughts and behaviors."

"To be forgiven is to be loved."