Saturday 19 July 2014

The Gifts of Imperfect Parenting by Brené Brown


The Gifts of Imperfect Parenting

Brené Brown is a research professor at the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work. She is highly regarded internationally for her research into vulnerability and shame.

In The Gifts of Imperfect Parenting: Raising Children with Courage, Compassion and Connection, Brené outlines how our mistakes actually contribute positively to our kids' development, well-being and sense of place in the world . Brené summarises it like this "It's actually our ability to embrace imperfection that will help us teach our children to have the courage to be authentic, the compassion to love themselves and others, and the sense of connection that gives true purpose and meaning to life." This is the wholehearted life.

According to Brené, it is impossible for us to "give" our children what we do not have ourselves. So if we want our kids to live a wholehearted life, we must first be doing so ourselves. To those of you that are already living the wholehearted dream - "you're amazing" (and you kind of already but humbly probably know it) - to the rest of us "you're amazing" (you just don't feel it yet). Here are Brené's 10 pointers for wholehearted living which are actually taken from her most recent book Daring Greatly:

1) Cultivate authenticity and let go of worrying about what people think

2) Cultivate self-compassion and let go of perfectionism

3) Cultivate resilience and let go of powerlessness

4) Cultivate gratitude and joy and let go of scarcity and fear

5) Cultivate intuition and trusting faith and let go of the need for certainty

6) Cultivate creativity and let go of comparison

7) Cultivate play and rest and let go of exhaustion as a status symbol and productivity as self-worth

8) Cultivate calm and stillness and let go of anxiety as lifestyle

9) Cultivate meaningful work and let go of self-doubt and supposed to

10) Cultivate laughter, song and dance and let go of being cool and always in control

You'll get a much better idea of what she's all about from her TED talks like this one on vulnerability





If you can make the time, I thoroughly recommend reading / listening to any of her work.




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