Vulnerability Expert Brené Brown on Diary Of A CEO Podcast (Transcript)

And there was laughter and there was love, but there was a ton of unpredictability.

Understanding Hypervigilance

STEVEN BARTLETT: I was going to say, isn’t that typically what creates hypervigilance, some kind of need to be that aware when you’re young?

BRENÉ BROWN: Yeah. I mean, I think, yes, being fun loving was very valued in my family. And being tough. These were the values. These are on the parental scorecard. This is what got you an A. If you’re fun, easy, you can shoot straight, spit far, fish well, really drive fast. And so those things were very valued. Athleticism was very valued. But those fun things could turn really hard very quickly.

STEVEN BARTLETT: There was a big pause there, four second pause.

BRENÉ BROWN: I could just picture it. It’s fun until you’ve got a parent ejected from a game for being so hard.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And that was your father?

BRENÉ BROWN: Yeah.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Oh, he was really hard. Then he was ejected from a game.

BRENÉ BROWN: Oh, yeah.

The Protector Role

STEVEN BARTLETT: There’s a photo I saw of you and your siblings where you’re clutching your siblings. And I think you referred to it as you could see there was a certain fear in your eyes. Do you know the photo I’m referring to?

BRENÉ BROWN: Am I on a couch?

STEVEN BARTLETT: You’re on a couch.

BRENÉ BROWN: Like a yellow velour couch, like from the 70s?

STEVEN BARTLETT: Yes.

BRENÉ BROWN: Yeah, I think about that picture. I like that picture. But there was definitely, I definitely had a protector role as the oldest. I mean, code name Sister Superior. It was jokingly, but it wasn’t joking. If things got hard between my parents and they would get in volatile fights, I would go get all my siblings, put them in my room, I’d go downstairs and handle it. I was definitely the protector. Physically volatile fights on occasion, but more emotionally volatile.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Screaming and shouting.

BRENÉ BROWN: Yeah, just loud.

STEVEN BARTLETT: There’s a background in my whole house for my whole childhood was just screaming.

BRENÉ BROWN: There was. Yeah, we had a lot of screaming. And there’s a certain, if you grew up with screaming, hearing screaming through a wall, you know that sound? Do you know that sound?

STEVEN BARTLETT: Of course. My God, it’s my whole childhood.

BRENÉ BROWN: Yeah. And so, yeah, I’m sorry, because I don’t like to hear that about your childhood and I don’t like to know that about my childhood, but there was a lot of screaming. And so I think hypervigilant, protective, responsible, with a dose of “be very f*ing careful because I will protect my siblings.”

Love as a Prison

STEVEN BARTLETT: And how did that change your model of love as a young person? Must have been, because, I mean, I obviously feel the same way about my situation. And I think the lesson I learned was that love was like a prison because it was my mum doing the shouting and my dad was the prisoner and he wouldn’t respond.

So you’ve got a woman shouting at him for six, seven hours a day and him sat there like he’s an inanimate object looking at the screen. And I remember thinking, “Oh, okay, so if I get in a relationship when I’m older, then I’m going to be a prisoner to a woman. Okay. Doesn’t sound appealing.” And if he moved to a different room, she’d follow him.

So I avoided relationships like the f*ing plague. I did. Well until about 27.

BRENÉ BROWN: And then what?

STEVEN BARTLETT: And then someone got over the wall and cracked into some of the defenses.

BRENÉ BROWN: They got over the wall.

STEVEN BARTLETT: She got over the wall somehow.

BRENÉ BROWN: Yeah. Steve got over the wall. Damn it.

STEVEN BARTLETT: That’s your partner, not me.

Breaking Down Walls

BRENÉ BROWN: Just context. No. Yeah, not you. Although a hell of a job right now. You’re like, you’ve crossed a piranha filled moat that I like, but the drawbridge is like, I’m just, see, I’m going to see my Steve. My Steve definitely got over the wall. But it was like game recognized game. He had a wall.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Oh, okay.

BRENÉ BROWN: Yeah. And so we had long conversations about our walls. And slowly through those conversations, we just, those walls crumbled with each other. And we’ve been together now for 38 years. Yeah. The hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life, bar none. Dude, nothing has been harder.

When I started dating Steve, well, when we got married, six months after we got married, this is, you know, you said for you, love was going to be being a prisoner and having to just shut down to survive. Right.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Run away.

BRENÉ BROWN: Run away. Right.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Don’t confront it. No conversations now.

BRENÉ BROWN: No. For me, six months after we were married, I went to go see a therapist and I said, “I cannot do this. I’ve got to get out of this marriage.” And we had dated off and on for seven years before we got married. And I said, “I’ve got to get out.”

And she said, “This is hard. I could see how this is not working.” And I was like, I had a twinge of defensiveness about Steve and I said, “What do you mean?” And she said, “He likes you so much more than you like you. It must be terrible.”

I was like, “F* you, man. You’re fired.” I was so high. I thought, “What?” That’s what I do. So if you, I’m going to give you one of my tells. If I do a really high pitched “what,” that means I’m looking for my purse and I know where the door is.

I just kept thinking, “What do you mean?” He said, “It’s got to be very uncomfortable to be with someone who sees you and really knows you and loves you so much when you have not found a way to see you and love you so much. It’s got to be disconcerting.”

What an asshole, man. Wow. And it was true. I had to get to this point where I was like, “Maybe I should like me as much as he likes me and then make a better decision about whether this is going to work or not.”

The Limits of Emotional Language

When you grow up and pissed off or shut down are your two emotional opportunities, in Atlas of the Heart, I write about 87 emotions that I think are important to understand because the limits of our language are the limits of our world. When you have two buckets, then everything must go in those.

And in fact, in our research over the last 15 years, we found the average person can accurately identify and name three emotions: happy, sad, pissed off. And so in my family, sad was not an option. That was weakness. So you could be pissed or okay. So when I get scared, when I feel grief, when I’m anxious, when I feel disappointment, when I feel anguish, I’m just angry.

Feeling Like an Outsider

STEVEN BARTLETT: There’s two sort of outstanding question marks in my head and they might be the same answer. But you said earlier on that you didn’t fit in at school or at home. And I didn’t understand why you didn’t fit in at school or at home. And then the other thing that’s still a question mark in my head is the therapist said to you that you, well, asserted that you didn’t like yourself as much as he liked you. And I wasn’t clear on what made you not like yourself.

BRENÉ BROWN: I wanted out of where I was raised. I wanted to leave everything I knew. And so I always felt like an outsider. I didn’t want to. I mean, I wasn’t popular. I wasn’t dating a quarterback. That was a dream that my parents and their parents and their parents. You were a bear cadet and you dated a quarterback and you got a farm.

So I felt not cute, not popular, not understood. And then at home, I wasn’t easygoing, I was anxious and always ready.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And the point about self esteem, which the therapist sort of highlighted about not liking oneself as much as Steve liked you, where did that come from? Or is that related in some way?

BRENÉ BROWN: Oh, because my parents parented with a very big heaping dose of shame.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Oh, okay. So if you accomplish something or you don’t accomplish something, you’re made to feel bad about it.

BRENÉ BROWN: Yeah. And a ton of it was about appearance, being fun.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Appearance.

The Pressure of Appearance

BRENÉ BROWN: Yeah, you know, big blonde hair with hot rollers. The higher the hair, the closer to God. You needed to be tough and strong and throw on a baseball cap and get somewhere really quick, low maintenance. And you need to be a beauty pageant queen.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Do you remember them ever being critical of your appearance in a way that has stayed with you?

BRENÉ BROWN: Oh, my God, yes. I mean, I think not just them. I mean, I think having young girls and young women, keeping them from developing threats to their self esteem, it’s not just a parental thing. It’s like asking them not to breathe because the air’s poison.

It’s like every message from everywhere. The fashion magazines, you’d read them and you think, “Wow, I don’t look like this. How am I going to look like this?” And you’d lather yourself up with baby oil and you put lemon juice in your hair. You’d put tinfoil under your chin, get as much sun cancer as you could. Because we didn’t know.

We all wore jeans that you had to put on with pliers for the zipper because they were so tight. Appearance mattered. This is Texas, baby.

The Path to Academia

STEVEN BARTLETT: You go off to university eventually, and not a straight line, but eventually you get into university.

BRENÉ BROWN: Not a straight line. That’s the sweetest thing you’ve said to me. I graduated from college when I was 29.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Wow. So you become a research professor in 2001, and you’ve been a research professor and many more things ever since then. You get your PhD in Social Work at the University of Houston, Texas, between 96 and 2002. And really, for the last couple of decades, you’ve focused on research, understanding people.

Obviously, there’s so many more strings to your bow in terms of media and podcasting and authorship. But over those, since 2001, we’re in 2025 now, just over two decades. My first question is how has your perspective on, how has the world changed in those last two decades, in your view?

The World Today

BRENÉ BROWN: Jungians would say, before any great progression, there is a regression. And I think that when you look at various, I know you have a very global audience. When you look at administrations, political administrations across the world, and you look at how power is being used right now, it will tell you a lot about what they’re afraid of. What is that face? We’re going to have to pause.

The Power of Fear in Modern Politics

BRENÉ BROWN: I was thinking about a conversation I had recently with my best friends. Must have been this weekend. Yeah, it was this weekend because it was my friend’s birthday in Manchester, the UK. So we flew in and we had a conversation about how the leading political narrative at the moment, this might be adjacent to what you were saying, but it’s the way I interpreted it.

The leading political narrative at the moment that seems to be getting people elected is if you say those people with that skin color are the reason for the pain and anguish in your life. It’s actually the people below you that are coming over the border or crossing the English Channel on dinghies that are ruining your life.

And it seems to be a really effective narrative to earn power both in the US and the UK. The central narrative that is swaying elections, it seems at the moment in the UK and the US, is those brown people on that boat or coming over the border are the reason for the pain in your life. And it seems to work. And that seems to be the thing getting power.

So that’s kind of what ran through my head when I heard this idea of power and what you’re scared of. I actually think I inverted it to, if I can tell you what to be scared of or find the thing you might be scared of or whatever, then I get power. But maybe it goes the other way too.

STEVEN BARTLETT: I don’t think we’ll ever talk about anything more important than this, to be honest with you. That’s why I thought your response was so interesting, because if I was going to do the text box above your face, it would have said, “Well, holy s*, that’s interesting.”

Because when you use power, especially power over, because there’s multiple kinds of power. There’s power within, power to, and power with. So people that use power within, power to, and power with work from a belief system that’s completely different. We believe that power is infinite and can grow when shared.

People who use power over work from a belief system that power is finite, like pizza, and if I give you any, I have a deficit. So it’s got to be hoarded and protected and not shared.

Understanding Power Over

STEVEN BARTLETT: Power over is really important to understand because when people are using power over, they’re definitely letting you know what they’re afraid of because that’s what they’re focused on and they’re tapping into. And I think this is absolutely true.

If you give people someone to dislike and blame for their pain and they look different than the people who are voting, you will win 100 times out of 100. If you say, “I see your pain, I can tell you exactly the source of it and I can fix this for you,” and the source of it, it’s going to be easy to see. You’re not going to see yourself in them.

So that narrative that you were talking about, it is a full circle. People in power use power to address issues that they’re afraid of. They gain power by leveraging fear and giving people an enemy. That’s how this works. It works like this.

I mean, I spend 95% of my time in organizations working with C-suite leaders and senior leaders. This is how it works in organizations, how it works in political, how it works in faith communities. This is how power works in general.

So power over is a very specific kind of power. And it’s especially dangerous because in order to maintain it, you have to engage in periodic bouts of cruelty towards vulnerable populations. You have to remind people what you’re capable of.

The Four Types of Power

BRENÉ BROWN: So there’s four types of power you speak about.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Do you have that in your notes in Daring Greatly? Yes.

BRENÉ BROWN: Why are you surprised?

STEVEN BARTLETT: I don’t know.

BRENÉ BROWN: It’s four types of power and leadership you speak about. There’s the power over, which is controlling or exploiting others. Power with, finding common ground and building collective strength. Power to, which is giving others agency and recognizing their potential. And power within, which is honoring difference and self-worth.

So as a leader of a business, if I want to be successful, are you telling me that I need to stay away from power over and adopt another power within this list of four?

STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah. I think what we’ve seen be very successful over time is power with, power to, and power within. So collaborative power, co-creation, power, self-awareness, metacognition, knowing yourself, knowing how you think and learn. So power with and power to.

Power over is excruciatingly difficult to maintain. We’re not neurobiologically hardwired to stay in fear for very long. So if I work for you and you’re using power over to lead me, you’re threatening me with my job, you’re threatening me with consequences, you’re threatening me with demotion. One of two things is going to happen for me neurobiologically.

I am either going to just become numb to it. It’s not going to be able, you’re not going to maintain, I can’t maintain that constant level of fear. It’s just too demanding, just physically demanding. Or I might get hyper-normalized. I might just be like, this is what I work in. This is crazy. This is it.

But every now and then you’re going to have to do something that demonstrates to me how chaotic and cruel you can actually be. You’re going to have to engage in periodic acts of cruelty to remind me that the fear is real and to put me back in it.

And so one of the things you’re seeing right now, I mean in the US, the deportation, immigration issues. This is not a president that has tightened his belt on immigration more than other previous presidents. But we’ve never seen masked people grabbing people off the street while children hold onto their legs screaming, “Mom, Mom, Mom.” We’ve never seen that before.

We’ve had other presidents probably exceed the deportation numbers that we’re seeing, but we’ve never seen that level of cruelty and display. That is a real display of cruelty as a reminder of who holds power and who does not.

BRENÉ BROWN: It also makes me think of relationships when you’re talking about how people are controlled with power over. A lot of people talk about narcissistic relationships or abusive relationships where they don’t feel like they can leave or they don’t leave, and they end up becoming acclimatized to the treatment.

Systems Theory and Permeable Boundaries

STEVEN BARTLETT: I’m a big systems theory person. I think in systems theory. I was trained in systems theory. I think if you don’t understand systems theory, at least if you’re leading an organization right now, you’re going to fall behind, because the complexity inside and outside of organizations is such that we need a framework to understand how all of these individual systems are bumping up against each other.

You probably bump up against 100 systems a day, right?

BRENÉ BROWN: Yeah.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And so what I would imagine, the story I would make up about your success, because this is true of any systems theory, is in order for systems to thrive and grow, they have to keep permeable boundaries, meaning they have to allow feedback to flow in and out from other systems to be aware.

So I’m just going to give you a very good example. I’m very excited about the female experts you had on around menopause, women’s life. I mean, I’m so excited about that. Just to be honest with you, Mary Claire is my doctor.

BRENÉ BROWN: Oh, really?

STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Dr. Haver. So what is interesting is the systems that just that podcast bumps up against, and the systems that would be sending feedback that, “Hey, this is not for me. I’m not clicking on this.” I’ve shared that first one with 100 people, because there’s a reality to our lives that is uncomfortable for people.

But those are your partners and your moms and your bosses. And it’s real. And I can guarantee if this was happening to dudes, it’d be a bajillion dollar, over a trillion dollar whatever. I don’t know.

But just thinking about that one podcast and the systems that you’re touching: health, women’s issues, family systems are affected. That podcast hits 20 systems that I can think of in my head right now. The divorce rates of people, of women in their 50s and 60s. I mean, right? Yes or no?

BRENÉ BROWN: Yeah, 100%. Yeah.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Right. So a healthy system has permeable boundaries, meaning feedback is flowing in and out all the time. What happens when the world gets complex is we start not wanting the feedback. The complexity is too big. So we start shutting down those permeable boundaries.

Well, what happens to a system where the boundaries are no longer permeable? It atrophies and the process of atrophying, the system becomes self-referencing. “Are we good? We’re great. Are we right? We’re right. Are we on target? We’re on target.” Because the boundaries of the system are no longer craving outside feedback, even when it’s tough.

And in businesses today, the geopolitical realities, the market changes, AI, I mean, it’s crazy. And so our predisposition to shut down uncertainty and complexity is the biggest threat to the systems in which we work and live. The self-protect, close the wall, put up the drawbridge, fill the moat with piranhas. We just don’t have that luxury. We’ve got to keep the boundaries permeable. We’ve got to keep learning, guessing, unlearning, relearning.

The Algorithm Problem

BRENÉ BROWN: One of the added complexities is the rise in algorithms. And actually when I think about algorithms that are powered by AI, they’re going to be even better at knowing what you want to see so that you spend time, so that you consume more adverts.

Which means probably the best thing to show me is either something really fearful or just to confirm what I already believe. An algorithm that was doing the opposite probably wouldn’t be an enjoyable experience for the average human brain. It would cause too much dissonance, too much discomfort.

STEVEN BARTLETT: But great for democracy.

BRENÉ BROWN: Great. Yeah, fantastic. But terrible for running a business and selling ads. So any company that takes that approach will go bankrupt. This is why TikTok, I think, have been so successful. The algorithm is, I don’t use TikTok, so I have a TikTok account. I don’t have the app on my phone, but from what I hear is it’s so unbelievably addictive. People describe it to me and they’re like, “Oh my God, it’s so addictive.”

STEVEN BARTLETT: But this s* is the devil.

BRENÉ BROWN: Yeah, yeah, but people are driven by incentives, right? And your share price is going to tumble and you’re going to be fired. You’re going to lose your status and your power if you don’t do that. I’m playing devil’s advocate. Obviously I’m not.

STEVEN BARTLETT: I agree. What do you think the solution is? And what responsibility do the bros who run these tech platforms have?

BRENÉ BROWN: It’s complicated.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Well, I agree. I’m not looking for an easy answer. Go ahead, hit me.

BRENÉ BROWN: Well, I just think it’s complicated because what an objective party would say, who’s just looking at the incentives of these groups of people, is if they don’t do it, someone will kind of will.

So even with AI now, I’m sitting with all these experts, and I keep hitting up against this wall, which is, okay, if we just banned people in the United States from pursuing this super intelligence strategy, then Russia and China get there first, then the United States, unfortunately, are going to end up being China’s French bulldog.

And actually, I can’t refute that. I go, “No, you’re right,” because you’d have to literally lease the technology off them. It will be so powerful and give such an economic advantage that you will have to lease it off China. So, okay, I guess Sam Altman does need to crack on, or else. So it’s complicated.

STEVEN BARTLETT: I mean, this is where I end up every time.

BRENÉ BROWN: I mean, look what happened with TikTok. China made an algorithm. It was unbelievably addictive. The United States have just had to buy it off them because they were scared that the data was going to be used against the United States, the prime example. China made an unbelievable algorithm called TikTok, which just captivates. The youth are all just f losing their brains. So, I don’t know. I don’t know. It’s tough. It’s rough. Spiritual crisis.

The Need for Cognitive Sovereignty

STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah. I mean, you just laid it out. You just laid it out. We’re emotionally dysregulated. We’re distrustful of each other, we don’t trust ourselves very much, and we’re disconnected.

I can’t give up on people, though. I’m not built that way. I just believe that we are more good than greedy. I was in conversation with Trevor Noah at an event, and I mentioned this term that I was really excited about, and he challenged me on it.

And I said, “I think what we need is cognitive sovereignty. We need to wrestle control away from the algorithms and decide what we consume, what we read, how we think, think critically. We need to think about our attention and our focus as commodities that people are after because they’re after them.”

He had an interesting point, though. He always has interesting points, don’t you think?

BRENÉ BROWN: It’s so tough to talk to Trevor because he’s so, he’s always got an interesting point.

The Danger of Cognitive Sovereignty and Tech’s Contradictions

STEVEN BARTLETT: He’s always got an interesting point, damn it. And he’s funny. But he said, no, we need less cognitive sovereignty, Brené. And I’m like, what do you mean? He goes, everything’s about the for you page. Everything’s for you. We need communal sovereignty. He’s like, you know, the whole problem is that your for you page is completely sovereign. You intellectually and spiritually. I’m paraphrasing what he said. I’m sure it was funnier and better looking, but he…

And then I was trying to think about, I guess maybe that’s not the right term. But let me tell you what scares me the most. I’m in some weird rooms because of the nature of my job. I’m in rooms where the people who run these platforms and, you know, that own the CEOs of these business and the founders are in these rooms. And I hear them talking, and I hear things that are so misaligned that it panics me.

So I hear someone say, hey, you know, tech billionaire, what should my kids study? I’m worried for my kids. Wow. They should study coding, physics. And then five minutes later, as if that answer didn’t happen, someone will say, to what do you attribute your success? I mean, deeply, when you think about it. And the same person will say, my deep reading of philosophy and the stoics.

And so then I’m thinking to myself, well, which is it, dude? And then I start to extrapolate from there and wonder if there is a thinking class that’s emerging where they’re like, we’re going to read philosophy and we’re going to read the liberal arts and we’re going to study history. And the rest of you, just keep scrolling, don’t worry about the big words. We’ll handle all the big words for you.

It’s like when they asked Steve Jobs, boy, your kids must love the iPad. Steve Jobs said, my kids don’t have an iPad. And then his biographer, who spent time with his family, said he wasn’t kidding. There’s no technology at dinner. They’re talking about art and history.

The Skills We Need for the Future

The hardest chapter I’ve ever written in my life, of any book, was the chapter on grounded confidence and strong ground. What is the set of skill sets and mindsets that I think we’re going to need to future ready and future proof ourselves to be leaders, leaders moving forward. And I think what was hard about it was the complexity of it. It was probably a combination of 30 different mindsets and skill sets.

And when I was done, you know, for commercial reasons, someone on my team immediately said, geez, this is like a, if you can train people in these things, this is really important. And the first thing that I thought was, f* that. My kids train schmain. I get it, it’s important. We’ll develop some instrumentation, measure it, we’ll train folks in it. I think it’s trainable, it’s teachable, it’s measurable.

But really, I want this for my kids. I want my kids to know systems thinking. I want my kids to know anticipatory thinking, situational awareness, temporal awareness. I want my kids to have their, this complex set of skills. Do I want them to have jobs one day where all they’re worried about is shareholder value? Really? No.

I want them to own their mind, own their intellect, own their attention, and own their focus. I want them to read. I want them to understand history. I want them to develop pattern recognition skills because these are the skills of the future. I want them to be able to hold the tension of nuance and paradox when everything in their brain is saying, pick one, pick one, reconcile. I’m uncomfortable. Pick one, reconcile. I’m uncomfortable. That’s neurobiology.

Drawing From a Wide Range of References

STEVEN BARTLETT: In those 20 years of your 20 plus years of your career, what have you been exposed to from a 30,000 foot perspective? What are the wide range of reference points that you draw upon to be the person that you are today? And you know, because you’ve had, it feels like you’ve got a very wide range of references. Clearly, you know, you’re someone that cares a lot about history. That comes through in your answers. But I’m wondering, in your career, what are the experiences that you’ve had? Have you been working directly with patients? Is it academic reference points you’re drawing upon?

BRENÉ BROWN: Yeah, no one’s ever asked me this, which I’ve been grateful that no one’s asked me, so, what a pain in the ass. But because no one’s going to like the answer.

STEVEN BARTLETT: I’m excited about the answer now.

BRENÉ BROWN: Everything. Every single thing. Yes, I, you know, I love history. Yes, I read academic papers all the time. Yes, I wake up in the morning and I read because of the nature of my work. I read the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Bloomberg, the Financial Times. Yeah, I mean, I read a lot.

But there’s a chapter in the book that was one of my favorite to write on the transitions home from work and how tough they are and how if you’re like me, you’ve had a very frustrated partner look at you more than once in your life and say, hey, I know it was stressful, I don’t work for you. Change gears yeah. Have you ever had that?

STEVEN BARTLETT: No comment.

The Lock Metaphor: Transitioning Between Work and Home

BRENÉ BROWN: No comment. Yeah. I use a metaphor in that book, in this chapter of a lock. And how did that come to me? Because I was reading the book series the Rivers of London, and in that book series, there are two gods of the Thames. And the Teddington lock is where, right outside of London. And Teddington is where custody changes for them.

So I went to the Teddington lock because I was interested. I met the lock master that runs the lock. She gave me a three hour lesson that day. We let narrowboats through the Thames. I learned how lock works. And that’s the metaphor that I use to talk about the research on what do we do when we spend all day locking in? Hyper focused, compartmentalizing, getting shit done, and then instead of going home to our partner, when we get home, we spend 30 minutes in the garage on TikTok because we can’t bear to go in.

So why do we do that? Because we need a lock through period. We need time to go into a chamber, metaphorically, change levels, let go of where we were, lower ourselves to the rhythm of what we’re doing. Now, cognitively would call it cognitive and domain shifting. And we need time.

So I looked at the lock master at Teddington and said, this shit is taking a long time. Can we get this chamber filled up a little bit quicker? And she said, locking through takes what locking through takes. If you rush it, you risked capsizing.

We get home and then we walk in the back door and it’s like, I can’t find my shin guards. I think I left him on the pitch. Where are my goggles? Mom? Oh, my God. You didn’t sign the permission slip. I had to sneak into the zoo, you know, and you’re like, take me back to work where I’m the boss of everything, you know?

So where do I learn those things? Well, cognitive and domain shifting come out of psychology. Gemma, the lockmaster at Teddington, there’s wisdom everywhere. I put it together through stories and metaphors.

Pocket Presence: Leadership Lessons From Football

I mean, another thing in the book, I’m standing on the sideline at DKR, the University of Texas Longhorn football stadium, and I’m standing with Emmanuel Acho. Do you know Emmanuel?

STEVEN BARTLETT: No.

BRENÉ BROWN: Yeah, he’s great. He played for the Longhorns. He played for the NFL. Now he’s a writer. So I’m standing there and we’re watching the game, and I look at him, I go, how would you define pocket presence?

And pocket presence is an American football term. So do you know American football? Okay, so I’m a quarterback. I’m going to get the ball, and I have to throw the ball or run the ball or hand off the ball to get the ball down the pitch, down the field, right?

And when the ball is snapped and the ball is put into motion, there’s about 1,200 to 1,400 pounds of really angry people trying to drive me into the ground. The people that are protecting me from those defensive guys are called my offensive line. And the way they do it is they form a pocket around the quarterback, and the quarterback uses that time to decide where am I going to throw the ball, am I going to run the ball?

And pocket presence is the ability of a quarterback to use the, on average, 2.8 to 3 seconds he has to read the field, understand where the defenders are, and make a decision.

And so when I asked Emmanuel Acho, how would you define pocket presence? He said, and I want you to think about this in terms of your business. The ability to read the field without seeing all of it, and trusting your team well enough to make a move even though you can’t see everything.

What are the skill sets you need right there? One, temporal awareness. You’ve got to know how much time you have to get rid of that ball, get it down the field. They say Tom Brady, who played for the Patriots. Is any of this ringing a bell?

STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah, I need to.

BRENÉ BROWN: Okay, Tom Brady. They said his pocket presence was so good, he could tell where his offensive linemen were by the vibrations through his cleats on the field.

So temporal awareness, situational awareness, what’s going on? Anticipatory awareness. Think about a great football player, right? Think about Masala. You don’t kick the ball to where the striker is. You kick the ball to where the striker’s going to be. So anticipatory and situational awareness, right?

Pattern recognition. Have I been in this situation before? Do I know how to, you know, where’s the goalie in the cage? Where are they standing right now? And so I’ll take my inspiration from sports all the time, which is why there’s so many sports metaphors, right? I think there’s not a better sports, a better metaphor to describe work right now than Premier League football.

The Meaning of Connection

STEVEN BARTLETT: One of the things that is throughout your work is this idea of connection. I did a mushroom. I did magic mushrooms with my girlfriend a couple of years ago. First time I’ve ever done it. And the message that came through for me was it was about connection. And that word has had a fond place in my heart ever since. It’s been really, really important.

And we live in a society that’s more lonely than ever before. More disconnected in many ways, as you described. When you’re referencing the spiritual crisis that we’re living in. This word connection, what does that mean? Does it mean on an individual basis, does it mean me having friends and relationships? Is that connection? Is that the type of connection I should be looking for? Or does it need, do I need to, do you think people need to ladder up further to their city, their town, their world, to the community, to something bigger? God? What does connection mean in this context?

BRENÉ BROWN: Yes. I think the answer to that question is yes. We’re neurobiologically hardwired to be in connection with other people. And in the absence of connection, there’s always suffering. Always suffering in the absence of connection.

So I think, I mean, just how we’re built, mirror neurons, you know, our ability to sync up neurobiologically when we feel connected and are hearing each other. So to me, connection is the ability to be in a relationship where we can both give and receive. Where we feel seen, heard, believed, valued. That human connection is really important on a micro level. One on one with other human beings.

I think a sense of belonging and a sense of place. And I don’t know that that necessarily needs to be a location. But a sense of being a part of something bigger than you, I think is also important. So love and belonging, connection, irreducible needs.

I think spirituality, I define spirituality, is being inextricably connected to other people by something bigger than us. Maybe that’s love, Maybe that’s God. Maybe that’s fishing. You know, it’s different for other people. For me, faith is one of my values. And I’m a pretty serious God person. I’m a pretty deep person of faith.

I guess I would ask somebody, what is that thing that transcends difference? Political difference, ideological difference, race, gender, you know, belief systems, class? What is it that brings you to a common humanity place? For me, it’s God. It’s a big challenge because, I try to work from an ethos where I try to find God in the face of everybody that I meet. Even if I want to punch you in the throat, I try to. That’s my thing. In some way, I’m connected to you whether I like it or not and whether I like you or not.

True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone

STEVEN BARTLETT: And when you talk about belonging, it’s interesting in your book Braving the Wilderness, which I think the question is kind of summed up by the subtitle here, the Quest for True belonging and the courage to stand alone. This appears to be a dichotomy or a contradiction. To belong, but also to stand alone. Why are both of these important? Why is it important to belong? What does that mean? And why is it also important to stand alone?

The Threat of Fitting In vs. True Belonging

STEVEN BARTLETT: Because I don’t think you can truly belong to anything or any art or any group if you don’t belong to yourself first. True belonging requires us to be who we are, not to change who we are. That’s fitting in. Fitting in is the greatest threat to belonging, which takes us both back to our childhoods, right?

BRENÉ BROWN: Yeah.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Fit in, fit in, fit in, fit in. The problem is that that chameleon kind of skill set means that in order to fit in, the first person you betray is yourself. We’ve got to be able to stand alone. And that’s what’s happening right now in the world.

I mean, if I look back at Braving the Wilderness, that was maybe the only prophetic book that I think I’ve ever written like that. I don’t think I’m prophet-like, but, man, did I call what was happening in terms of the big sort into ideological bunkers where we are going to get to a place where I don’t even know you, but I’m going to call you friend because we hate the same people. And you over there, I actually do love you. You’re a family member of mine, but I’m not, you know, because we don’t believe in the same things. You have no meaning in my life.

Like, it’s like we have gotten to the place where ideological bunkers, and those are so dangerous because here, you and I, like, let’s say that we have the same belief around immigration. So we’re going to flip this table over and we’re going to get behind it in our ideological bunker, and we’re going to be like, yeah, we’re right, and these guys are fing crazy and f y’all, you know, and then one day I’m going to turn to you and say, you know, one thing I’m wondering about is how are we going to solve the problem with the folks coming over in the dinghies from France?

Because I don’t think we’re going to be able to go without solving it because we do have an employment issue and a housing crisis. And then you go, you’re out. My care for you, my connection with you completely dependent on you not questioning anything we agreed to back here. Well, that’s counterfeit connection. What’s real connection? Like, I got to know what’s going on in your mind because your face is like, we got to play poker. We’re going to put that on our agenda. What are you thinking?

The Loneliness of Standing in the Middle

STEVEN BARTLETT: I was just thinking about being a podcaster, and I sit here with all types of people. So I had Kamala Harris sat here three, four days ago. And I’ll have someone on the right side here.

BRENÉ BROWN: Yeah, yeah.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And then I’ll have Michelle Obama. Then I’ll have Jordan Peterson. Then I’ll have the opposite of whatever Jordan Peterson is. And I was just thinking about how that’s also kind of made me feel like I don’t belong, because that is quite rare. There’s probably not a podcast on Earth that has had both Michelle Obama and Jordan Peterson.

BRENÉ BROWN: No.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah. And then Kamala Harris after that. Like, I didn’t manage to scare Michelle off. I didn’t scare Jordan off. And so you get, you kind of get attacked from both sides.

BRENÉ BROWN: Oh. I mean, look, if you’re not getting threatening shit from the far here, the far left or the far right. If you’re not getting both, you’re not doing your job.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Amen.

BRENÉ BROWN: Yeah. Period.

STEVEN BARTLETT: But it’s tough.

BRENÉ BROWN: Oh, God, it is heartbreaking.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah.

BRENÉ BROWN: It will break your heart, and it will remind you of why Standing Alone is on the front of that book. Because what it will do is it is winnow, the right word. It will narrow your belonging, your true belonging.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah.

BRENÉ BROWN: Down to a very few people.

STEVEN BARTLETT: I mean, I completely understand how it happens that a podcaster like me will end up picking a side because there is safety in numbers.

BRENÉ BROWN: Well, because there’s an ideological bunker.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Because we flip the table over 100% at any point. You know, when the left attacks you, I’m like, well, the right looks pretty good. When the right attacks you, you go, oh, the left looks pretty good. Because standing in the, in no man’s land is, it’s not the place you want to be.

I know I’m never going to succeed in this. Like, I know I’m never going to succeed in converting people to be nuanced and to not get viscerally angry when I have someone on the show who’s on the right or viscerally angry when I have someone on the show who’s on the left. I’m already aware that when the Commander episode comes out, it’s just going to be a bunch of people that didn’t listen. And within the first three minutes, the comment section is just going to be.

BRENÉ BROWN: Yeah.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And I’m like, part of me is trying to win that war with my audience where they too will just listen. And I know that you don’t agree with the person, but can you just listen? Because that’s what I do. And it’s not some act I’m putting on. It’s not like I walk out there and I start, but I, I’m right wing in my kitchen or left wing in my kitchen.

Genuinely, the way my brain works is, oh, I see this, this good in this individual. And then I meet someone else who’s on the other side and I say, oh, there’s a couple of points of good that I agree with them on this. That’s how I am. And it feels so weird because when you go on the Internet, you don’t find yourself being compelled by either side entirely.

The Line: When Beliefs Question Humanity

BRENÉ BROWN: No, no. And I think it’s really confusing. And the only limit I have, really is I am not probably going to have a conversation with you if your beliefs question my humanity.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Okay.

BRENÉ BROWN: That, that’s going to be my line. That’s going to be, that’s going to be the line for me, is going to be if you’re cruel or name-calling or if your core beliefs about who I am or who other people are are dehumanizing, that I can’t do because now I’ve betrayed myself in order to make a political point about nuance. Yeah, because that, because, you know, dehumanization is a really interesting and hard thing.

When you look at the research of people who study dehumanization, and we talked about earlier with immigrant populations, there is a circle of moral inclusion. We are not built. We are not hardwired to hurt each other, to kill each other, assault, rape, beat. It’s not. We’re not wired for it, actually. So in order to do that, you’ve got a person here inside your moral inclusion.

In order to be okay with that, you’ve got to push them outside of moral inclusion, to be morally excluded from somebody you see as human and worthy of moral inclusion. And the first step to moral exclusion, moving people out of a safety zone where you don’t do horrible things to them. The first way to move people out is language. Throughout history, as long as people have lived.

So you hear people in this administration calling a community of immigrants an infestation, the same way we would talk about animals or rats. And so my only limit to hard conversation is if you are operating from an ideology where women are dogs, immigrants are illegals. You know, if you’re operating from that place of moral exclusion, you are too dangerous for me. But other than that, I’d probably be willing to have a conversation with anyone. But I can understand why people pick sides. I tell you what, it is lonely.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. It’s nice to hear, though. It’s really nice to hear that. That is, yeah, we’ve talked about it quite a lot, me and Jack, who’s been producing this show since the very beginning. We’ve talked a lot about how we understand the temptation to pick a side.

And actually, one of the greatest compliments a journalist has ever given me is they wrote in the article, and this wasn’t a journalist that liked me. They just said, were unable to ascertain which political party he is part of. I thought that was a great compliment because, I mean, it means that that’s.

BRENÉ BROWN: That’s a journal. That’s a journalistic ethos.

STEVEN BARTLETT: I think they would want to pin me down and say he’s f*ing. They’d love to say right wing or something else. But they said in a not very nice piece they’d written about me or whatever, they said they were unable to figure out what side he’s part of. And I think that’s a compliment because it’s, it’s true. And I think it allows me to do my job better, that I don’t have too many preconceptions when I meet people. I try and meet people for the first time, which I enjoy.

BRENÉ BROWN: I think you’re pretty good at that because you are insatiably curious. It’s lovely. And terrible.

The Challenge of Curiosity for the Avoidant

STEVEN BARTLETT: Why terrible? It’s terrible for an avoidant. I found this out recently. I’ve known it my whole life, but I found it out recently because I had a conversation. If someone’s, I think if someone’s uncomfortable with vulnerability, then I’m like their f*ing worst nightmare.

BRENÉ BROWN: You are. Which is interesting because I don’t expect. She was super vulnerable, really. Maybe carefully optimistic vulnerable.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah.

BRENÉ BROWN: That’s probably like you’re cognitively a believer and trying to move the rest of you to it. You’ve got the journalistic ethos of equal opportunity. Insatiable, curious guy. Right. What do you think the responsibility is of someone who has a platform to vet or understand the credibility, especially when it comes to science or those kind of things, of what their guest is saying?

The Responsibility of Platform and Truth

STEVEN BARTLETT: I think that we, the school of podcasters, haven’t really. We don’t have the, the ex, the training that journalists do. So we’re almost catching up in that regard. Especially if you become a big podcaster because you’re kind of held, you’re held at, in a different level.

So more recently, one of the things we do is we, we’ve hired. I mean, this recently was a year and a half ago, we hired a PhD who does exactly that, who, after this comes out, will go through everything that you said and then put on the screen things that were not within scientific consensus.

BRENÉ BROWN: But that in itself is a decision.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah, yeah, it is a decision.

BRENÉ BROWN: It’s not a choice without consequence either.

STEVEN BARTLETT: No, some people don’t like it.

BRENÉ BROWN: What led you to that choice?

STEVEN BARTLETT: When your podcast reaches lots of people, you’re forced. It’s kind of going, goes to what I said earlier about the political stuff. You’re forced to really get clear on what you believe and, like, what matters to you. And one of the things that matters to me is that the stuff we put into the world, we feel like it’s helping people, even if it’s not nice. And it kind of goes to something that I read in your work, which is, like, our objective isn’t to be nice, it’s to be kind.

BRENÉ BROWN: Oh, yeah.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And so, for example, my conversation, the conversations we have about AI. Like, I’m well aware that that’s not going to necessarily make you feel great, but I think the avoidance of discomfort in, in through history.

BRENÉ BROWN: Oh, God.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Hasn’t led to great places. So, like, if you think there’s a bus coming, I can, you know, it’s, I can pretend there isn’t. But if I think that there might be a bus coming, and if experts and they’re telling me there’s a bus coming, I think we should have a conversation about the bus coming.

And actually me having that conversation. I get messages all the time, which is like, please stop talking about this subject. It doesn’t make me feel good. I’m very anchored to, like, what my, my job is here. And I think it’s, we can push people further towards, we can progress. We can create progress through honest conversations.

So when the podcast got bigger and you get more and more, you get attacked more for any, any of your guests that you have on.

BRENÉ BROWN: Yeah.

STEVEN BARTLETT: You have to get clear on what matters to you and what your job is. And so one of the things I thought is actually, when we have these conversations, I want them to be as accurate as they possibly can be for the listener who might be confused because it’s a confusing world in this new world of democratized media. So we do that.

BRENÉ BROWN: I really respect that. I just want to say I don’t think that that choice is the easy choice.

STEVEN BARTLETT: What is the easy choice, do you.

The Responsibility of Podcasting and Platform Power

STEVEN BARTLETT: I think the easy choice is I’m going to let you say whatever you want and I’ll let my listeners sort out if it’s real or not, and I’ll take no responsibility for the credibility or the facts that are being presented.

What I think is interesting about what you’re doing is it just seems like a very solid approach where I’m a big believer in science. You know, I’m married to a physician, I’m a social scientist. Like I’m not going to be the golden child of this administration when it comes to science for sure. Like I have an “I Love Science” shirt that I wear with a DNA scarf. So like I’m very real about that.

I also don’t think that everything that we see that is projected as peer-reviewed clinical trial, you know, I think challenges to that system are also important. I think science cannot be a self-referencing system any more than any other system can be. So to have people that have different opinions or new opinions on, but to let your listeners or your viewers know that this is not an opinion where there’s a lot of data collected or that this is a controversial opinion is respecting people’s cognitive self-determination. I just think it’s an interesting way to do it.

I just, I think I launched the podcast and it became very big during…

BRENÉ BROWN: COVID. Oh, go to. Yeah.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And so Houston is home to the biggest medical center in the world. Like in the world. And I live in the medical center area. In the beginning there were just, you know, it just never stopped being funerals for physicians and people working on COVID.

And so to hear on podcasts that it doesn’t exist. Yeah. Or that you can use, you know, Windex or you know, like some bullsh*t like that. I just started to, and then I got into a little desktop around it in my own situation. And so I’m always interested as we enter this world in platform and podcast responsibility.

BRENÉ BROWN: It is a, it’s a slippery slope and it’s very, and there’s no, there’s no perfect outcome. Like, you don’t want to go too far either way. Right. You don’t want to like the government get involved and tell you what truth is or…

STEVEN BARTLETT: Right.

BRENÉ BROWN: But you also don’t want to stray into conspiracy land and away from science because, you know…

STEVEN BARTLETT: There are things that are knowable.

BRENÉ BROWN: Yeah, there are things that are knowable.

STEVEN BARTLETT: But…

BRENÉ BROWN: Yeah, but…

STEVEN BARTLETT: I don’t know, I just think it’s an interesting question for this time and I think it’s an interesting question when you have a platform that’s powerful and I think if you’re doing the best you can to make decisions based, what is the question that drives your decision making?

BRENÉ BROWN: To me…

STEVEN BARTLETT: No, like just in general. Yeah, I got yours. You want to help your listeners and you want to do good.

BRENÉ BROWN: Yeah.

STEVEN BARTLETT: That’s a different thing than downloads.

BRENÉ BROWN: You can do both.

STEVEN BARTLETT: You can do both. But if you’re only filter, oh, you’d…

BRENÉ BROWN: Go for f*ing total conspiracy.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Right, right, right, right, right. And so I just think it’s, I just think it’s an interesting question. I don’t have an answer. I just know that it’s an important question.

Navigating Truth and Responsibility in Podcasting

BRENÉ BROWN: Yeah. And you know what, I’ll be honest. So as, I mean we’re not journalists, we’re not journalists here, so we don’t really understand the rigor and I’ve got a lot of respect for journalists and the effort they’ve put in to understand the journalistic method and all those things. I feel like we’re somewhat catching up.

We didn’t, this podcast went from zero to 17 million people a month in four and a half years or something. So, and we’re just again holding on. Like me and Jack didn’t run a podcast before, so I didn’t run one before. And so we’re now catching up.

And part of the, part of the way that we’re shaped is with feedback and you get lots of feedback, don’t have this person, I’ll never speak to this person again. And you kind of bat that stuff off. But if there’s any ever anything that actually feedback that actually is in contradiction, that does test your own mission or your own values, then you listen and you will, you know, you can start to innovate.

And one of the things that we thought was smart was to have the pop-ups on screen, which everybody is probably familiar with by now. And it’s a balancing act. We don’t want to completely discredit everything the guest has to say, but we also just want to give context and that’s kind of context what they’re saying.

If something’s ridiculous, we’ll just remove it. Like if something’s absolute, we’re not publishing the episode is probably a better way of saying it. We had a couple of episodes where people said some guests and things which were just absolutely f*ing crazy. You don’t need a PhD to know that you can’t exercise by lying on the ground. Like this one guest said to me that you can build your muscles just by laying on your back or whatever and not doing anything. We just didn’t publish the episode.

STEVEN BARTLETT: I can just say as a PhD that I have attempted that it was…

BRENÉ BROWN: For jack sh*t.

STEVEN BARTLETT: On the, just laying the shelf. Yeah, no, I think that I respect the approach, which is one of the reasons I decided to come on, because I respect the approach.

BRENÉ BROWN: We’re not perfect, but we’re trying.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And it’s tough that you’re walking a path.

Defining Vulnerability and Its Connection to Courage

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On that point about me and vulnerability, is vulnerability important? Because there’s a lot of performative vulnerability taking place in me, for sure. Is it an important thing for my health, happiness, my future to be a vulnerable person?

STEVEN BARTLETT: Well, let’s define it. Vulnerability is the emotion we experience when we have, when we are up against uncertainty, risk and emotional exposure. So vulnerability is what I feel. It’s the cringe, the awkward, the thing that I, the emotion I feel in times of uncertainty, risk or emotional exposure.

So it was really interesting because I had a hard time helping people understand because we are so raised to believe that vulnerability is weakness, that it took a trip to Fort Bragg, working with Special Forces to ask soldiers a question. Give me a single example of courage in your life. One example that you’ve witnessed or you yourself have done. One example of courage that did not require uncertainty, risk or emotional exposure.

No one could answer it. Finally, a young soldier stood up and said, “Three tours. There is no courage without vulnerability.”

So is vulnerability important? It is if we want to be brave with our lives. If we want to be able to manage ourselves in a way that’s values-aligned and courageous, we have to be able to reconcile how we feel when we’re uncertain, at risk, or exposed.

I mean, and really weirdly, the next week, after the trip to Fort Bragg, I was with the Seattle Seahawks, the football team, NFL team, asked the players, give an example of courage on the field or off, that did not require vulnerability. They said, it’s not possible. There is no courage.

Like, if you’re doing things in your life, in your work, and there’s no risk, no uncertainty and no exposure, then they’re not brave. If you know how it’s going to end, that is not courage. Courage is a willingness to show up and be all in when you cannot predict the outcome.

Courage is saying, “I love you” first. You want to know what vulnerability is? “I love you” first. Have you ever said, “I love you” first?

BRENÉ BROWN: I’m not sure.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah, it’s been a while, but it’s hard. It’s…

BRENÉ BROWN: You know, so I need to give context. It’s been a while since I’ve been in that situation.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Well, you’ve had to go first.

BRENÉ BROWN: Yeah, we’ve had to go first. Yeah.

The Power of Vulnerability in Love and Life

STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah. I mean, there’s this great story that I tell about, I gave a talk here. It was actually in LA, and afterwards a kid came up to me, he’s probably 22 or 23, and he said, “Can I tell you a story about your work and how it’s really changed my life?” And I was like, sure. And a kind of a crowd grew around, and this is like the last time I ever got pinned. Like, not being able to exit a stage because it was such a traumatic, it wasn’t traumatic, but it was like…

He said, “Well, I was dating this woman and I was so crazy about her. So I took her to eat to our favorite restaurant, and I waited until dessert came because we love this chocolate volcano. And I ordered it and I said, ‘I love you.’ And she looked at me and she said, ‘I think you’re awesome, and I think we should date other people.’ And then she Ubered home.”

And so I was like, “God damn, this is the worst story I’ve ever heard.”

BRENÉ BROWN: This is not a good story.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And he said, “So I got in my car and I drove home. And the whole way home, I just kept saying to myself over and over, ‘F* Brené Brown.’ When’s the turn on the story?” You know?

And he said, “I got home and I walked into my apartment and I pushed the door open and both my roommates were wired in and they were on their computers. And they looked up and said, ‘Dude, what’s going on?’ And he said, ‘I told her I loved her and she told me I was awesome.’ And one of my roommates looked at me and said, ‘What the f* were you thinking? That’s not how it works. When you are going toward them, they go away. So you’re always kind of going away. So they come towards you.'”

And he goes, “Oh, oh no, no, I don’t want to, I don’t want to be that dude. I was daring greatly.” And he said both of his roommates just got teary-eyed and went, “Right on man, right on.”

Like, there is no courage without vulnerability. How can you say you’re brave if you’re not putting yourself out there?

When Past Wounds Block Vulnerability

BRENÉ BROWN: So many people have been through things which have made it very, very difficult for them to be vulnerable. I was actually speaking to someone yesterday who was cheated on, bunch of attachment issues in their early childhood.

And funnily enough, when I was talking to her about, I was asking her questions about, because I’m very deep person, this carries over into my personal life. I was asking her questions about the things, you know, she’d been through. Whatever else, she just shuts down.

And she told me that she, she, what were the exact words she said that she finds vulnerability to be a form of intimacy that she tries to stay away from because she needs to really, really, really trust the person before she opens up.

And I think this is a trend you see across a lot of people. They, they won’t open up enough to form a connection because they’ve been hurt before by opening up and it feels too scary to do that. And that results in them being single, alone, unhappy, so on and so on.

The Relationship Between Vulnerability and Trust

STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah, I mean I think there’s, what you said was so loaded with so many things. So first of all, there’s this very interesting relationship between vulnerability and trust. And how does that work? And people always ask me what comes first, trust or vulnerability? Do I trust you first, then I’m vulnerable or am I vulnerable first and then I trust you.

And I think it’s a very slow stacking. We get to know each other. I share a little bit. I don’t share, “Hey, nice to meet you, Steven. Here’s my darkest, horrible, most painful trauma.” Because that is actually, that kind of litmus testing is actually a form of armor. I’m going to throw something at you that our relationship in no way has been built long enough to hold. You’re going to go away and I’m going to use that as verification that vulnerability is dangerous.

That’s litmus testing. Let me prove to you that you’re not trustworthy. I see you’re backing away. That’s what I thought. I’m backing away because we haven’t built a relationship that can bear the weight of this story. Can we start? Can we start small?

BRENÉ BROWN: Okay.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Vulnerability, trust. Vulnerability, trust. Vulnerability, trust. I think in my work we call that the smash and grab. I’m going to hit you with something really big and then watch you go away and use it as evidence.

And it takes a really skilled person to say, “Yeah, I’m really taking in what you told me. I want to be respectful and honor that. And I don’t have a way to file it right now because I don’t know you well enough. So I appreciate the share.”

I mean, we also call it spotlighting. So if I had a military grade spotlight that they use in the wilderness, I work with the military a lot, and I picked it up and put it in your face right here, what would you do physically? That’s our reaction to too much vulnerability too fast.

The Armor We Wear for Survival

So you’re talking about the slow stacking of courage and vulnerability and trust. And then you’re also talking about that when we’ve had a lot of hard things happen to us. I think this is where I really believe the democratization of coaching and therapy, that a lot of times we have to work with people. We have to get help to be able to open up and take off some of the armor that we put on.

Because sometimes that armor that we put on, it’s survival. And you want to start adding variables like race, gender, anything where there’s social systems also at play. That’s survival.

Telling me right now at my career, “Hey, you should be vulnerable with your new team and talk about your previous failures.” Well, of course I could do that. And I would do it, and everybody would clap and they’d think, “Oh man, she’s so brave.”

And take the new person who’s a young black woman or the new first LGBTQ person on a team and say, “Hey, don’t tell anybody shit. Develop trust first. See how trust your own instincts about the accountability of this group to hold themselves accountable for their behavior.”

Vulnerability is not more necessary for any of us than anybody else, but certainly more difficult for some people, for sure.

Vulnerability and Life’s Most Meaningful Experiences

And I think what’s hard about that, what’s so painful, probably the most painful part of my career is that regardless of why the armor is on, without vulnerability, you cannot access the experiences that are the most meaningful in life. Love. To love someone is to be vulnerable. From the time you wake up to the time you go to bed, you know that you’re in a relationship. To love is to be vulnerable, right?

And have you ever buried someone you loved? I lost my mom two years ago. My kids, it’s like having your heart live outside of your body. To love is to be vulnerable because it’s to risk grief and losing belonging.

Is vulnerable, the most vulnerable human emotion, joy. Joy is so vulnerable that when some of us get close to it, we dress rehearse tragedy to prepare for disappointment. It’s so vulnerable that we don’t even let ourselves feel joy because we’re so afraid someone’s going to rip it away and we’re going to get sucker punched by disappointment.

Yes or no? People choose to live disappointed rather than to feel disappointed, risk feeling disappointed and get excited about something.

The first time my kids shared with me when they were young, certainly not the way I was raised, but “I really, really want to make this team, mom.” And I said, “I want to pause you for a second and tell you how brave it is to talk openly about something you want so much when you don’t have control over whether you get it or not. I want it for you because you want it. But regardless of what happens, I admire your courage for wanting something and sharing out loud that you want it. Because if you don’t get it, I’ll know that it was a crushing blow. But that’s so great because I’ll be here for you when that happens either way.”

Foreboding Joy and the Practice of Gratitude

We call it foreboding joy. That joy is so good, just waiting for the other shoe to drop. And people who have trauma histories are really like that. For me, because the way I was raised, when something good happens, I’m like, “Oh, God, now what’s going to happen? Statistically, bad shit’s going to roll around any second now.”

And it’s interesting because the group of people that we research, the only group of people that could take that, there’s a bodily quiver, right, of vulnerability. Have you felt it?

BRENÉ BROWN: Yeah.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah. The only people that can really lean into joy consistently are people who use that vulnerability quiver as a reminder to be grateful, to be able to practice gratitude in that second. So gratitude is a huge enabler of joy.

BRENÉ BROWN: Is that automatic or can one train that?

STEVEN BARTLETT: No, it’s a training. Oh, shit. No, I had to. I mean, standing at my front door watching my 16 year old daughter walk down the sidewalk with her boyfriend in high school and get in his truck for prom, right? And I’m standing there and I’m like, “Oh, God.” And you know, what am I worried about? Prom night, car wreck, right?

Of course, when I tell the story, the military is always like pregnancy. I’m like, no, no, no, no, no. Car wreck.

And so I just remember staying there and she gets in and I’m staying next to Steve and Charlie. My son’s, you know, at this time, he’s 10. And I’m like, “I’m so grateful. I’m so grateful. I’m grateful for this moment. I’m grateful that I’m a part of it. I’m grateful that they did the corsage and the boutonniere over here. I’m grateful that I got to help pick out the dress. I’m so grateful.”

And Charlie goes, looks at Steve, “What’s wrong with mom?” And Steve goes, “She’s practicing gratitude. Let her do it. Otherwise she’s going to get on a crazy train. It’s going to be all hell.”

Because part of me wants to say, “Oh, God, oh God, so beautiful and so joyful and get in your truck and follow them right now. If he’s speeding, I want to know about it. If he’s not stopping fully to stop sign, follow them until this date is over.” That’s what I want to do. Because I’m afraid, because the joy of that moment was just too much for me. Too vulnerable.

The Journey of Overcoming

BRENÉ BROWN: It appears you’ve overcome various traits of old Brené Brown.

STEVEN BARTLETT: No, I’m overcoming.

BRENÉ BROWN: Overcoming.

STEVEN BARTLETT: No, I’m not over. I have not overcome.

BRENÉ BROWN: Have you overcome anything?

STEVEN BARTLETT: Yes, the belief that I will overcome anything. I’ve overcome the belief that I have overcome the belief that I will ever arrive. I am grateful for the skills that I have that are new skills that keep me more aligned with the person, the mom, the partner, the leader that I want to be.

But I try to stay very mindful that I am scary when I’m scared, that I catastrophize very, very easily. And that’s painful for everybody around me and I don’t need to be liked. I just need to be myself. But those are things, because I will sit down like two days ago and be like, “Oh, my God, it’d be so freaking easy to be liked here. This would be a piece of cake.” And I’m like, “Shit, I don’t do that anymore. Ever.”

BRENÉ BROWN: Two days ago?

STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah.

BRENÉ BROWN: Ahead of what?

STEVEN BARTLETT: Just with a group of people that I knew what it would take to be liked.

BRENÉ BROWN: And you made the choice to just…

STEVEN BARTLETT: To be myself? Yeah.

BRENÉ BROWN: Why?

STEVEN BARTLETT: Because now the person I’m going to betray last is me. Yeah. I hope I see you again. But not that important.

The Value of Never Being “Fixed”

BRENÉ BROWN: Some people might find that somewhat demoralizing to know that they too might never cure parts of themselves that they’re desperate to change. I think people, you know, they often come to podcasts like this or read books like yours looking for solution fixes to not liking myself, to the way that I react to my emotions. They want to fix it because if they can fix it, then they can be happy.

STEVEN BARTLETT: I don’t think that’s in the consideration set for a very beautiful reason that if we could fix it and never have to wrestle with it again, we would be so short on grace for other people that we would be tireless.

BRENÉ BROWN: So you think it creates a form of empathy for others?

STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah, I mean, I have really serious boundaries. I’m a very boundary person, but when I see someone behaving a certain way, I was like, “Oh, my asshole sees your inner asshole right here. I get it. I get what you’re doing. I’m not going to tolerate it. I’m going to set a boundary around it. But I’m not really judging you for it. It’s just that behavior’s not okay right here.”

BRENÉ BROWN: But you…

STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah, yeah, I do. I do. I can. I think I can say that pretty. I like what I’m becoming.

BRENÉ BROWN: And for anyone that doesn’t like themselves, what work has had to go into getting to the point where you like what you’re becoming?

Recognizing and Releasing Our Armor

STEVEN BARTLETT: I think the hardest is maybe one of the biggest findings of my research over the last 25 years is it’s not fear that gets in the way of us being brave with our lives and our work. It’s armor. Everybody’s afraid. It’s okay to be afraid. What’s dangerous is the armor that we reach for to self protect when we’re afraid. And how that armor moves us away from love, connection, and our values.

And so I think the hardest work is for me constantly being aware of what is my armor, what am I grabbing for when I’m afraid, what am I grabbing for when I want to protect my sense of self worth, my ego, and how heavy that shit is?

You know, at some point I had to wear it because that was survival for me growing up. But this is the big, this is the biggest developmental milestone of middle age, which you are squarely entering, which is kind of when the universe grabs you by the shoulders and pulls you really close and says, “I’m not f*ing around anymore. I gave you gifts. Choosing not to grow into them is not benign. There’s a consequence for that and your armor is getting in the way. You’re a grown ass person now. You have different choices. Let go of what doesn’t serve.”

And that is the big milestone, I think, that we have to wrestle with in midlife. What no longer serves that’s preventing us from growing into who we want to be.

BRENÉ BROWN: And is that where vulnerability comes into the picture? Because…

STEVEN BARTLETT: Oh, for sure. Because all the armor, all the armor is about vulnerability.

BRENÉ BROWN: It requires a huge amount of, I was going to say self awareness.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Yes.

BRENÉ BROWN: That some people just don’t, could probably never accomplish. I mean…

STEVEN BARTLETT: That’s why I think metaphor is helpful. I mean, most of us can understand. If you back me into an emotional corner, what are you going to get? As a leader, I know my armor. Perfectionism, micromanagement. I get super intensive. I get recklessly decisive. I know my armor and my team knows my armor.

I think my armor in my personal life, especially when it comes to my kids, when I get, when I feel vulnerable, is control, control, control. Take over all the chess pieces.

BRENÉ BROWN: But that’s not a good idea.

STEVEN BARTLETT: It’s not possible. It’s just pretend. That’s called anxiety. Pretending that you can control the chessboard of other people’s lives, your own, much less other people’s lives. But I think I do it out of fear.

BRENÉ BROWN: Is fear the opposite of courage or is it…

STEVEN BARTLETT: No, I think the opposite of courage is armor.

BRENÉ BROWN: Armor. Okay.

STEVEN BARTLETT: I think the opposite of courage is self protection.

BRENÉ BROWN: To be courageous in this context, whether it’s as a leader or in another environment. You talk about these four steps to courage. You talk about it in strong ground.

The Four Skill Sets of Courage

STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah, this was research that emerged like 15 years ago. And I was really nervous because I’m a grounded theory researcher, I’m a qualitative researcher. So a grounded theory is only as good as its ability to work new data. So you develop a hypothesis or a theory based on data. And then as you collect more data, does the hypothesis hold?

And we collected that data pre pandemic, pre a lot of things. And so I was really worried about the four skill sets of courage which are identifying and understanding your core values. I would love to do this exercise with you sometime.

Two, understanding what gets in the way of you wrestling with vulnerability, kind of owning it and moving through it constructively.

Three, how to build trust and how to become super important, trustworthy to yourself, self trust. Because one of the first casualties of failure or disappointment or setback is we lose our ability to trust ourselves, our ability to make good decisions, our ability to take care of ourselves.

And the last one, which is my favorite because it can really, I’ve seen it really change an organization is how to get back up after failure and disappointment, how to reset, how to manage your own bounce when hard shit happens.

So those are the four skill sets of courage. Again, evidence based, observable, measurable and teachable. We’ve taken 165,000 people through this work across 45 countries, collected data on all of it. It’s so exciting. And it withstood all of the complex changes over the last five years, including AI organizationally, because this is where we do our work.

I’m not a therapist or a clinician. I don’t work with families or individuals. I mean, I have a therapist, but I’m not one. So I think you can develop courage skills.

BRENÉ BROWN: The third point is braving trust. Yeah, and I’ve heard about your marble jar theory. So I got a jar of marble.

STEVEN BARTLETT: I saw that.

BRENÉ BROWN: Could you explain to me what your marble jar. Look at how excited you are.

The Marble Jar Theory

STEVEN BARTLETT: I know. So this comes, where do I get my information? Ellen’s in fourth grade, my oldest. She comes home from school, the front door closes. She slides down the door into a heap, sobbing. Oh, my God. Ellen, are you okay? Are you hurt? What’s going on?

She says that something hard happened. She shared it very confidentially with one or two of her friends during recess. When she got back to the classroom, they had told everybody in her class, all 30 kids, everybody was laughing and pointing and making fun of her. And she said, I will never trust anyone again.

And my response immediately in my mind was, damn straight, not a f*ing person. You trust your mama and that’s it. That was my response. But again, that’s not the right thing to do. Right? You want a kid who can develop trust with others.

So I said, trust is really hard. She said, I don’t understand it. And her teacher at the time, Mrs. Bauckham, had a marble jar. And when the class would collectively make good decisions, she would put marbles in this empty jar. And when it got full, they’d have an extra recess and party.

And so immediately what came to me, because I’m describing trust, which is a hard concept to a fourth grader, I said, trust is the marble jar. She’s like, what do you mean? And I said, every time you share something with someone that’s confidential and they don’t share it, they get a marble. Every time you build trust. When you want to share something really private and personal, you look for a friend whose jar is full of marbles.

Do you have any marble jar friends? She’s like, not the ones I shared with today. And I said, who are your marble jar friends? And she said, Hannah and Lorna. And I said, tell me something they do to earn marbles.

Oh, well, if I get to my tray late at lunch and there’s no place to sit, Lorna will scoot over and give me half her seat. And we just share one seat and I can sit at the table. And then the other day when I had strep throat, Hannah was worried about me. So remember her mom called and said, Hannah’s worried about Ellen. Why wasn’t she at school?

But then the biggest thing that Hannah did was the other day, Oma and Opa, my parents, my mom and her husband came to my soccer game and Hannah looked over and goes, oh my God, your Oma and Opa are here. And I said, why was that a big deal? And she goes, because everybody’s divorced and remarried and I’ve got eight, four sets of people. And she remembered their names.

And what was shocking to me is that Ellen was conveying that these marbles were being earned on these very small. She knew my grandparents name. She gave me a seat to sit at. She checked on me when I was missing something. School.

And so it made me start thinking about the literature on trust. So I immediately go to the Gottmans. Have you had the Gottmans on here?

BRENÉ BROWN: Oh, twice. Yeah.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah. I mean, just yeah. So I go to the Gottman’s research on trust, and I read right off the bat where Gottmans say trust is earned in small moments. Every day he tells a story. It’s my favorite story that he tells. And I’ve had them on my podcast and I’ve done blurbs for their books and written forwards. They’re just great.

So he tells a story about how he’s also a mystery lover like me. He’s on the second to last page of his mystery.

BRENÉ BROWN: He’s like, oh my God.

Trust Is Built in Small Moments

STEVEN BARTLETT: Oh my God, who did it? And he jumps up to go brush his teeth and he gets walks to the bathroom and he sees his wife crying and brushing her hair. He’s like, shit, don’t look. Everything’s good. Just go to the bathroom and get back in your, get back to your book.

And he’s like, that’s a sliding door moment. I have a choice in that moment to build trust and stop and say what’s going on? Or to build betrayal and pretend like I don’t see her hurting. So I stop, I take the brush out of her hand, I start brushing her hair and say, what’s going on? That’s a sliding door moment that we have all the time, right?

And so to me, trust is built slowly over time. A marble at a time. And that’s how we teach trust to the most senior leaders in Fortune 100 companies. That trust is a marble jar. It’s earned.

Leaders believe, and you’re a leader, so you know the temptation. Leaders believe that in the middle of a crisis, you put the numbers together and there’s a fever dream in the United States and there’s new tariffs and you wake up and you’ve got a revenue line that’s in crisis. And then you can just look at your people and say, hello, everyone. This is back to the executive presence. Trust me, here’s what we’re going to do. And it means nothing to people.

What matters is a leader that walks past you in the morning and says, hey, good to see you, Steven. How’s your mom’s chemo going? Marbles. Marbles. Then when the crisis happens, you don’t need to say, trust me. You just need to say what’s on your mind. They trust you.

BRENÉ BROWN: The other thing I think is often plagued my mind is as a leader, sometimes you say things and those things can’t happen for whatever reason. Things change, right? And I think leaders sometimes think that trust is always being correct, always predicting everything correctly, always being right.

STEVEN BARTLETT: No, trust is. Man, did I think we had nailed this. I thought this was how this was going to happen. We were wrong. You’ve been working your asses off for six months on this, and I’ve got to deprioritize it today standing right here in front of you.

But I’m not going to bullshit you. You’ve been working your ass off on a priority that literally does not exist today. I want to stop and say thank you. I saw what you were doing. I want to be completely transparent about why the priority has shifted. And then I’m going to ask you for the same level of work on the new priority. Yes or no?

BRENÉ BROWN: Yeah. And in the blame and responsibility often rear their heads.

STEVEN BARTLETT: That’s right foot.

BRENÉ BROWN: For better or for us. Go like this. The eyelash or something. Oh, no.

STEVEN BARTLETT: One marble. There you go.

BRENÉ BROWN: Oh, yeah. Is that a marble?

STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah, it is. Yeah.

BRENÉ BROWN: Yeah.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Because you didn’t have to say that. I think that sometimes people say, you got some shit on your shirt. I’m like, that’s, thank you so much because it would have been much easier for you not to point out the bogey on my face or whatever.

BRENÉ BROWN: I don’t trust somebody that doesn’t do that. So I guess it is a marble.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Hmm. Someone said to me a couple of weeks ago on the podcast, they said, I trust people who say things in public that is against their near term interests. And I thought, oh.

BRENÉ BROWN: That’s good. Yeah, that’s a, that’s a right.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah, yeah.

BRENÉ BROWN: It’s a good metaphor though, right?

STEVEN BARTLETT: It’s.

BRENÉ BROWN: The trust in the marble jar has been very helpful for us. And let me tell you, there are behaviors. This is plastic. There are behaviors in relationships where you take this whole thing and just slam it in the ground. Cheating, I think that’s an obvious one. There’s one that’s more, has a more ragged edge of grief and distress than even cheating, which is just slowly disengaging.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Emotionally disengaging.

BRENÉ BROWN: Yeah, yeah. Gosh, that’s a ragged, that’s a ragged edged break on that marble jar. And it just happens over time. And other people think that they’re nuts and it makes them question their own judgment.

Relationship Advice

STEVEN BARTLETT: You have been in a relationship much longer than me, but we share a lot of similarities in many ways. I was wondering if you were to give me any relationship advice that might hold my together over the next 30 years. I mean, you could give me so much. I know because I’ve seen so much incredible. I’ve actually stolen so much advice.

One of the things I stole recently, which me and my girlfriend talked about was sometimes I’d come home and I’m on 10%. And I heard you say this.

BRENÉ BROWN: Oh yeah.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And I just, I don’t communicate to my girlfriend that I’m on. I’ve got like 10% left. And then she, you know, she might want to try and work through some shit.

BRENÉ BROWN: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

STEVEN BARTLETT: It’s going to go bad.

BRENÉ BROWN: It’s going to go bad. It’s going to go bad.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah. Let’s not do this at 1:00am. And I saw you talk about how you communicate. You vocalize what you have left in the tank to give context to the person, I guess to create some empathy for both of you, but I’ve stolen that. But is there anything else that you think might help me over the next 30 years to have a good relationship with my girlfriend with all the risks that you see?

BRENÉ BROWN: I’ll just start by saying I think therapy couples work is so incredibly powerful and helpful. I think the Gottman’s work is really like. We read the Gottman’s work together sometimes, so I think that’s helpful.

STEVEN BARTLETT: I’m surprised you were willing to, as someone that struggles with vulnerability.

BRENÉ BROWN: Oh, yeah, no, for sure.

STEVEN BARTLETT: What, you. You weren’t?

BRENÉ BROWN: No, I was willing.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Oh, really? Okay.

The Three Commitments to a Lasting Relationship

BRENÉ BROWN: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I struggle with vulnerability, but I really respect humility in people so much that even if I’m not feeling humility, I will fake humility and be like, I need help. And then I’ll say, shit, this is real. This is hard. They got my number. I’m like, damn, they just called a thing a thing. And it hurt my feelers.

But I guess the biggest thing is that neither Steven nor I had any modeling of what a healthy relationship looked like at all. And I think one commitment we made is to just keep showing up. I think these are the three commitments. Keep showing up. Don’t buy into the bullshit that it’s supposed to be easy. It’ll be the hardest thing you ever do and ask for help.

And that’s not. There’s no. I wish I could give you a. Here’s the secret to it. But the secret to us is we keep showing up. We know it’s not supposed to be easy, and we get help.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And the help being you turn to him and ask for help or external help.

BRENÉ BROWN: Well, we get external help, but we read, we try new things, we try new tools. We’re just. We don’t ever want to be done learning and trying to be better for ourselves and for each other.

And that’s a lot. I mean, 38 years together is not just the slow roll movie of a life and a family. But we’ve been buried parents, you know, we’ve gone through illnesses, we’ve raised kids. We’ve gone through different seasons in our own lives where we were not synced at all. It’s really, really hard.

But it’s. I’m more proud of it than anything I’ve ever done because my setup for success was zero.

Caregiving and Loss

STEVEN BARTLETT: You’ve buried parents.

BRENÉ BROWN: Yeah.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Christmas Day.

BRENÉ BROWN: My mom died on Christmas Day after my sisters and I were her primary caregiver for four years with dementia.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Four years.

BRENÉ BROWN: I wouldn’t wish that shit on the people I hate the most. I try not to hate people, but I. God gives me grace for it on occasion, but I would not wish that on anybody.

You know, there’s the reality of it. You know, she gets there. There’s an accident. You’re showering your mom, you’re bathing your mom, you know, and she knows just enough to be humiliated by it. But this is life. This is caregiving, you know, and it’s a tremendous emotional, physical, mental weight that falls primarily on women who are also in the workforce.

You know, thank God I had two sisters, so there’s three of us, but. And many people have. Very many people have zero. It’s like you and your PhD researcher. I have resources, a lot of resources. And I think it almost killed me, you know, and so.

STEVEN BARTLETT: It almost killed you.

BRENÉ BROWN: I mean, yeah, it. To lose someone that you love. I love my mom in bits and pieces, in chips and bones. You know, and then there was a day when she just got incredibly, incredibly cruel.

My mom was the fulcrum. Our family changed on her back. She was the first person to go to therapy. She left my dad. She got us into therapy. She worked three jobs. She changed everything. She talked about the long history of addiction in our family, you know, on both sides, everywhere. She changed our family.

And so to say she was someone who I respected and revered was an understatement. And, you know, and we did so much healing work around kind of how she showed up as a parent in her marriage with my dad.

And so then the one day I went to go take care of her, and I saw that thing that I hadn’t seen since I was 14, you know, and I’m 54, you know, and it literally, I couldn’t drive. It brought me physically to my knees. My husband had to come and get me.

And I don’t. I can’t talk about it without getting emotional, because it’s not like I blamed my mom because she’s in the middle of this disease, you know, but it was like, I didn’t see her for two months after that. And Steve kept saying, I thought I can’t. And he’s like, you got to heal from that.

I mean, just imagine being dropped back in a worst case scenario situation when you were 13 or 14. And then, you know, you’re just like, I can’t. And, you know, my sisters were like, we got this. And then they’d go through a period where they were like, I can’t right now. And then, okay, I got it.

But Steve always had it. She was like, I got the diaper. I’ll take him to dinner. I’ll meet with the doctors. That’s partnership. You know what I mean? That’s partnership.

Processing Grief and Relief

STEVEN BARTLETT: How did you deal with the grief?

BRENÉ BROWN: Well, don’t send me your hate mail, f*ers. But, you know, when she died, it was nothing but relief.

STEVEN BARTLETT: I’ve heard this, I’ve never not heard that from someone that had a parent struggling with dementia and passing away.

BRENÉ BROWN: It was complete relief. I mean, the day before she died, I think we had a really important time with her. And I’m sure she is, you know, playing dominoes with Ann Richards and Molly Ivins and great other female Texas politicians, Democrats. But my mom was very radically political.

But the window of grief was just years of. There was, you know, very early on, there was no calling her to say, oh, Charlie got a really cute date. Let me show you the homecoming pictures. Or, hey, Ellen, you know, got into her master’s program that. That all just went away just every week.

And so that’s why, you know, the whole strong ground book, there’s a sentence in the first chapter that said, I have a sticky note on my window, on my mirror in the bathroom that says, “I’d rather be the oldest woman in the gym than the youngest woman in assisted living.” Because I do believe in the connection around exercise dementia.

And I took care of my grandmother with dementia with my mom. And my mom and my grandmother made a lot of different lifestyle choices than I’ve made.

Finding Strong Ground

But the whole strong ground metaphor is that I went to go see a trainer, and one day he looked at me and he said, he called me brown. He said, “Find the ground, Brown.” And I looked down, I said, okay. And he goes, “Not the floor, the ground. Take your feet, push in to the ground. Use your mind to connect with your body. Push into the ground. And then tell your mind you’re going to be using f*ing lats.”

And I was like, okay. So I did it and I felt them. And I started whispering every time I would do a weightlifting thing. Strong ground. Strong ground.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Strong ground. An unbelievable, unbelievable book. So we didn’t cover everything in this book today, which is a great shame, but hopefully speak again in the future. But it’s the lessons of daring, leadership, the tenacity of paradox, which is something I was keen to talk about, and the wisdom of the human spirit.

All of your books are amazing. You said earlier on that someone called you a wizard when you were younger. That’s exactly what I think you are. I think you’re a wizard.

BRENÉ BROWN: Why?

STEVEN BARTLETT: I think you’re a wizard. You have an unbelievable pattern recognition understanding of humans. You have so many wide reference points that it appears to be magic to a Muggle like me.

We’re out of time and the team are going to run through the door if I’m not careful. But we have a closing tradition on this podcast with the last guest leaves a question for the next guest, not knowing who they’re leaving it for. You actually know this person, do you?

BRENÉ BROWN: I know the next guest.

STEVEN BARTLETT: No, you know the one that left the question for you.

BRENÉ BROWN: Oh, got it.

The Closing Question

STEVEN BARTLETT: They didn’t know it was for you. “Dear beautiful and highly intelligent next guest. What are you optimizing for right now?”

BRENÉ BROWN: Strength and longevity. Mentally, physically, spiritually and emotionally.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Strong ground. The lessons of daring, leadership, the tenacity of paradox, and the wisdom of the human spirit. You are. You are. I was trying to think if there’s any others. You are the single most requested guest and you have been on the show for a long, long time. For three or four years.

When we ask people who they want me to speak to, they say your name. And they say your name because of these incredible work you’ve done through your own podcast, which I’m going to link on the screen and below right now, but also through some of these incredible books which have changed people’s lives.

If you’re unfamiliar with Brené’s work, I think people will understand after listening today how much they’re missing out on. I’d highly recommend you go and listen to Brené’s podcasts, but also to check out this book, Strong Ground, which I’m going to link below.

Also, Dare to Lead, I think all of the leadership team in my office reference Dare to Lead so often, which an incredible book about brave work, tough decisions, and whole hearts. You make the most beautiful artwork. I consider these books to be artwork again because they pull on so many different reference points to make something that feels so original and you’ve helped so many people.

The fact that my audience have demanded I speak to you for so long, I think is testament to that. And you’re a wonderful human being. And actually, one of the things you’ve inspired me to be is myself, because that’s exactly what I find you to be.

So thank you so much, Brené, for your time today. It’s deeply, deeply appreciated. More so than I could say. I think you’re a wonderful human being. Please come back again soon.

BRENÉ BROWN: I will. I have enjoyed every minute of this. I would say it has not been easy because we went to some hard places together, but it’s been meaningful. Thank you.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Thank you.

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