Book SummaryDaring Greatly, by Brené Brown

1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of Daring Greatly

We innately seek connection and belonging. Brené Brown describes this as the desire to live “Wholeheartedly.” Wholehearted living is characterized by behavior or beliefs that facilitate meaningful engagement and growth.

However, Wholehearted living is impeded by shame, which prevents you from accessing or expressing the vulnerability necessary for true connection. In Daring Greatly, you’ll learn:

• How shame shows up in your personal life, as well as the general collective
• Why vulnerability is the solution to shame
• How you protect yourself from your vulnerability
• Ultimately, how to embrace vulnerability, so you can live a Wholehearted life.

The Three Irreducible Human Needs

Human beings need three things in order to feel happy and healthy: love, connection, and belonging. Unfortunately, we all face a number of obstacles on the path to meeting these needs, including our culture of scarcity, shame, and fear of vulnerability.

We’ll cover each of the obstacles, then look at Brown’s solutions for overcoming them in your own life and becoming Wholehearted.

Obstacle #1: Culture of Scarcity

The most prominent obstacle is the mentality of scarcity embedded in our culture. Cultures of scarcity are infused with a constant sense or expectation of lack. There is “never enough” of anything, a constant focus on filling what feels like an empty cup. This has occurred in response to chronic, collective trauma on the broader scale, and has resulted in cultural post-traumatic stress. It manifests in three ways.

Manifestation #1: Shame

Shame is characterized by fear of not being worthy of love, connection, or belonging. In other words, it’s the internalized manifestation of “never enough” culture.

For example, sometimes one generation will shame another generation for their mistakes or perceived inadequacies. Consider the way the “Boomer” generation sees the “Millennial” generation as not being responsible or hard working enough (or vice versa, with Millennials viewing Boomers as not being flexible or adaptable enough).

Manifestation #2: Disengagement

Disengagement is lack of connection, whether it be a lack of willingness to connect, or an inability to connect. It is a type of burnout that arises from unsuccessfully seeking meaningful presence within a culture that is profoundly focused on what is not present.

For example, students and teachers alike struggle to meaningfully connect with one another, whether it be due to large class sizes that don’t allow for personal engagement or material taught for the purpose of passing a standardized test.

Manifestation #3: Comparison

To compare is to rank someone or something against another, and allow that ranking to determine value. Scarcity culture breeds comparison, because everyone is always comparing what they have (or lack) to what others have (or lack), whether that be material or emotional.

For example, you are bombarded on a daily basis with messages and images that encourage you to compare who you are, and what you have with that of others. Consider the woman who is constantly seeking the “perfect” body because she is comparing her body to pictures of women in magazines.

Obstacle #2: Shame

Shame is the most pervasive effect of scarcity culture. It causes you to fear that you will never be enough, and as a result, to fear that you are unworthy of belonging. Shame is woven into every aspect of our lives.

Individual Shame

You are confronted daily by cultural messaging that tells you that you are not good enough, not smart enough, not good-looking enough, and so on. You are told that all the ways in which you are not enough will end in rejection. As a result, you internalize the expectations of others, build a false self based on those expectations, and develop a deepening sense of inadequacy.

Relationship Shame

Healthy love is cultivated with vulnerability and trust. Intimacy is not possible without those things. Shame prevents vulnerability, and erodes trust. It is especially damaging in an intimate relationship, because when employed, it twists the sacredness of vulnerability into a weapon. Once this occurs, trust is damaged. If it becomes chronic, you have a recipe for destroying the entire foundation of intimacy.

Shame in the Workplace

Many work environments are shame-prone, as shame is often used as a management tool. This type of environment is unsustainable, and detrimental to employee self-esteem. If shame permeates a work culture for long enough, people eventually begin to throw up protective mechanisms. The most common result of this is disengagement, which causes risk aversion and impedes workplace innovation.

Shame at School

Shame-prone school environments are similar to shame-prone work environments, and they’re subject to the same pitfalls and destructive results. If students experience too much chronic shame they will eventually disengage from the learning process. This...

Daring Greatly Summary Introduction: Shame, Vulnerability, and the Path to a Wholehearted Life

Connection is the cornerstone of the human experience and something every human being needs to be happy. Daring Greatly teaches that the biggest obstacle to experiencing connection is shame. In order to move through shame, and find connection, you need to have the courage to engage with vulnerability. This practice is called Wholehearted Living. To live “Wholeheartedly” means to dare greatly, to know you’re worthy of a fully connected life, and to build a relationship with life that reflects that knowledge.

The Ideals of Wholehearted Living

Wholehearted living is based on five core ideals.

Ideal #1: Human beings are biologically wired to need love, connection, and belonging to survive. When you don’t get these things, you experience pain and suffering.

Ideal #2: People who feel a sense of love, connection, and belonging believe they are worthy of it. In contrast, people who don’t believe themselves worthy of love, connection, and belonging are unlikely to feel these things.

Ideal #3: The feeling of worthiness is not inherent, it’s learned. You learn your worth through embodying worthiness in daily habits and practices. Those who feel worthy...

Daring Greatly Summary Chapter 1: Scarcity and Our Culture of “Never Enough”

We want to take risks, but because we live in a culture of scarcity, the fear of not being enough makes us prioritize protecting our sense of self. One of the ways we do this is by projecting an ideal image of ourselves out to the world. In Chapter 1, we look at the ways in which this mentality is an obstacle to wholehearted living, as well as what can be done to resolve it.

What Is a Culture of Scarcity?

A culture of scarcity is a culture preoccupied with lack, in which the focus is on your inadequacies, and there is a perpetual felt sense of “never enough.” The preoccupation with scarcity may well be the biggest cultural influence of our time. We’re afraid we’re not enough, and we respond to this by trying to prove how extraordinary we are.

Why Are We So Obsessed With Scarcity?

As a collective, we have experienced (and continue to experience) local, national, and global trauma that has stolen our sense of safety. Culturally, we’re traumatized, and it manifests as a hyper-vigilant, pervasive, underlying worry. As a way to control, we hold up an idealized image of ourselves, our lives, our days (in other words, Instagram-worthy), and when the reality...

Shortform Exercise: Identify Your “Never Enough” Thoughts

Reflect on the obstacles keeping you from believing in your own inherent worth and the effect these obstacles have on your life.

Write down some of your “Never Enough” thoughts. Where in your life do you feel like you aren’t enough? Examples might be “I never feel successful enough” or “I never feel smart enough.”

Daring Greatly Summary Chapter 2: Vulnerability Myths

Vulnerability gives you the power to move beyond shame and scarcity. As a culture, we have many false beliefs about vulnerability that reinforce our focus on scarcity. Embracing vulnerability requires you to distinguish the myths from the truth. In this chapter, we identify and dismantle four common myths about vulnerability.

Myth 1: “Vulnerability = Weakness”

This myth revolves around viewing vulnerability as a deficiency. When you view vulnerability this way, it comes from the belief that experiencing “negative” emotions means you’re weak. This belief is ultimately quite dangerous. Why? It causes you to avoid your vulnerability, which results in the expectation that others do the same. When they don’t, you feel superior, and see them as weak. Seeing yourself and others through a lens of contempt prevents you from connecting in meaningful ways.

To be vulnerable is to be present with the full spectrum of your emotional experience. You can’t experience joy without being aware of the possibility of sorrow, or experience sorrow without being aware of the absence of joy. In that vein, even positive experiences of vulnerability may remind you of darker emotions that you...

Shortform Exercise: Identify Fact Versus Fiction

Consider the myths that resonate with you and the steps you can take to confront them.

In what ways do these myths resonate? For example, are you someone who prefers to “go it alone,” or who considers vulnerability avoidable? Do you view darker emotions as weaknesses?

Daring Greatly Summary Chapter 3: Make Shame Make Sense

In chapter 1, you learned that vulnerability is a requirement for living a wholehearted life, and identified shame as a core obstacle to vulnerability. In chapter 3, you’ll take a deep dive into shame. You’ll explore:

• What shame is
• How it shows up in your life
• Why it's an obstacle to living wholeheartedly
• The best way to work through it

What Is Shame, and Why Is It so Powerful?

Shame is the fear of not being worthy of connection and belonging. It is the fear that you are not enough and will be rejected for your weaknesses. It overtakes the prefrontal cortex, and initiates your fight or flight response. Instead of being able to think critically or analyze the legitimacy of a threat, you are thrust into survival mode.

Why Is Shame So Bad?

1. Once the shame cycle begins, you really only have three options: fight, freeze, or run. In terms of human behavior, this might look like aggression, numbing, or people pleasing.
2. Being in this type of survival mode prevents you from connecting meaningfully with yourself and others, which impedes your ability to live wholeheartedly.
3. It’s common to confuse guilt, shame, embarrassment, and...

Shortform Exercise: Build Shame Resilience

Identify a recent experience in your life where you felt shame and the impact it had on you.

Describe your experience of it. How did it feel in your body? What messages did it communicate to you about yourself?

Daring Greatly Summary Chapter 4, Part 1: Vulnerability and Armor

In the previous chapter, you learned about shame, and how it is an obstacle to vulnerability, preventing you from experiencing a wholehearted life. In part one of this chapter, you’ll learn about another significant obstacle to vulnerability: the “armor” you wear for protection. In part two, you’ll explore how to remove this false protection and embrace the vulnerability you’ve been shielding.

Why Do You Protect Yourself From Vulnerability?

Vulnerability isn’t something that feels safe to lead with—most would prefer to keep it hidden (though it’s equally common to admire when others lead with it). We are afraid of what makes us feel most vulnerable, and we are especially afraid of allowing others to see those areas. If you don’t trust that you’re worthy of being seen as you are, your fear can cause you to live with protective armor to a point where, not only do your loved ones not know who you truly are, but you might not even know who you truly are.

Everyone protects the masks they wear, and often in similar ways. You can call this our Common Vulnerability Armor.

Armor #1—Foreboding Joy

The feeling you get when you’re happy, but the happiness is followed...

Daring Greatly Summary Chapter 4, Part 2: Disarming the Armor

You will not be able to remove your armor or shields until you are able to believe you are enough without them. You need to give yourself permission to let the walls down, and trust in your worthiness. How do you give yourself permission to remove the protection? The good news is that each of these armor mechanisms can be overridden by taking actions that demonstrate worthiness. You can use the following tools to disarm your protective thoughts and behaviors.

Disarming Tool #1: Foreboding Joy

Instead of catastrophizing when joy arises, shift your perception, and allow the accompanying feeling of vulnerability to remind you what you have to be grateful for.

Brown notes that gratitude is a common practice for the research participants who are able to embrace the vulnerability attached to joy. On an even deeper level, these same participants seem to see conscious gratitude and embracing joy as practices that allow you to trust in a greater thread of connection between yourself and your human experience, as well as yourself and a higher power.

Why Is Gratitude So Effective?

The motivating forces for foreboding joy are, unsurprisingly, fear and scarcity. You...

Shortform Exercise: Remove the Armor

Think about your own Vulnerability Arsenal, and how you use it to protect yourself.

Where do the methods of Foreboding Joy, Perfectionism, or Numbing show up in your life?

Daring Greatly Summary Chapter 5: Mind the Gap, Build the Bridge

In the previous four chapters, you learned the core obstacles to living a wholehearted life, and a number of ways to overcome these obstacles. In the final three chapters, you will explore the greater context of these concepts as they relate to some of the most significant areas of modern society: culture, education, work, and parenting.

In order to transform a culture into a wholehearted one, you need to address the discrepancy between your ideal values and the values you actually demonstrate. In chapter 5, you will identify how you want to show up, as well as how you show up in practice, and explore the importance of closing the gap between the two (on a personal and collective scale).

What Does It Mean to “Mind the Gap”?

To mind the gap is to have a clear understanding of where you’re at, a clear vision of where you want to be, and the willingness to traverse the space between. In the context of Daring Greatly, “mind the gap” is a message for the leaders of our society (parents, educators, innovators, and so on) that the discomfort caused by the gap between how you want to show up, and how you actually show up is necessary and transformative.

• An example of...

Shortform Exercise: Shift From Aspiration to Practice

Think about our culture and the norms we’ve come to expect (perhaps consider one area--education, politics, workplace, family, and so on).

What do we praise? What do we reject?

Daring Greatly Summary Chapter 6: Rehumanize the System

In chapter 5, you learned that if you want to develop a culture of wholeheartedness, you need to traverse the gap between the values you aspire to embody and the values you embody in practice. In other words, you need to rehumanize the leaders, systems, and structures which make up our modern society. In chapter 6, you’ll learn about:

• What defines a wholehearted leader
• The challenges of being a wholehearted leader in a culture of scarcity
• The obstacles to facilitating meaningful innovation and creativity in organizations
• The hallmarks of shame culture in our schools and workplaces
• How we can develop shame resilience in each of these arenas

In order to create effective change, you need to disrupt the status quo of the current system. The impetus to affect change in a culture often lies with its leaders.

What Is a Leader?

Brown defines a leader as someone who sees possibilities and potentials, and makes themselves responsible for actualizing them. Anyone who is willing to step into that responsibility has the potential to lead.

Why Is It So Difficult to Be a Leader in Our Culture of Scarcity?

To be a true leader, you need to...

Shortform Exercise: Back to School

Consider your school or workplace, and your experience of that environment.

Based on what you’ve read in the chapter, what can you notice about the culture? Do you see any elements of shame culture? Wholehearted culture? Describe.

Daring Greatly Summary Chapter 7: Parenting With a Whole Heart

We’ve spent the previous chapters exploring the obstacles and solutions to wholehearted living as they relate to your individual experience, as well as the experience of the greater collective. Now let’s zoom in again, and take a look at how you can raise your children to live wholeheartedly.

Children are the future, so if we want our future to be Wholehearted, we must raise kids with Wholehearted values. Who you are is what will determine who your child becomes. In this final chapter, we discuss:

• What it means to be a wholehearted parent.
• The obstacles that threaten your ability to engage wholeheartedly.
• How to support your children to grow into wholehearted adults.

Raising a child is an uncertain experience. We tend to want certainty and structure, but wholehearted parenting is more about embracing the unknown. Being wholehearted doesn’t mean you know what you’re doing all the time, it means learning and growing and making room for mistakes. Unfortunately, the foundation of uncertainty is the perfect environment for shame and judgment to grow. Parenting is wrapped up in doubt, which makes it easy to listen to the fear of not being a good enough parent,...

Shortform Exercise: Wholehearted Reflections

If you’re a parent, bring to mind some examples you can think of where you, or your child, demonstrated wholeheartedness.

How did these experiences feel? Joyful? Uncomfortable? How do you think it impacted the relationship between you? If you’re not a parent yourself, consider an experience with your own parents.