5 Moving Takeaways From Brené Brown

The happiest people are the ones who are upfront about who they are. They choose to embrace their imperfections, because we all have them. They live authentically. This is what I derived from reading Brené Brown’s The Gifts of Imperfection.

As a society, we tend to admire authentic people in spite of their flaws. We’re also constantly inundated with messages from reality TV and social media, which conditions us to look outward for approval and ideas about how we should be living our lives.

We hold measuring sticks up to our resumes and the number of likes we get on Instagram posts, which only makes us more inclined to live inauthentically. We’re addicted to living out other people’s ideas of authenticity, poisoned with the belief that it’s better to be a reality TV show star than a teacher, a nurse or a philanthropist.

I may have just spoiled the book for you, but you should read it anyway. Here are 5 of my favorite quotes from the book.

The universe is not short on wake-up calls. We're just quick to hit the snooze button.

Fitting in gets way of belonging. Fitting in is about assessing a situation and becoming who you need to be to be accepted. Belonging doesn't require us to change who we are, it requires us to be who we are.

When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.

Authenticity is the daily practice of letting go of who we think we're supposed to be and embracing who we are.

It's easy to attack and criticize someone while he or she is risktaking. Cruelty is cheap, easy and rampant. It's also chicken shit. Especially when you attack and criticize anonymously - like technology allows so many people to do these days.

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