Brené Brown Leaves the Audience SPEECHLESS | One of the Best Motivational Speeches Ever

foreign [Music] has been my most steadfast counselor for my entire life I discovered her probably 30 years ago when I was in college and I lean into her work you know how when you find those people that just are unspiring and honest in their work they also bring you Joy and comfort she's that for me and I love everything she does except for that quote that quote has pissed me off for decades and I never understood this idea that you're free when you belong nowhere and as a social scientist I know that belonging I know

this for sure like if you ask me the one thing I know for sure 200 000 pieces of data I know in the absence of love and belonging there's always suffering that I know for sure so this quote from her about belonging everywhere which is really nowhere is what sets us free was so troubling to me but then I started digging in and I started trying to understand what does it mean to belong and I never thought of the concept of belonging I thought belonging was like we have a crew [Music] and and belonging to

something you kind of negotiate with external groups of people um but it's not what I found very quickly is the rest of that actual quote is part of an interview that she did um where she ended with Bill Moyers where she ends up saying you know he ends up pushing a little bit on and saying so are you saying that you belong nowhere and to no one and she said I belong to Maya and what I found is that true belonging is a spiritual practice and it's about the ability to find sacredness in both being

a part of something but also the courage to stand alone and the people for those of us who struggle to have the courage to stand alone especially when we know that at risk we're risking that sense of being a part of something because we disagree yes because we have a different opinion because we love something different that is the mark That's The Mark of true belonging to be able to say yes I am a part of something bigger but I also will stand alone when I need to you belong everywhere in nowhere and that is

liberation foreign [Music] leadership work I talk about understanding your personal values and my two personal values are Faith and courage and so they say don't talk about faith it's inappropriate it's this is a you know an organic corporate Corporation and so I just got to the point where I'm like look I've set across from thousands and thousands of people over the last two decades of my life listening to the hardest things you can imagine and the two things that everyone has in common when they're talking about those things are cussing and praying if you don't

want me to cuss and you don't want me to pray that's awesome ask somebody else because what I'm not going to do is get up and you know and there are a million people in this space who who are better than I am who know different things than I do invite them if you need me to wear a suit I totally get it I'm not gonna do that when I speak in public I don't get up there to talk to my you know to talk from my Brooks brother self to your Brooks brother self I

get up there and when I walk on the stage I'm going to talk about things that 90 of the people in the audience have never thought about talked about and are scared to listen to and they need to see me as a person and I'm just that person there's this part from braving the Wilderness that it really changed me it's the practice that came from the book and it is don't walk through the world looking for evidence that you don't belong because you will always find it don't walk through the world looking for evidence that

you're not enough because you'll always find it our worth and our belonging are not negotiated with other people [Music] carry those inside of our hearts and so for me I know who I am I'm clear about that and I'm not going to negotiate that with you I will negotiate a contract with you I will negotiate maybe even a topic with you but I'm not going to negotiate Who I Am with you because then and this is I think the heart of the book then I may fit in for you but I no longer belong to

myself and that is a betrayal I am not willing to do anymore I spent the first 30 years of my life doing that I'm not willing to betray myself anymore I just can't do it foreign is all about trust and so probably three or four years ago in a lot of my leadership work I I probably and this is something people don't know about me I probably spend 90 of my time inside big organizations working with c-suite teams that's what I do most of the time and so in working with leaders one of the things

that kept coming up is trust trust building in teams building trust in a culture the thing that's hard about trust is if I work for you and you call me in and I'm like really upset because I got passed over for a promotion and you say to me look Renee you're doing great work but there are some trust issues the minute you say anything that I can perceive as I am no longer trustworthy are you don't trust me we go completely limbic we go completely out of listening with our prefrontal cortex to listening you know

to fight flight freeze defend because our trust is our integrity it's who we are so I kept wondering like when we talk about trust what are we actually talking about like what could you what could you call me into your office and say to me that would be more helpful more impactful and productive than we have trust issues or I don't trust you so we dug into the data to figure out what is trust what do we mean when we say trust and what I found are there are seven elements that we're talking about when

we talk about trust and these are observable and measurable these are what we can talk about with each other so braving is the acronym we use B is boundaries you set boundaries when you don't know what they are you ask you're clear about what's okay and not okay which is as you know so hard for people boundaries are really hard reliability is the r you do what you say and you say what you do the big hard thing about reliability is you're not hustling for worthiness so you're not completely over committing and not delivering that's

the reliability issue a is accountability you don't back Channel and blame you hold people accountable in a straightforward way V which I think is really interesting is the Vault what people don't understand about the Vault that's really interesting to me too is that foreign you say look we've got some trust issues that we need to work through specifically I want to talk about confidentiality in the vault and I look at you like Marie I've never shared a single thing that you have told me in the 10 years we've known each other and you look back

at me and say yes but you come in here on a regular basis and share things with me that are not yours to share it's the other side of confidentiality it is not only do you not talk out of school between us you don't come in here and say hey look I know what's going on with John Baba you know this is what's happening with you know so because when I do that and I I do that to get connection with you I do that as a bid for connection let me tell you what's going

on that you don't know about but when I walk out of the office you trust me less [Music] because I'm using stories that are not mine as currency so we got the Vault then we go to I Integrity which is choosing courage over Comfort practicing your values and this is a big one I think we have this in common I love this about you it's choosing what's right over what's fun fast and easy you know we have a culture of fun fast and easy we have a culture of people who don't do discomfort I've never

achieved a single thing in my career or life comfortably and then we go to not end for non-judgment you can ask for help without feeling judged and I can ask for help without judging myself and then generosity which I think is probably the biggest hardest one for me sometimes which is when something happens I assume positive intent so if things go sideways between us I'm like damn it Marie I'm so pissed off I go and say Let Me Assume the best help me understand what happened Marie I thought we had a plan around this that

I give you a chance the benefit of the doubt before I launch into my anger you know that's that's human nature that's wiring and the absence of data we will always make up stories and so I think for braving the wilderness the whole idea of the Wilderness being those times when we stand alone and those times when we go out on a limb the times we walk away from what we know our ideological bunkers and our beliefs braving is the tool to help us manage the wilderness [Music] I'll leave you with this there will be

times when standing alone feels too hard too scary and will doubt our ability to make our way through the uncertainty someone somewhere will say don't do it you don't have what it takes to survive the Wilderness this is when you reach deep into your wild heart and remind yourself I am the wilderness [Music]