Brene Brown: Daring Greatly

After a particularly difficult week of high school soccer, my cousin, then a freshman, was feeling defeated. My uncle, ever the history buff and saver of the day, printed out and taped over my cousin’s desk a copy of Teddy Roosevelt’s “The Man in the Arena” speech:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.

The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again,

because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause;

who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly…”

Upon hearing this story, I naturally and immediately googled the speech so I too could print a copy for myself and make it the front cover of my students’ data folders. As I scanned my list of results, I stumbled across Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead and naturally and immediately ordered a copy. Each time I read it, I discover something new to consider. When I first read it, I was struck by the notion of embracing vulnerability. Skimming it weeks later, I imagined what “normalizing discomfort” would look like in my classroom and in our schools. Recently, I’ve been coming back to the chapter on vulnerability armor, ways to protect oneself from feeling vulnerable. My shield? Perfectionism.

I recently shared my pursuit to manage my energy. To start, I began to examine my habits, my actions, and my thought patterns. I felt like I was working hard each day, staying for hours after school, but I had little to show for my time. I slowly realized that I like to think about things and plan them to perfection. The only (obvious) problem being: perfection does not exist. I have developed an all-or-nothing mentality. I want everything to be exactly the way I have it planned in my mind or I don’t want to do it at all. This mindset looks different than my middle and high school years, when it was possible to attend soccer or track practice after school and eat a healthy dinner and wash the dishes and study until the wee hours of the morning and feel a sense of accomplishment. Both ways of thinking and behaving, however, are still forms of perfectionism.

“Is perfectionism an issue for you? If so, what’s one of your strategies for managing it? I ask this question because, in all of my data collecting, I’ve never heard one person attribute their joy, success, or Wholeheartedness to being perfect. In fact, what I’ve heard over and over throughout the years is one clear message: ‘The most valuable and important things in my life came to me when I cultivated the courage to be vulnerable, imperfect, and self-compassionate.’ Perfectionism is not the path that leads us to our gifts and to our sense of purpose; it’s the hazardous detour.”

In middle and high school, I had time to force my work to meet my expectations. As a “real person” with more responsibilities, time management seemed to become an unrealistic goal, a fantasy. I kept thinking the problem was that I didn’t have enough time, not that I was mismanaging the time. Throughout my unraveling, I have come to understand that the pursuit of perfection is debilitating and has caused great stress and anxiety.

“Perfectionism is not the same thing as striving for excellence. Perfectionism is not about healthy achievement and growth. Perfectionism is a defensive move. It’s the belief that if we do things perfectly and look perfect, we can minimize or avoid the pain of blame, judgment, and shame. Perfectionism is a twenty-ton shield that we lug around, thinking it will protect us, when in fact it’s the things that’s really preventing us from being seen.”

“Perfectionism is not self-improvement. Perfectionism is, at its core, about trying to earn approval. Most perfectionists grew up being praised for achievement and performance (grades, manners, rule following, people pleasing, appearance, sports). Somewhere along the way, they adopted this dangerous and debilitating belief system: ‘I am what I accomplish and how well I accomplish it. Please. Perform. Perfect.’ Healthy striving is self-focused: How can I improve? Perfectionism is other-focused: What will they think? Perfectionism is a hustle.”

“Perfectionism is not the key to success. In fact, research shows that perfectionism hampers achievement. Perfectionism is correlated with depression, anxiety, addiction, and life paralysis or missed opportunities. The fear of failing, making mistakes, not meeting people’s expectations, and being criticized keeps us outside of the arena where healthy competition and striving unfolds.”

“Perfectionism is not a way to avoid shame. Perfectionism is a form of shame. Where we struggle with perfectionism, we struggle with shame.”

I ended my last post with Joan Didion’s thoughts on self-respect. When you have it, you have everything. Struggling with perfectionism, and therefore shame, makes me feel less than, not worthy. It’s hard to have self-respect when you feel that way.

Image: Brene Brown’s Facebook

Joan Didion: On Self-Respect

I can usually recall, with remarkable clarity, how I stumble upon new things: recipes, books, blogs, museum exhibits, perfume. How one thing leads to another and you find yourself. Yet, I honestly cannot remember how I came to acquire Slouching Towards Bethlehem, a collection of Didion’s essays. Perhaps the how is less important than the why. It seems that I was meant to have it all along.

“In brief, people with self-respect exhibit a certain toughness, a kind of moral nerve; they display what was once called character.”

My uncle once scoffed, “You could never be Katniss.” I couldn’t argue with him. I knew what he meant. I would not survive The Hunger Games. Fiction or, as it turned out, reality. Student-teaching kicked my butt and I feel like I never really recovered from that experience. As a student-teacher, I didn’t know where to start or what to do. An overwhelming prospect! When I was a first-year teacher, I didn’t know what I didn’t know. Bliss! As a second-year teacher, I most definitely knew what I didn’t know, but didn’t know that I could ask for help. Deciding where to start once you realize how little you know and how much you have to learn is a daunting task! As a third-year teacher, I realized I needed to ask for some help, but I didn’t know what kind of help to ask for. If you have curmudgeons for colleagues, try asking someone else! As a fourth-year teacher, I started to learn about myself, how I learn and operate, my weaknesses, and later, my strengths. During my fifth and sixth years teaching in my second school, I began learning what it means to be vulnerable, to admit that there are a great number of areas in which I can improve. I am learning to ask for the right kind of help and am overcoming my perceived fears of what it says about me that I need help and that I am only now asking for it. So now I know: toughness, moral nerve, character. These things can be learned.

“Self-respect is something that our grandparents, whether or not they had it, knew all about. They had instilled in them, young, a certain discipline, the sense that one lives by doing things one does not particularly want to do, by putting fears and doubts to one side, by weighing immediate comforts against the possibility of larger, even intangible comforts…That kind of self-respect is a discipline, a habit of mind that can never be faked but can be developed, trained, coaxed forth.”

I have learned that discipline requires a great deal of mental, physical, and emotional energy. Teaching is exhausting. For a long time, I allowed the school day to deplete my energy because I thought that was just the way things were. When I read one of my favorite blogger’s post on managing energy, I knew things could be different. Mara of A Blog About Love shares four strategies:

1) Pay attention to small reactions (and learn to master them)
2) Find your motivation (and your desire for change)
3) Be still (and present)
4) Pursue something better (by focusing your brain, your thoughts, your heart)

It’s not quite as simple as it seems. Each strategy needs to be unpacked and I can (and will) dedicate whole posts to them. Sharing them, however, is enough for now!

“To have that intrinsic sense of one’s worth which constitutes self-respect is potentially to have everything…Without it, one eventually discovers the final turn of the screw: one runs away to find oneself, and finds no one at home.”

Worth. Self-worth. Worthiness. Whole-hearted. The courage to live with your whole heart. That Brene Brown gets me every time.

Image: The Reconstructionists