Design matters will be back in a few weeks with a season of new episodes. In the meantime, we wanted to replay this interview from October of 2017. This is Design Matters with Debbie Millman from design observer Dotcom. 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 morning talks with author and researcher Brittany 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, vulnerability, shame, failure. These aren't the things we like to think about in ourselves. But for Bernie Brown, they are the focus of her attention as a research professor and business leader. She has studied how being vulnerable could make us more courageous and empathetic, more true to our humanity. In her new book, Breathing the Wilderness, Bernie Brown calls on us to move closer to each other because people are hard to hate, close to speak truth to bullshit, but be able 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. Bernie Brown, welcome to Design Matters. I'm 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. 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, 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? I don't even think it was that part. It was the singing and the dancing and like this is going to be high school and I can't wait. You know, you and 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. I 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, until I watched it maybe ten years ago with my daughter, who's now 18, so maybe she was probably 10 or 11. We watched it. So maybe 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 catsuit, buy a pack of marbles. STOCKARD Channing rolled in. Oh yeah. And 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 Briney Brown. Yeah . 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. In what way? So, yeah, my mom and I are both Cassandra's and she goes by her middle name and I go by Bernie, she you know, we move 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. They you know, I think the laws that 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 issue, 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 white woman, and she was also rather crafty, I understand she may view herself and your Barbie matching yellow plaid shift dresses. Yes, I. Please tell me you still have them. I don't have the dresses, but I have the pictures. I have 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 of her as like, you know, my mom, my crafty mom. But I knew and other adults got around her. They they could look at her like she was a shit starter. So she really had it all going on. Crafty, smart, vivacious. So you take back to your mom. I see. I do a little bit. Luckily now, 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'd 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 trips. 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 are going to if we were going to San Antonio is a breaker one nine four. Eytan, East Border, how's everything looking over your shoulder? Because we'd be looking for police and so they would say everything's clean, green, you got to smoke 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 know, the last thing I want 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 wanted to be a cruise director like Julie. You're staring at me with hatred. I did. So Dallas Cowboy cheerleader, truck driver or cruise director. Yeah. I mean, like, you know, look. What we see matters, so we hear all these debates about inclusively on television and seeing people in jobs like that should matters. What I saw were 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 or whatever. And so that's what I saw. And so that's what I wanted to do. So until you discovered Eleanor Roosevelt, man, and she changed her life, that changed everything. Yeah. What 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 could watch two shows a week. What did you watch? Love Boat? Well, Love Boat was later, but we were Young Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom, too. Yeah. And Disney. Marlin Perkins. Right. Yeah. Oh, I loved him. Yes. And Disney. So there was a PBS special on on Eleanor Roosevelt and it was kind of all know rules that night because of 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 like her more now. So that kind of shifted everything. Then 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, D.C. when you were in the sixth grade in eighth grade, he moved back to Houston. That must have been really hard for you. Is terrible. I was always the new girl and I never it was terrible. Yeah. I think that's why writing a book on belonging seems so natural to me, because I think I could mark the times, 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 the same school I was in in sixth grade, but I had been gone for two years. Everybody's friendships had developed. Oh, yeah. Like my friend group had nothing to do with me. And I had been living in Washington, D.C. 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, you know, wake up and wear it really big and curly. And people were like, oh, where is she from? After the final move back to Houston, your parents marriage began 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. Yes. So that's a slightly different type of its the best cadet. I just want you to picture white leather cowboy boots, a blue short little satin skirt with white friends, a white cowboy hat, and then everyone had a short wig that had like flipped out Doris Day hair. Oh. In 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 what happened in that experience without giving too much away? Because, yeah, it's such a great story. It's such an amazing story. No, I think, you know, we had just moved back and we moved back like two days before tryouts or something. Like we were right as tryouts were starting at the end of eighth 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 they weren't around. Yeah, no, really. Are you there? God, it's me, Barney. Do not move. So I said, OK, 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 Greece, this is Greece is the ticket to Greece. And so I just thought and, you know, my parents were strung out. They were things were so hard. My dad worked for Shell and they'd 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 didn't talk about 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. That's all I knew is that that divorce thing is really bad and it's, you know, and so here my parents feel like on the cusp of disaster, but here of the barricades 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 try outs and we get the routine. And it was funny cause when I was writing the book, I had to I was like, what is the name of that song? We tried out too. 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. Oh, I still know 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. No one 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, I kind of looked around. I was going out of 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 quick. Within seconds, all of these girls were just full makeup, huge hair, golden golden blue collars, both gold and blue silver outfits. I mean, like and I had on a black leotard, gray sweatshirt, like sweatpants, material shorts that were rolled on my leotard and like just dancing shoes like Jennifer Beals in Flashdance. That's yeah. That's what you look at. That's I look like because it was like, you know, it's a dance thing. So I just remember being traumatized, by the way, because I made the way and by six pounds because, you know, for that week I remember girls screaming and running into the dressing room with their 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 number on 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 drove me back because 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 there, you know, there are numerical order like 58, 59, 64, 67. And I was like, no, no, 58, 59, 64, 67. 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 up, looking at her. No, 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. Just they just kind of got really quiet and looked down. And I think 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 and my mom was the head of her 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 in and actually American, Jason, like while a little, you know, if I was 12, Jason was eight and the girls were four, 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 belonged in my family. I did not belong with these people anymore. Like they my brother was cool. My sisters were even cool in 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 Greece at all. Their story was the opposite of Greece. But back then, you just make up these stories. That's the thing about nobody's life is Greece. No one's life is Greece. 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 Light and smoking weed, right. When he became STOCKARD Channing. Yeah, I became 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 20s. Well, you go on to right after sharing this 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 hurt. You talk about how they were really only 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 story about the drill team and not belonging other, 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 planet, don't belong on the planet, because then it's hard for us to be a part of the resistance. It's hard for us to speak out 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 reaction to pain is one. I pretend like it doesn't happen until it absolutely cripples you. You know, pain is not going to be ignored and. In the very end, it will take you down physically like the body keep 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 inflicted 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 worked their way through and who in response to doing that, have a very keen eye for seeing pain in the world and other people. And 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 I'm like wary. But I think those are the only three options inflicted on others. Pretend like it's not happening until 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 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 description of Harvard trained psychiatrist Dr. Shelley eram 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, we reexperience 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's 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 thereby inflicting pain on other people. And so I think you either own the story. And you heal from that story or you become dangerous to other people. It seems to be, from my perspective, so obvious that anybody that has to exert their power over someone else doesn't feel powerful enough. And you just sit 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 Ph.D. in social work. That's what I did. And I started very early in 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 is 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. I 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 house is 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 supremacists really powerless to remember majority culture there? Men? I don't know this for sure. So I'll just say hypothetically, I make up their mostly straight and Judeo-Christian. So what their narrative of powerlessness is, I don't know. But that's when people 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 stand. 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, is something that's always been very important to me. I thought I covered it and 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 there shot to call whether I belonged 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 that 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 people's 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, it's it's you know, it's interesting. Just a quick story I think you'll love. This grand theory was developed by Glaeser and Strauss in 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 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 have thought they couldn't handle their prognosis. And so these researchers were stuck and they thought, we want to study dying in 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 lives, experiences. 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 people's lives 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 kid said, I'm dying , but it must be really terrible. No one will talk to me about it. Hmm. 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. The methodology is a super rigorous and very difficult. In fact, most of the time we try to tell people, you don't want to do it for dissertation because it's long and hard. I mean, we don't use any technology so we could all data by hand. So I have 200000 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 calls into question traditional research. You mentioned Bernie Glaser, one of the founders of Grounded Theory. He calls it the drug last 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 began studying vulnerability, your own conflict with it became apparent and you recognized you were, in your own words, judgmental, perfectionistic, all work and not only no plan, no 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 awakenings breakdown you referred to in your first TED talk in 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 shitlist and that described me to a T. like, you know, try to be cool, try to be perfect, try to derive your status from how exhausted you are or 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 then 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 buie ourselves up in the eyes of others or in doing what we think Bui's ourselves up. Yeah, I mean, it's a culture status thing. I mean, exhaustion as a status symbol. I think because 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 we'll never be thin enough or rich enough or safe enough or maybe exhausted enough or successful enough. And the number one casualty of a scarcity culture 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 shitlist, the judgment, the perfectionism, the work that's trying to control perception of Instagram, yeah, Instagram is trying to you know, it's trying to control how we're perceived , where vulnerability is. This is who I am. And just in openness with that and. OK, yeah. Always willing to get better and change. But this is this is the flaws. This is me. I for many, many decades really tried to hide how not only how much shame I felt about sort of living, but my failures, 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 not 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 it is the paradox of vulnerability that when I meet you, the very first thing I look 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 an lovability. It's rare to meet someone that you can see immediately 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. So I think it is key. And I think I think the mistake that we make is, I would say with very few exceptions, ninety nine point nine 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, a parent, 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 or they 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, Steve 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 Bernie. But he saw me and he came from really similar hard parenting, kind of a lot of divorces. And we we were the first people we talked to about those things. But he really he really saw me. And I remember six months after we got married, I was in the therapist's 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. I'm like, yes, I know he likes you so much more than you like. You know, as I'm sorry. She's like, yeah, she he just likes you so much more than you like. You must be a lot of conflict like you. You're fired. Yeah I, I underline that in the book, so it's a wonderful story. Yeah. I was like, you're fired. I got there eventually a Maya Angelou quote figures prominently in the narrative of braving the wilderness in a come from an interview she did with Bill Moyers. And I was wondering if you could read it today to us on the show. Yes. So she says you are 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 cross in your side. 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 belonging, I'm like, there's no freedom and not belonging. Like, that's been that's been like a jacket, not freedom for me. So there was this moment where I was sitting with Steve just a couple of 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, there'll be 3000 people in the audience. It'll be amazing. We know you're folksy down home. The only thing we ask is that you not cuss. It'll offend the faithful. And I was like, I want to say what I said to that. But that would actually offend possibly the faithful. But I was like, why? I'm the faithful like like and then in the same stack like to request deeper in the stack. It said Fortune 100 company, because I do like 90 percent of my work on leadership and culture 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 are faith and courage. And we're wondering if you could admit 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. And I look at Steve and I still, you know, I can't like forty forty ninth time 49, I still belong nowhere. Like am not a 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 you know, I don't belong anywhere. And he's like Qabbani. 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 you yourself. I'm like, maybe I mean, I guess I guess I belong everywhere. I belong. Along everywhere, I went nowhere, holy shit, the Maya Angelou quote, I was like, Oh my God. So I grabbed my laptop, I searched it, I read it to her. And 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 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, and I was like, oh, my God, I want to belong to Bernie. And so I went back to my study and said, I'm not looking to this thing for a minute and he's like, I ordered dinner, I'll make dinner. We just start and I'll yeah, no, you make dinner. He's like, I'm going to order dinner. Because the last time you said this, it took two years. So I'm going to go and order dinner. And so that's when I started the research on belonging. Yeah, I love that she she says I like Maya very much. I like the humor and courage very much. And when I find myself acting in a way that isn't that doesn't please me and I have to deal with that. Yeah, I love that. I love so. Well, I. Yeah, yeah. The experience of learning into that quote motivated you to start this body of research that allowed you to start developing this book and the theory of true belonging. Yeah. And I was going to ask if you could share that with us as well, Bernie. Yeah. So the theory of true belonging to true belonging is the spiritual practice of believing in and belonging to yourself so deeply that you can share your most authentic self with the world and find sacredness in both being a part of something and standing alone in the wilderness. True belonging doesn't require that you change who you are. It requires that you be who you are. Stunning. Thank you. I think I need to have that tattooed on my heart. Why are so many people so afraid of being alone, Bernie? I think people are afraid to be alone because they don't belong to themselves. And so one of the things that was so crazy to me about this research in these findings was that true belonging is not just about being a part of something, but also having the courage to stand alone when you're called to stand alone, when the joke's not funny, when you don't believe in something, when you have a different opinion, when you're at a family dinner and people are saying things that you actually find hurtful when you're called to stand alone and you can't, then true belonging is very elusive. So your level of belonging will never exceed the level of courage you have to stand alone. And that was a new thing for me, and so I think I'm in a place in my life right now where I'm not afraid to be alone because I so fully belong to me now. I call what we're in right now a spiritual crisis of disconnection and people get nervous about spiritual practice and spiritual crisis because they're like, oh, not religion. Isn't that why we're in this mess to begin with? And this has nothing to do with religion or dogma. When I say spiritual, I mean. Spirituality, I define spirituality, is the belief that we're inextricably connected to each other by something bigger than us. Some people call that bigger than God, some people call it fishing. Some people call it art. But spirituality's no more no less than the belief that we're connected to each other in a way that's unbreakable. You know, you cannot break the connection between human beings, but you can forget it, and we have forgotten that inextricable connection between human beings. And so when I am alone and standing up for something that I believe in, I know you can't do anything to permanently break the connection between me and everyone else in the world. But I know I'm called to courage to stand alone. I think people who forget that we're inextricably connected actually feel completely not just alone, but lonely. And I think that's the difference. How do you hold on to your vision of what is right and just and noble in the face of other people's rejection or discontent with whatever it is you stand for? I mean, this is why I called the wilderness. I mean, every poet, artist, musician, theologian has used the metaphor of the wilderness to describe that kind of solitude, that journey of it's just me and I don't know what to expect. I don't know what's coming next. That inner belief, that inner belief. And so I think when you're called to the wilderness. It's very hard to walk in and stand alone, but you have to hold on to the belief that even though you feel like you're the only one, a lot of us live out there. And the thing about going into the wilderness and standing alone and taking a stand is I think those experiences mark your heart. And I think, you know, to me, it's the mark of the wild heart. I do find sacred being a part of something, but never at the cost of betraying myself. Your TED talk catapulted you to fame, but you had already been speaking and publishing quite a bit before that in your first book, the book that I referenced earlier, I thought it was just me, but it isn't making the journey from what people think to I am. Enough had been published in 2007, but you self published it first as women and came back in 2004 and have written about how you could wallpaper a building with your many rejection letters from publishers. And I'm not sure that everybody really knows that about you. You even borrowed money from your parents and sold copies of the book out of your trunk. They did. What gave you that sense? I mean, you were deep in the wilderness at that point. Oh, my God, I was with you because no one was talking about shame. Yeah. And people were like, yeah, back on shame. Nothing sexy as it sounds more not interested. Man One publisher said we're interested will buy it. Willing to change the title to women's most embarrassing moments. Oh, no, no, no. So what gave you the power to persevere? What kept you sure that you were on the right course? I mean, I knew like, I, I felt otherworldly about it. Like, I mean, I don't I mean, there's a lot of tears and a lot of frustration, a lot of crying, a lot of rejection. And then pinguin I sold enough books out of my trunk that it got Penguin's attention. Then Pinguin bought it. And I may change the name. And they changed the name from women and shame to I thought it was just me, which is great because that's like the one thing people say when they read the book. All I thought it was just me and I had experienced so much shame, especially at the hands of my academic colleagues for self publishing, that when Penguin bought it, I was like, I will absolutely sever myself from the vulgar commerce of book sales. I will not do any kind of promoting of this book. I will sit back and wait for it to, you know, hit the charts and do everything it failed. So I thought it was just me came out two months later, they called me and said, how many copies do you want to get? And I said, I'll take 10 for my mom and her friends. Now, I know we have thousands. You're being remaindered pulped like it's over. Like it's done. Like you failed. What did you do? I will lost my shit at first, and then I was like, I can I have a very high tolerance for risk and failure as long as I can learn some things. I was like, what is the learning here? What is the learning here? And I think the learning for me was if you're not going to get excited and put value on your work, don't expect anyone else to get excited or put value on your work. If you're going to sit back and wait for people to knock on the door and say, talk to me about your work, don't do it. So that was the hard lesson for me. So I got a chance to redo it with a paperback. And the other thing that I thought it was just me is a lot of people, it's a lot of people's favorite books because, you know, it's but it's very it's all women and it's thick on Shein. It's a book just about shame. Well, you featured four women in that book. And I did read the book thinking, oh, my God, I thought it was just me. But I have actually been saying that through all your books, I almost feel like you write the books for a specific point in my life that I am approaching or in the middle of good. And then there sort of guidebooks to get out of whatever it is in my way. You said that courage is more important to you as a value than succeeding. Yeah. Was this one you cultivated it coming out of that hole. Yes. Yeah. Yes. That and after the success of daring greatly or maybe the success of Gifts of Imperfection, I can't remember which book, you know, I think there was some pressure to kind of just do a formulaic, you know, formulaic books like just keep doing whatever you're doing. And I thought I'd rather have a book. Well, this is the learning from I thought it was just being. If I fail wholeheartedly, I can live with that, if I fail and I've been half assed, are half hearted in my effort that I cannot live with. I had a student a couple of years ago, we were talking about the kind of life we want to have, and one of the classes that I teach is called Get How to Get a Job When You Graduate, Differentiator DI , How to get a Job and you do it. And so it's not only about getting a job, but getting a job that really means something to you. What do you feel like you deserve? What do you feel like you're worthy of? And I actually feel like I've shown your 2010 TED talk so often. I show it in every class that I teach that I could actually do it if I want. If you wanted me to. But I won't. At least not now. But one of the things that I ask the students is, what are you afraid of? What is keeping you from trying this or doing this? And one of my students said something that I've never forgotten. He said, I'm afraid if I do this and I fail, I will die of a broken heart. And I at that point try to bring Dan Gilbert in, synthesizing happiness in, but essentially saying, what would you rather die of regret at not trying. Yeah, that's much crueler. Yeah. Any advice for young people that are at the beginning of their adult lives and thinking about what they can do with their lives that can allow them to feel that courage? Plan on heartbreak. Yeah, yeah, I mean, just playing on heartbreak. The only people who don't have heartbreak in their careers are people who have no love or passion for their career. But heartbreak is, well, miserable when you're in it, a small price to pay heartbreaking criticism, small prices to pay for doing work that you're profoundly in love with. I find the work of people whose hearts are stretched, marked and scarred to be far more profound than clean, shiny new hearts. Well, I think having experience with heartbreak also allows you to understand humanity in a way that you couldn't possibly if you didn't experience it does and know going in. You know, that's wholehearted, right, that's wholehearted, no going at it, and that's daring greatly. Yeah. The only guarantee if you live a brave life is you're going to get your ass handed to you and just know that is part of the process. Greive have a hard time. Yeah, I think that's that's what you have to do. One of the most significant themes of braving the wilderness was the notion of trusting oneself and others. And I love the quote you included from Charles Feldman, who describes trust as choosing to risk making something you value vulnerable to another person's actions and distrust as deciding that what is important to me is not safe with this person in. It blew my mind. It really blew my mind because I think that's the world we're living in right now. Yeah, this sense of distrust. So my last question to you today is this. And it's I think it's kind of a big one. How can we learn to be more trustful in our relationships and in our communities and in our countries and in our world? How can we do that? I think it starts with self trust. Trust is a big, hard word, and when our trustworthiness is called into question, we usually go very Lembeck. We just, you know, we hear like the peanut's mom. Like what? Longlong we don't hear people talking. So what we did is we went into the research and said, when we talk about trust, what are we really talking about? And we found the seven elements that you're referring to. We use the acronym abrading Boundaries, Reliability, Accountability Vault, which is confidentiality, integrity, non judgment and generosity. I think we build trust by having honest conversations about what trust is to sit down with our families and say people want to like pull in information, integrate it, and then slowly lose it out with people. Like, they just sit down and say, look, I read a book. And in this book it said the definition of trust is sharing something vulnerable with you and feeling safe about sharing it and yaha the people I love the most. But I don't feel like I can trust you with my opinions because they're different than yours. Can we talk about this? Like, I don't know what to do, but if this is the definition of trust, it's really important that you and I have this and I don't feel like we do right now. And so just having the hard conversations, that's how I think this starts. Briney Brown, thank you so much for being on the show today. Thank you for writing these remarkable books that helped to change our lives, our culture, our world. It is so important now more than ever. And braving the wilderness is a remarkable, remarkable accomplishment in helping us do that. Thank you so much. To find out more about Ronnie Brown and read an excerpt from Braving the Wilderness, go to Briney Brown Dotcom. This is the 13th year I've been doing design matters, and I'd like to thank you for listening. And remember, you can talk about making a difference. We can make a difference what we can do both. I'm Debbie Millman and I look forward to talking with you again soon. Design Matters is produced for the TED Family of podcasts by Curtis Fox Productions and on Pandemic Times. The show is recorded at the School of Visual Arts Masters in Branding Program in New York City, the first and longest running branding program in the world. The editor in chief of Design Matters Media, Zachary Petitt, and the art director is Emily Weiland.
