This weekend I watched the Brené Brown Netflix Special titled “The Call to Courage.” All I can say is wow.  I’ve listened to some of Brené Brown’s books and seen her famous Ted Talk, but this Netflix special came to me at just the right time.  The world has a funny way of delivering messages to me when I need to hear them.  Also, I don’t think I ever realized how funny Brené Brown is – she is really funny.  She’s an amazing storyteller and that combined with her humor and wisdom just make for the perfect combo.  She’s the sort of person when I hear her talk, I just keep thinking, “I want to be friends with you.  We should probably hang out.”  I’m not sure that we’ll be hanging out anytime soon, so for now I’ll just get to the point and share my key takeaways from listening to her talk on Netflix.     

Top 12 Mostly Minimal Takeaways from Brené Brown’s Netflix Special titled “The Call to Courage”:

• Stop Engineering Smallness – She talked about how she “engineered smallness” for much of her life, to avoid playing big and getting criticized for things. I love that term engineering smallness.  I’ve certainly noticed times in my life when I have done this in order to avoid putting myself out there, failure, or criticism.  
• Theodor Roosevelt’s Daring Greatly quote – This is a quote she talks about a lot (below), and one of her books, Daring Greatly, was titled based on this. She tells a really vulnerable story about what led her to finding this quote.  Then she said she now defines her life as the part of her life before this quote, and the part of her life after this quote.  She wants to live in the arena and be brave with her life.  It’s guaranteed that if you live in the arena, you will get you butt kicked at some point, but that’s OK and that’s something you need to be ready for.
  • “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” – Theodor Roosevelt
• Vulnerability as Defined by Brené – “Vulnerability is not about winning or losing. It’s having the courage to show up when you can’t control the outcome.”  I like to have control over things.  We could delve into my childhood and understand why this is the case, but that’s for another post.  For me hearing the idea of the “courage to show up when you can’t control the outcome” is so important as I need to remember to show up and be okay with whatever might come of it.  And that takes courage.
• Vulnerability is not a weakness – Brené says, “Vulnerability is not weakness… it’s actually our most accurate way to measure courage.” The idea of vulnerability being a measurement for courage is solid gold. 
• Feedback and Criticism – I’ve always sought and loved feedback. I crave it.  I want to hear what people want and how I can get better because I think it makes me better.  It’s not always easy to hear, but I’ve always been open to hearing it.  Brené’s insight that she only wants to listen from feedback and criticism from other who are also “in the arena” is very powerful.  More specifically she says, “If you are not in the arena getting your ass kicked on occasion because you are being brave, I am not interested in or open to your feedback about my work.”  She then challenges “you can’t take criticism and feedback from people who are not being brave with their lives.”  It reminds me to focus more on where I seek and listen to feedback.  The most valuable feedback in my life should come from others who have had the courage to jump into the arena.  I want to hear from those people.  She takes this even a step further to suggest that the best feedback will come from those who love us despite our imperfections. 
• The Story I am telling myself – This is a magic sentence. Brené tells a story about she and her husband that is very powerful.  It ends with the idea that we all put these stories and narratives into our heads that impact how we respond to and deal with things.  Those stories aren’t always true or right, but we’ve convinced ourselves they are.  And we do damage by making assumptions and creating these stories.  We should instead have real conversations and seek the truth vs. creating these stories in our heads.
• Foreboding Joy – This is the idea that we are so afraid that if we let ourselves feel joy, it will get taken away. Brené says, “When we lose our capacity for vulnerability, joy becomes foreboding.  It becomes scary to let ourselves feel it.”  She actually ties in the idea of gratitude and practicing gratitude and says foreboding joy can be a reminder to be grateful. 
• Finding joy and gratitude for the ordinary moments – Brené says, “I get so busy chasing the extraordinary moments that I don’t pay attention to the ordinary moments, the moments that if taken away I would miss more than anything.” I absolutely love her point here.  It gets to the heart of my views on what’s important in life, minimalism, financial independence, and so many related topics.  I personally have been able to find so much joy in the ordinary moments over the years that I don’t need fancy or complex things to make me happy. 
• Time Spent Without Purpose – This is not something I am great at. I am a very active and driven person, and it’s hard for me to sit still for too long.  Brené challenged to “sometimes just do the joyful thing for the hell of it.”  This is a great reminder for someone like me.  She mentioned that Stuart Brown defines play as “time spent without purpose” and I love that phrase.  It sounds a little funny to say aloud given I have spent a lot of time in life trying to nail down my purpose, but I need to spend more time in my life without purpose.  Challenge accepted.
• The Importance of Really Hard Conversations – This is a concept I’ve heard before, but it’s always good to get a reminder.  Brené reminded that you need vulnerability for creativity, and you need to be okay with failure to drive innovation.  We need an environment that tolerates vulnerability in order to have honest and productive conversations.  Brené says, “If we all had the capacity to have really hard conversations everything would get better.  Cultures would be stronger.  Relationships would be stronger.  So much value comes from vulnerability.”  What things are going unsaid that we need to say aloud?  It will require courage and vulnerability, but we need to say them. 

• • No vulnerably = No creativity.
  • No tolerance for failure = No innovation.

• Pain – Brené shared that “It is so much easier to cause pain than feel pain” and “People are taking their pain and working it out on other people.” I think everyone can admit to a day when they had a rough day at work, and they came home and were not as pleasant with the ones they love as a result.  I certainly can.  This is one of many ways of taking your pain and working it out on other people.  I took from this a reminder that my job is to more vulnerably explore my pain when I am experiencing it, and really watch for moments where I may be working it out on someone else. 
• The importance of storytelling and humor in getting your ideas across. A lot of people have important things to say, but not everyone can tell a story and be funny.  That combo really makes her points that much more relatable and impactful.  Her stories about the initial book covers of Daring Greatly and open water swimming with her husband in Austin had me laughing so hard. 

I watched this with my husband, and he enjoyed it as much as I did.  It sparked a number of meaningful conversations around how we want to be and show up with ourselves, with each other, with our kids, with our co-workers, and with our friends and family.  We actually discussed afterwards that we didn’t want to lose the heartbeat of what we learned and thought about while watching this, and we committed to revisit and discuss our thoughts on it again soon so we can dig a bit deeper.  My way of starting this was writing this post.  It’s one of the reasons I started Mostly Minimal Life actually.  I often engage with powerful content like this, but then I go back to my busy life and I don’t fully reflect or act upon what I learned.  So, here’s to less fear, and more vulnerability and courage in my life in 2020 and beyond. 

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