Brené Brown

This is design matters with Debbie Millman from design Observer.com.

For 13 years. Now, Debbie Millman has been talking with designers and other creative types about what they do, how they got to be, who they are and what they're thinking about on this podcast. Every moment talks with author and researcher brene, Brown about

belonging, courage, and vulnerability. The very first thing I look for in you is vulnerability and the very last thing I want to show you is my vulnerability.

Here's Debbie Miller.

Vulnerability. Shame failure. These aren't the things we like to think about in ourselves. But for brene brown, they are the focus of her attention, as a research professor and business leader. She has studied, how being vulnerable kid, make us more courageous and empathetic more true to our Humanity in her new book. Braving the Wilderness Brené Brown calls on us to move closer to each other because people are hard to hate close.

Up to speak, truth to bullshit, but be civil to hold hands with strangers. And she's here today, to talk about her brand new book, her career, and the Ted Talk. That changed her life, brene Brown, welcome to design manners of excited to be here. I listen

to you all the time, so it's

really fun to be across from you doing this. Oh, ditto? Oh, yes. Bernie is it true? That when the movie Grease first came out, all those decades ago, you saw it.

25 times.

So I was trying to remember exactly. So, I went with the most conservative number that we could come up with, but yes, like Island. Oh yes. I used all of the money. I had saved up all my Christmas birthday card money. I saw it at least 25 times,

was it? Because of Olivia Newton, John, John Travolta. What was the Allure? Was it, the two of them together.

Now, I don't even think it was that part. It was the singing and the dancing, and like, this is going to be high.

And I can't wait. You know, living in

John. I think was my first crush I went and saw her when she was still a country music singer back in the 70s. 70s, late 70s. Yeah, yeah. Totally. Get

it. I think it was that I think, you know, I started smoking.

Yes. I actually read that you wanted to be Olivia Newton-John with a cigarette and a catsuit winning over John Travolta.

Yeah, I mean I just thought you know and you know it's until I watched it maybe 10 years ago with my daughter who's now a

Teen. So maybe she was probably 10 or 11, we watched it. So it was eight years ago. Seven years ago. I was like this is completely inappropriate. You, we have to shut this thing off. Cover your eyes. Yeah, because the moral of the story is like don't be the good girl. Get the cat suit by a pack of Marlboros Stockard. Channing ruled in the holy land, so oh I loved it and I

aspired. Oh, I wish my listeners can see your face right now. Your eyes are sparkling. Now, you were born

Cassandra brene

Brown in San Antonio, Texas. But you moved to New Orleans. Louisiana, when you were very young and you've described your mom who you are named for as outspoken and tenacious and in what way.

So yeah, my mom and I are both Cassandra is and she goes by her middle name. Then I go by burn a. She what? You know we moved to. And this is recent history, which, you know, we're not that old. But when I started kindergarten in New Orleans 1969 was the

First year of mandatory integration. Hmm, they, you know, I think the laws had come down maybe a decade before, but they just weren't acting on them. So this is when the Judiciary said, you will integrate your schools. And my mom was a very outspoken around racial issues. So she wrote an open letter to the Times Picayune against. What we would call racial profiling today, she was just very outspoken in a time where people were not especially

A white

woman and she was also rather crafty. I understand she made you her self and your Barbie matching. Yellow. Plaid shift dresses. Yeah. So please tell me you still have that. I don't have the dresses but

I have the pictures. I have this boarding a train and she's holding my hand and I'm holding my Barbie and all of our dresses match. Yeah. So I just thought I'd ever is like, yeah, my mom, my crafty mom but I knew when other adults got around her they could look at her like she was a shit starter.

She really had it all going on crafty smart vivacious. So you take after your mom, I see. I

do a little bit. Luckily,

and from what I understand you when you were little, there was a time when you wanted to be a Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader. Oh, my God.

Where did you get your research? That's terrible. It's true, but it's

terrible. Well, it's true. It was followed by a short period of time when you dreamed of driving an

18-wheeler. Yeah, because we had a CB, and once we were proficient enough on the language, we were allowed to talk on the CB during family trip. So, I would say like,

We go back and forth to San Antonio from Houston all the time. And so I'd say, if we were going to Hughes, if we were going to San Antonio's, a breaker 1-9 for I-10 eastbound, ER, how's everything looking over your shoulder? Because we'd be looking for police, and so, they would say everything's clean and green, you got a smokey at mile marker. 29, so, like as long as I could understand and be fluent, I was allowed to use it. So I was like, I think I just do something where I can just talk on this for a living. I would give just

about anything right now to be able to talk on a CB radio with you. Now, the last thing I

to ask you about in terms of what you were aspiring to be, when you were a child, was that when you were in Middle School inspired by the television show Love Boat. You want it to be a cruise director, like, Julie, you're staring at me with hatred, I

did. So Dallas, Cowboy cheerleader truck driver or a cruise director? Yeah, I mean, like, you know, in spirit, look what we see matters so we hear all these debates

Out, inclusivity on television and seeing people in jobs, like that should matters. What I saw or Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders because we watch football all the time. And there were no female, there's no Captain stubing was not a woman like, on The Love Boat. It was just the cruise director telling people where the parties were whatever, and so that's what I saw and so that's what I wanted to do.

So until you discovered Eleanor

Roosevelt. Yeah.

And she changed your life. That changed everything. Yeah.

It happened. How did that happen?

I just remember that my parents were hosting a bridge party. So all four of us, the kids were upstairs and there was a PBS special on and we were allowed. We were never allowed to watch television. We could watch television, we can watch two shows a week. When did you watch science? Love Boat. Well love, but was later, but we were young Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom Speedy to. Yeah. And Disney Marlin Perkins, right? Yeah, I loved him. Yes, and Disney. So there was a PBS special on

Eleanor Roosevelt and it was kind of all no rules that night because with the bridge party downstairs so I watched it and I was like she's a complete badass and I can't believe she put up with all the crap. She put up with and why wasn't she president? And I think she was pissed off that she wasn't president and I even liked her more now. So that kind of shifted everything that I became much more aware.

You left, New Orleans for Houston Texas. When you were in the fourth grade and then you left Houston for Washington DC, when you were in this,

Sixth grade in eighth grade, you moved back to Houston, that must have been really hard for you. It

was terrible. I was always the new girl and I never it was terrible. Yeah, I think that's why writing a book on belonging seemed so natural to me because I think I could Mark the times my mark, the calendar of My Life by not belonging and so, yeah, it was really hard. I mean, just think about this. Now, as a parent I think about moving fourth grade, sixth grade, and eighth grade. And the hard thing about the Houston move is we moved back to Houston and I went back into

Same school, I was at in sixth grade but I've been gone for two years.

Everybody's friendships had developed. Oh

yeah. Like my friend group had nothing to do with me and I've been living in Washington DC. So I was a little bit more ahead in terms of like how I dressed and I would go to bed and I put like a hundred little braids in my hair and we wake up and we're really big and curly and people were like where is she from

after the final move? Back to Houston your parents marriage began.

An to seriously disintegrate as well. Yeah. And it was also at this time at the very end of eighth grade after eight years of ballet, you tried out to be a cheerleader on the drill team

on the drill team. Yes.

So it's a slightly different, yes type of,

it's the bear Cadets, I just want you to picture white leather, cowboy boots, a blue short, little satin skirt with white fringe, a white cowboy hat, and then everyone had a short wig.

They had like flipped out Doris Day hair and their natural hair color and then you had to wear a standard-issue cherries in the snow Revlon lipstick.

So in your amazing new book, braving the Wilderness, you wrote that to this day. You're not sure that you ever wanted anything in your life, more than you wanted, a place on the drill team. And being on this team was about belonging personified, can you share with our listeners?

Listeners, what happened in that experience, without giving too much away. Cuz, yeah, it's such a great story. It's such a amazing

story. Now, I think, you know, we had just moved back and we moved back, like, two days before tryouts or something like, we're right as tryouts. We're starting at the end of 8th grade because I think I moved back with four weeks of eighth-grade left, which was

just, oh, my God. It's like the rules of when not to move if I burn a

brown and I really are you there? God, it's me. Burn a do not move. So I said, okay, well, I'll try

Out and then when I had seen them like they came in the first day of tryouts, the whole team and did a routine for us and I was like, it's like Greece. This is, this is Kris. This is, this is Greece. It's a ticket to Greece. And so, I just thought it, and, you know, my parents were strung out. They were things were so hard. My dad worked for shell and they've been moving us around a lot. It was hard and I was the oldest of four and things were just getting more and more tense at home more fighting and, you know, back then.

You can talk about, no, I didn't know anyone, whose parents were divorced. You know, all I knew is that, my grandmother was divorced, and my mom's mom and she was also an alcoholic and my favorite person in the world. I named my daughter after her, she was amazing. But growing up. She was an alcoholic. She was an alcoholic, she was divorced. And no one could come to my mother's house because she my mom had a divorced mom. Wow. It's all I knew is that that divorce thing is really bad and it's you know and so here my parents feel like

The cusp of disaster. But here are the bear Cadets, and they're so bright and shiny, and just these high kicks, you're like, what is happening? This is like, this is great. So I go to tryouts and we get the routine, and it's funny because, when I was writing, the book, I had to, I was like, what is the name of that song we tried out to? And so I went to iTunes to try to find it and I was going through all these different songs and I hit it and it did the preview and I just burst into tears, I was like, oh my God, that's the song.

And you still know the routine. Don't you

know, I still never the routine. Yeah, I could probably do half of it right now and it was not, it was not a hard routine and again, I had been in ballet for like, eight years, so it was like not a big deal. There was a rigorous terrible way in. And so I remember during the whole thing, everyone was starving themselves to death. Everyone was eating everyone was working out in those plastic sweatpants and sweat tops. And so, then tryout day came and I got to the gym to try out and I kind of looked around I

Gina the car by myself and all the other girls had spent the night together the night before, and they were running in holding hands and giggling and laughing. And I got out of the car by myself. And I realized very quickly within seconds. All of these girls were just full makeup, huge hair, gold, and red, gold, and blue are colors, Bose gold, and blue, silver outfits, and mean, like, and I had on a black leotard gray. Sweatshirt is like sweatpant material shorts that were rolled on my leotard, and

Like just dancing shoes.

Like, Jennifer Beals in

Flashdance, Flashdance. That's what you look like, but I look like, it was like a, you know, it's a dance thing. So, I just remember being traumatized by the way, and cause I made the way in by six pounds because, you know, eat for that week. Remember girls screaming and running into the dressing room with her, hands over their faces because they didn't make it. I did the routine, it was easy. It was great. I could kick higher than anyone, my group, you know, it was fine. And then you went home, and you had to wait for three or four hours until they posted the number. You were little

Broaden your thing. So, I get back to the high school and there's a, just a poster board

and your parents drove you

back. My parents were me back as we were going straight to San Antonio to visit my grandma. And I remember walking up to the poster board. I was never 62 and I remember looking, and they're now, you know, their numerical order. And I'm like, 58 59, 60 467. And I was like, 58 59, 60 467. I was like, how is this happening? And I remember this girl named Chris, who is the shiniest of all girls?

In eighth grade running app. Looking at her number, clearly seen it screaming and her dad jumping out of his car and running and grabbing her and twirling around, they were twirling around. And I was like, oh my God, this is not happening. So I get back in the car and I was crying. And my parents did not say a word. I

know, I know I couldn't breathe. When I was

reading this, they didn't say anything. They didn't say anything. Did they just kind of got really quiet and looked down? And I

It was so this is the hard thing about parenting. The story I made up at the time, is my dad was the captain of the football team. In my mom was the head of her Jewel team and I think they were ashamed of me. And for me, like, they did not know what to say. Like, my parents had no idea what to say in that moment.

And so we just drove inside and Ashley and Garrett and Jason like, while a little, you know, if I was 12, Jason was eight and the girls were for, they knew it was hard, but no one said a word like for three hours to San Antonio. And for me, it was a defining moment because it was like the moment I no longer belong to my family, I did not belong with these people anymore. Like they, my brother was cool, my sisters were even cool and fifth grade they had, you know, and I was like, oh my God and it's funny because when I

Talk to my parents about it today.

They just said we didn't know what to do, like we they couldn't be vulnerable growing up to survive. They came from very hard backgrounds and so their story was not greasy at all. Their story was the opposite of Greece, but back then you just make up these stories. That's the thing about paying nobody's life is grease, no one's life is grease. You know, and I always tell parents you cannot control for the stories, your kids will make up. The only thing you can do is provide a culture where they can go to you and say the story I'm making up right now.

Is this, Are you ashamed of me or for me? Or everyone's cool here. But me and so it really defined me. It was the last thing I ever tried out for my life. And so what I did is, you know, fitting in is imperative in high school. So, you know, I took to Miller Lite and smoking weed. Right? See how he became Stockard? Channing. Yeah I VK I found another crew. That did not dance on the drill team and it was not great. It was really hard.

And it continued really through my early twenties.

Well, you go on to right after sharing this story with the readers, how not belonging in our families, is one of the most dangerous hurts and it has the power to break our heart, our spirit, and our sense of self-worth. And that day, all three broke for you. And I was astounded. When I read the ways in which people family respond to, this type of profound heard you talk about how they were really only,

We three ways we respond to this type of pain, living in constant pain, denying pain, or finding the courage to own the way we move forward. Can you talk a little bit about those three ways of trying to deal with pain at that point?

Yeah. I think when people experience pain like that and it's really interesting because I thought you know this is a book that takes on the political culture right now. Today this is a book that takes on everything from white supremacy and black lives matter. Why am I starting with a

A about the drill team and not belonging are there bigger bigger issues to take on. There are absolutely bigger issues to take on, but there is no bigger issue. I think than feeling, for those of us who feel like they don't belong in their families or don't belong on the pledge, a Blog on the planet because then it's hard for us to be a part of the resistance. It's hard for us to speak up because we don't know and we lose ourselves in the movements that we become a part of. And so for me, what I've observed in the, in the data are that the

Into pain is one. I pretend like it doesn't happen until it absolutely cripples you any pain is not going to be ignored and in the very end it will take you down physically like the body keeps score and it will always win.

The second piece is people who take that pain and this is what we see today in the world. People who take the pain, the early pain and they inflict it on others, they take their own pain and their own heart because it's easier to cause pain than it is to acknowledge and feel your way through it. And then the last one is people who acknowledge pain work their way through and who in response to doing that, have a very keen eye for seeing pain in the world and other people.

I think that was my choice and I think the little miracle for me is that my parents grew with me, like my parents will read every book and say God we didn't know and what do you think about this? And now I watch them with my kids and they're like you know Ellen I don't think you should pull that in on yourself. Don't carry that load. This is not about your worth. I'm like, oh my God, which is great. But like where are you? But I think those are the only three options inflicted on others.

Pretend like it's not happening till it. Takes you down or own the story and walk through it.

In many ways, I feel that braving the Wilderness is a bit of a culmination of your previous four books. And as I was rereading quite a lot of your books. Before today's interview, one of the books that I was really struck by in how much of that book became a sort of primer for this book. Was I thought it was me, but it wasn't and I was struck when I read about your

Harvard trained psychiatrist, dr. Shelley Orem, and her work on. Remembering the wound versus becoming the wound and you wrote how most of the time when we recall a memory, we are conscious that we are in the present recalling. Something from the past. However, when we experience something in the present, that triggers an old trauma memory, weary experience the sense of the original trauma. So, rather than remembering the wound, we become the wound.

And this makes sense when we think of how often we return to a place of smallness and helplessness when we feel shame, how do you get over those initial life-defining wounds? How do you get to a place of feeling? Like you don't belong in your family and then to a place where you're willing to look at why and then feel that you do belong at some point to the world.

I think the key is owning the story, I think, as long as you deny the story, the story owns you. The story is not going anywhere. So your choices are to pretend like it's not happening or to own the story and walk into it and when you talk about becoming the wound, like when I look at Charlottesville and I look at those guys with torches, I see people living a wound and there by inflicting pain on other people. And so I think you either own the

Three, and you heal from that story or you become dangerous to other

It seems to be from my perspective. So obvious that anybody that has to exert their power over, someone else doesn't feel powerful

Man, you just hit on one of the biggest controversies. I think in my field, you know, I'm a social worker. And I mean, a social worker, social worker, like, bachelor's Master's and PHD in social work. That's what I did and I started very early and domestic violence and sexual assault. And there was a lot of controversy around when you're dealing with perpetrators of domestic violence. Is that an action of power and control? And what I found in my work is that as a response to powerlessness not power?

People who feel a sense of power, don't respond like that, but there's no greater and more profound danger in the human experience than powerlessness.

Why is that? Because I mean, how do you respond when you feel powerless like we're desperate? Yeah, I mean, power mean Martin Luther King defined power is the ability to affect change. When you're sitting there in Harvey and you're watching water, go lap into your neighbor's houses, coming up your stairs, it is a sense of powerlessness. It is a sense of helplessness of you want to come out of your skin.

And so powerlessness is incredibly dangerous. Now, are those people in Charlottesville really, you know, are the white supremacist, really powerless? The remember majority culture, their men. I don't know this for sure. So I'll just say hypothetically, I make up there mostly straight and judeo Christian. So what their Narrative of powerlessness is, I don't know. But that's when people come become dangerous, that's when people are really dangerous.

and I think what we're seeing right now in the culture,

Not just from this Administration, but around the world is power over is absolutely making a last and power over is absolutely saying this is the way the world has been. Since the beginning of time, we are not going to go to a model of shared power. We are defending the Paradigm of power over at all costs.

What made you decide to write a book

like this?

I think belonging obviously for obvious reasons, it's something that's always been very important to me. I thought I covered it in the gifts of imperfection. I didn't know I'd come back and revisit it but I was going through kind of my own metamorphosis around belonging I was starting to finally understand what it meant to carry belonging in my heart and not to negotiate it externally with other people it wasn't there. They're shot to call whether I belong to or not. It was my shot to call and so I thought let me look back into it. I was in it for five minutes before I realized

Shit. You can't write about connection and belonging without talking about the real political world today and so it was not my intention to wade into politics and what's happening but you have to follow the data when you're a scientist and that's where it

went. You call yourself a grounded Theory researcher which you've described as developing Theory from peoples lived experiences so it doesn't it doesn't feel like a big stretch to actually be looking at the way in which people are living their experiences now.

Now, now it's, you know, it's interesting, just a quick story. I think you'll love this grounded theory was developed by Glaser and Strauss and the 50s and they needed to find a methodology to talk to children who were dying about the fact that they were dying,

But they couldn't ask them what they thought because they're back. Then there was a pact made between Physicians nurses, parents and clergy to not let children who are dying know that they were dying. Why they thought they couldn't handle it, they could thought they couldn't handle their prognosis. And so these researchers were stock and they thought we want to study dying and children but we can't ask them what it means to die. So we're just going to come up with a methodology that is rigorous based on people's lived.

Variances, but we're not going to ask them anything, but tell me what's going on in your life. And if what we want to study is not a priority for them, then we won't take it on because that's this is peoples, lived experiences. So they would sit down with children and say, tell me about your tummy while you're in the hospital. And one after one, the kids said I'm dying, but it must be really terrible. No one will talk to me about it. And so grounded Theory, evolved as this methodology for studying hard topics, where researchers

don't, if I sit down with you and said,

Tell me how you negotiate belonging with people who you disagree with politically. There's so much loaded in that question that what I'm getting back is very prescribed. So I just say, you know, tell me about your family and your friends after the election and then we build it from there and then we test it quantitatively.

You've stated. That grounded, theory is really controversial in a lot of academic Arenas. Why is that

the methodology is not controversial to me?

LG's is super rigorous and very difficult. In fact, most of the time we try to tell people you don't want to do it for a dissertation because it's long and hard. I mean, you we don't use any technology so we could all data by hand, so I have 200,000 pieces of data. We've collected over 17 years. What's controversial are the findings? Because we are not proving kind of the dead white guy theories out there. We're really asking people what it means in their lives and so the theories that come up are hard because it

It calls into question, traditional research,

you mentioned Barney Glaser one of the founders of grounded theory. He calls it the drugless trip and it said that you have to have a real comfort with uncertainty, and vulnerability to do this kind of research, and you Define vulnerability as uncertainty risk, and emotional exposure. And when you begin studying vulnerability your own conflict with it became apparent, you recognize, you were in your own words. Judgmental. Perfectionistic all work, and not only no play in.

Rest, but a kind of disregard for play and rest. And the people who thought it was important was this an attempt to understand yourself, what caused the spiritual awakening? / breakdown you referred to in your first Ted Talk and 2010.

Now I think what happened early on is I was trying to figure out the anatomy of connection, what do men and women who are connected share in common. And I remember it was a very Jackson Pollock moment because Steve Took the

kids to San Antonio for the weekend and I had like 50 big poster size, Post-it notes, all over my house and I was coding this data and I was going through and I end up with a list of kind of the whole hearted men and women do this, and they don't do this, they do this, but they try to avoid this and then I looked at the don't like the shit list and that described me to a tee like, you know, try to be cool. Try to be perfect try

Derive, your status from how exhausted you are. How hard you work? Like, all these things just described me and so I thought, oh my God,

I think they describe everybody. I know. Yeah,

I'm on the wrong end of the research stick

people and it was at that moment than you decided to seek help for yourself and figure it all out. Yeah, why

therapist? So, why do we do that? Why do

we use these outside badges? This social cachet to Bowie ourselves up in the eyes of others, or in doing what we think, buoys,

Zup. Yeah, I mean it's a culture status thing. I mean exhaustion is a status symbol. I think, as we just desperately, want to be seen, we desperately want to belong. We want to believe we're lovable in the absence of connection, there's always suffering. So we want to feel

connected. You said that we're living in a scarcity culture and that many of us feel that will never be thin enough or Rich enough or safe enough for may be exhausted enough for successful enough, and the number one casualty of a scarcity.

Of chair is vulnerability. Why is the opposite of all of these things? This social cachet this out, external meaning, this external validation the opposite of

vulnerability because vulnerability at its heart is the willingness to show up and really be seen no armor to really be seen when you can't control the outcome. And so every one of those things on the shit list, the

The Judgment, the perfectionism, the work that's trying to control perception. Okay? Instagram, yeah, Instagram is trying to, you know, it's trying to control how we are perceived, we're vulnerability. Is this is who I am,

and just didn't okayness with that. And

okay, with, yeah, always willing to get better and change. But this is, this is the flaws. This is me. I

for many, many decades really try to hide, how not, only, how much shame, I felt about sort of living, but

Failure is my rejections as if somehow. If I revealed that that it would Mark me. It would damage me. I would become Hester Prynne and yeah, never be loved again. Yeah. But I think it ultimately came from ever feeling, love to begin with. And

what is so powerful is the one thing that we all have in common is the fear that you just named that's it, is the Paradox of vulnerability that when I meet you, the very first thing I look for

for in you is vulnerability and the very last thing I want to show you is my vulnerability,

right? So I'm Desperately

Seeking yours while hiding mine.

What are we? So afraid of people seeing unloved ability

It's rare to meet someone that you can see immediately. Yeah as someone who's had good parenting because ultimately, I think good parenting is what makes you feel lovable in the world. It has very little do with anything else. At least from my perspective,

I think it is key. And I think, I think the mistake that we make is I would say, with very few exceptions, 99.9 percent of the parents who raised all of us were doing the very best they could and probably 10 orders of

Magnitude better than what their parents did.

But the belief that we have to change, is that?

Because someone didn't or couldn't love me, that makes me unlovable.

That's that's the big mythology and regardless of someone's ability or willingness to love you, whether it's a partner apparent, it has really no bearing on your love ability whatsoever and to take that on to our load that's what changes the trajectory of people's

lives. Yeah. And if somebody does love you, you there's this crazy Paradox of why do they love me? And they need to keep proving that they love me

Love me, so they must not be so great. It's like the Groucho Marx thing. I don't want to belong to a club that would let me in, right? Yeah. And so and that's, you know, when I started first see was the first person I felt like, who really saw me like really saw me and he caught the tail end of like self-destructive wild burn a but he saw me and he came from really similar hard, parenting kind of do a lot of divorces and we we were the first people we talked to about those things but he really

He he really saw me. And I remember six months, after we got married, I was in the therapists office and I was like, this is not going to work at all, like he's just bugging the shit out of me. And I don't think I can stay married to him at all. And she, you know, we had several sessions and she's like, I think you're right about Steve and like, yes, he likes you so much more than you like you. Hmm. As a, I'm sorry. She said yeah, she he just

She's so much more than you. Like, you must be a lot of conflict.

Yeah, I wrote I underline that in the book, so it's a wonderful story. Yeah, I was like you're

fired.

I got there eventually Maya Angelou quote figures prominently in The Narrative of braving the Wilderness and it comes from an interview. She did with Bill Moyers, and I was wondering if you could read it today. Yeah. Us on the show? Yes.

So she says you were only

Free when you realize you belong, no place. You belong every place. No place at all the price is high. The reward is

great. Now, this is a line that actually really bugged you for a long time. And I know you spoke to Steve about it at length. Yeah, this thing was like a craw in your side. So

it was totally stuck in my craw. I was like, what does that mean? You're only free when you belong nowhere and everywhere. I'm calling bullshit on that like that cannot be true. Like as someone who crave belong.

I'm like there's no freedom and not belonging, like that's been, that's been like a straitjacket, not freedom for me.

so there was this moment where I was sitting with Steve just a couple years ago and I was going through a big stack of speaking request and one of them said,

Please come speak at our church. We really love you. They'll be 3,000 people in the audience. It will be amazing. We know your folksy and down home. The only thing we ask is that you not cuss, it will offend the faithful. And I was like, I want to say what I said to that, but that would actually have been possibly the faithful. But I was like, what? Like I'm the faithful like who like and then in the same stack like to request deeper in the stack it said Fortune 100 company because I do like 90% of my work around leadership.

Through development and people don't know that. But that's where I spend most of my time and they're like, super excited to have you come in and talk to the leadership team about your work? We saw you speak at this Retreat. We love what you're saying about vulnerability and Innovation and art and creativity. It's super important for our business right now. You did mention that your two values that, you know, lead you or faith and courage. And we're wondering if you could omit the faith part and just talk about the courage part because in the corporate setting, we don't talk about faith and I was like, no.

And I look at Steve and like, I still, you know, I can't like 40 at 149th time, 49, I still belong nowhere. Like I'm not the church speaker. Completely not the church speaker. I'm not the leadership speaker because I talk about feelings and faith and things that are important to us. I belong. I don't belong anywhere and he's like, yeah. But I everywhere you speak, you're like, the top-rated speaker. Like, what is that? What's, you know? Like, you belong anywhere that you go, as long as your yourself? I'm like, maybe, I mean, I guess,

I guess I belong everywhere. Belong, along everywhere, I belong, nowhere. Holy shit, the Maya Angelou quote, I was like, oh my God, so I grab my laptop. I I searched it, I read it to him, he's like, yeah, that makes sense to me. I mean, it wouldn't make sense, but I think that's true of you then. I Googled the interview with Bill Moyers because I'd never seen the whole thing, just that clip. And so the next question he asks, after she says, this is he says so,

No, really. You don't belong anywhere and she pauses for a second and says, no, actually I belong to Maya and I like Maya very much as I want to. I want to belong to burn a and so, I went back in my study, I said, I'm going to look into this thing for a minute and he's like, should I order dinner? And no, no, I'll make dinner. We just need to start now. I'll yeah. No, you make dinner. He's like I'm gonna order dinner because the last time you said this, it took two years. So I'm going to order dinner.