Brene Brown on Respect and Courage

In Braving the Wilderness Brene Brown describes refusing to go along with what her academic advisors insisted was best. She wanted to study human connection, and what gets in the way of that. She wanted to study it thru interviews, by hearing people's stories. This alternative path challenged and changed her own life profoundly. 

Brown points out the “You’re with us or against us” rhetoric demands a false and forced loyalty. She has written about leaving the safety of a tribe, giving up a sense of belonging in order to speak her whole truth. "It feels dangerous," she says about being in between tribes, "but you also find others there." She speaks of growing up in a family that hunted deer and relied on that food source. She speaks of feeling pressured in her academic setting to side with the anti-gun tribe. She maintained her nuanced position that she wants more gun safety, but not bans. Lately she has been doing leadership training with corporations, so at this point she doesn't seem so much the renegade, but she never sold out. She kept her clogs on, even when on the corporate stage. More importantly, her messages have consistently maintained integrity and an ethic of respectful communication.