Brene Brown at The UP Experience (2009) and TEDxKC (2010)

Brene Brown broke onto the TED Talk scene in October of 2010 with an amazing talk (The Power of Vulnerability), but she was already doing a lot of public speaking before that. This talk is from 2009 at the UP Experience. Below this talk, there is another TEDx Talk from 2010.

Dr. Brown's books are The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are and I Thought It Was Just Me (but it isn't): Telling the Truth About Perfectionism, Inadequacy, and Power.





Brene Brown at The UP Experience

"The heart of my work is about the very human need to live with authenticity, resilience and a deep sense of love and belonging," says Brené. Dr. Brown is a researcher, author and award-winning teacher of graduate studies at the University of Houston, where her focus has been the areas of shame, empathy and vulnerability and the effect those powerful emotions have on the way we love, parent and build relationships.

Brene Brown appeared at TEDxKC not long after her TEDxHouston debut - and she offered another great talk.




TEDxKC - Brené Brown - The Price of Invulnerability

TEDxKC talk synopsis: In our anxious world, we often protect ourselves by closing off parts of our lives that leave us feeling most vulnerable. Yet invulnerability has a price. When we knowingly or unknowingly numb ourselves to what we sense threatens us, we sacrifice an essential tool for navigating uncertain times -- joy. This talk will explore how and why fear and collective scarcity has profoundly dangerous consequences on how we live, love, parent, work and engage in relationships -- and how simple acts can restore our sense of purpose and meaning.

Speaker: Dr. Brené Brown is a research professor at the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work where she has spent the past 10 years studying courage, shame and authenticity. She is the Behavioral Health Scholar-in-Residence at the Council on Alcohol and Drugs and has written several books on her research.

Pavel Somov, Ph.D. - Perfection: Aristotle versus Buddha

Cool . . . . From Huffington Post.

Perfection: Aristotle versus Buddha

By Pavel Somov, Ph.D.

Psychologist/Author

"The Buddha lived in India five centuries before Jesus and almost two centuries before Aristotle. The first step in his belief system was to break through the black-and-white world of words, pierce the bivalent veil and see the world as it is, see it filled with 'contradictions,' with things and not-things, with roses that are both red and not-red, with A and not-A. You find this [...] theme in Eastern belief systems old and new, from Lao-tze's Taoism to the modern Zen in Japan. Either-or versus contradiction. A or not-A versus A and not-A. Aristotle versus the Buddha." (B. Kosko)

Seeing yourself as either perfect or imperfect is black-and-white thinking. Time to update your understanding of perfection from the standard Western, psychologically toxic, dualistic view of perfection to a more self-accepting, psychologically healthier, nondual view of perfection: you are neither perfect nor imperfect or, if you prefer, you are perfectly imperfect. Same thingless thing!

Perfectionism suffers from Aristotelian dichotomies and bivalences: it cuts life in half, into "what is" and "what should be," into "perfect" and "imperfect," into "actual" and "ideal." A perfectionistic mind is sore with the either/or self-fragmentation. Time to learn to accept your whole self in its existential continuity. In other words, time to stop falling onto this Aristotelian sword of black-and-white self-judgment.

Yes, you are doing the best that you can at any given point in time and you can still do better. Time to perfect perfection!

Resources:

Self-Acceptance Manifesto

Pavel Somov, Ph.D. is the author of:

Tags: Pavel Somov Ph.D., Perfection, Aristotle versus Buddha, Huffington Post, Eating the Moment, Present Perfect, The Lotus Effect, Buddhism, Psychology, perfection, Philosophy