Lead With Courage and Compassion | Brené Brown EP 380

0:00Hi, my name is Lewis Howes and welcome to the Daily Motivation show.

0:10I firmly believe that taking charge of your mindset allows you to be in the driver's seat of your life and unlock your potential. And that's why I'm thrilled to share that my new book is out right now. It's called The Greatness Mindset. In it, you'll learn how to build a plan for greatness through powerful exercises and toolkits designed to propel your life forward. This is the book that I wish I had 20 years ago. It's everything I've learned in the last decade with the research and the science to help you unlock your mind. Make sure to go to lewishouse.com slash 2023 mindset to pick up your copy of my book, The Greatness Mindset, today.

0:52What should parents be learning about how they can grow? Because I think it starts with being aware of what they know and what they don't know and being receptive to learning something different. I believe that 99.9 % of parents are truly waking up every day and doing the very best they can with what they have. I don't think there are a lot of parents who wake up and maliciously try to screw up their kids or hurt their kids or belittle or shame their kids. I think we're doing the best we can with what we have. And so I think to let go of the idea that if I have done something that I could have done better or that I could learn from, people defend their parenting like they're defending their lives because it's such a shame minefield.

1:30And a great example is the work you're doing around men and vulnerability. I cannot tell you the number of fathers in the hundreds, if not thousands, of fathers I've interviewed that said I shamed my son every time he was vulnerable. Yeah. I put him down. I made fun of them. I hit him every time he was vulnerable. And now I look back and I know it's because that's the way I was raised or I was afraid he'd be soft and get hurt at school. I think for parents, it's about understanding I'm not perfect. Like, you know, like I've never not been a researcher and a parent. My husband's a pediatrician.

2:03Our kids will be in therapy. You're right. And the reason why I think that'll be so successful is there's only two kind of kids you raise. Kids who will ask for help when they need it are kids who won't. And that's as good as it gets is to raise a kid who will ask for help. Yeah, I never asked for help. Yeah. I was always suffering inside. Yeah, right. And I always felt shameful, guilty. And I just, my way of asking was being angry, resentful, mad, hitting people in sports or outside of sports, because that's all I knew. I'll tell you a story about a guy that I interviewed. One of the first men I interviewed when I went from interviewing all women to men was a guy who I said, what is shame for you?

2:41And he used the P-U-S-S-Y word, which is like just synonymous with shame in male culture, right? And he said, I'll never forget the day that changed my life. He said, I was at football practice. I was a freshman in high school. And he said, the coach yelled, get on the line. And I didn't want to get on the line. I was afraid to get on the line because I know, you know, it's where people crash into each other. And so I must have had fear on my face because my coach looked at me and said, don't be a P-U-S-S-Y, get on the line. and he said that's the day that I learned that the way you deal with that is you change that fear into rage and he said and I just plowed over the guy across from me and then he said then I spent the next 20 years plowing over my wife my children my colleagues the people who worked for me yeah he said that's what I did with my fear I mean I can definitely relate I remember being picked last on a team once when it was a co-ed sport.

3:42We were playing dodgeball on the playground. I think it was third or fourth grade. And there was two captains, two guys. And they were picking one at a time, right? They pick all the guys. And I'm like, okay, I'm going to be the last guy chosen. But then they go and pick all the girls. And then I'm going to pick my name. I'm just by default the last picker's team. So as a boy trying to fit in in third or fourth grade, it was devastating. And I told myself in that moment, I was like, never again will I be picked last at any sport. I'll do whatever it takes. I'm going to be a machine. I'm going to train for six hours a night.

4:18I'm going to, you know, take no prisoners mentality. And just, I mean, I dominated on that dodgeball game that day. I was just like throwing the ball, like just diving everywhere. I was like, never again. And did you ever get picked last again? Never got picked last again. Right. And it guided me towards achieving these things. But it left me feeling very unfulfilled every time I'd achieved them. Every loss we ever had in a sport, it was like my life was at stake. And I felt like I was worthless. Because if I didn't win, that meant no one was going to accept me. So I would take it so personally when I wouldn't win.

4:50And then I would take it out of my family, my girlfriends, my friends, everything. And I didn't know how to communicate. Because anytime you try to talk about any vulnerabilities as a guy growing up for me, it was like you're a P-U-S-S-Y. Don't be a little girl. Don't be a B-I-T-C-A. All these things. And so I think it's very hard for me and especially for a lot of men who grew up to stand alone and feel like they belong in an isolated world. If they're not going to join a group that's going to make fun of them or put other people down.

5:23Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of The Daily Motivation. and I hope you have an amazing rest of your day. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to click the link in the description that will take you to the full episode of our main podcast on the School of Greatness. And if you are loving the daily motivation, please follow us over on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and leave us a review over on Apple Podcasts right now. And if you want more exclusive content and ad-free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel on Apple Podcast right now. And if you wanna get even more inspiration from our world-class guests and learn how to improve your life and take it to the next level, then make sure to sign up for the Greatness newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox over at greatness.com slash newsletter.

6:20Again, have an amazing day and I'll see you tomorrow with another episode of the Daily Motivation Show.

6:36Thank you.