Brene Brown’s 10 Guideposts for Wholehearted Living

I just finished Dr. Brene Brown’s The Gifts of Imperfection and The Power of Vulnerability. Both teachings center around Brene’s Ten Guideposts for Wholehearted Living. Brene defines wholehearted living as engaging in our lives from a place of worthiness. “It means cultivating courage, compassion, and connection to wake up in the morning and think, ‘No matter what gets done and how much is left undone, I am enough.’ It’s going to bed at night and thinking, ‘Yes, I am imperfect and vulnerable and sometimes afraid, but that doesn’t change the truth that I am also brave and worthy of love and belonging.” The first time I heard those words, I cried.

How it Started

A few months ago my son Gabe brought home a book titled Braving the Wilderness, by Brene Brown, and shared insights he was learning about. I had heard her on my favorite podcast, We Can Do Hard Things, and the conversation became a catalyst for shedding what I refer to as my shame body. Gabe left the book on the coffee table one night for a few minutes and I quickly read the first chapter and added the book to my wish list. A few weeks later, I was happy to see the book sitting on my dresser.

How it’s Going

Two days ago, I started the audiobook edition of The Gifts of Imperfection, I finished it in the four hours and thirty-one minutes it takes to listen to it. I didn’t take breaks. I listened, wholeheartedly, taking notes on every aha moment; there were several. “The Gifts” was originally written in 2010, but the version read by Dr. Brené Brown in 2020 is a tenth-anniversary edition. It includes insights and experiences gathered over the ten years since the original publication. I feel fortunate to have access to her most updated information from that period. While I wish I had discovered it fifteen years ago or even five years ago, I am grateful to have it now. As soon as I was done with The Gifts, I ordered The Power of Vulnerability.

The Guideposts for Wholehearted Living

Before Brene Brown’s teachings, I had no real definition of wholeheartedly. I have used the word a few times in sentences when I needed to emphasize how much I cared about something or how hard I tried to do something. In that sense, I understood it to mean, with my whole being, heart, or self. Brene surveyed people and compiled the information to give us ten guideposts for wholehearted living; engaging in our lives from a place of worthiness. It means cultivating courage, compassion, and connection to know we’re enough.

Guidepost 1

Guidepost one is Cultivating Authenticity and Letting Go of What People Think. “Authenticity isn’t something you can check off a list.” Brene gives insight into her beliefs around authenticity. According to Brene Brown’s books, “Authenticity is a collection of choices that we have to make every day. It’s about the choice to show up and be real. The choice to be honest. The choice to let our true selves be seen.”

Guidepost 2

Guidepost two is Cultivating Self-Compassion and Letting Go of Perfectionism. My perfectionism goes way back to elementary school. I remember loving poetry at a young age and reading the dictionary when I didn’t have any new books to read because I liked to learn new words. I like the way words can have more than one meaning, how they can look the same but sound different, and how when they are strung together, they can make sentences that can make you feel something; sadness, joy, or pain. Often still, when I’m writing, I have to remind myself that I don’t need anything to be perfect, I need it to reflect who I am and how I feel.

Guidepost 3

Guidepost three is Cultivating a Resilient Spirit and Letting Go of Numbing and Powerlessness. The word resilient is a favorite for me. Without realizing I was creating it, my resilience to shame has grown exponentially and profoundly changed my life. Seven months ago, I smoked more than a pack of cigarettes a day and was prescribed three milligrams of Xanax daily. I sat back and judged everyone and everything I came in contact almost as much as I judged myself. I am a big believer in taking medication that is needed but mine was not. Mine just stopped me from feeling.

Guidepost 4

Guidepost four is Cultivating Gratitude and Joy and Letting Go of Scarcity and Fear of the Dark. Before last fall, gratitude seemed like a fairy tale word for rich people and I had never heard the word scarcity in my life, but I’ve felt it since I was a young child.

Guidepost 5

Guidepost five is Cultivating Intuition and Faith and Letting Go of the Need for Certainty. “Intuition is not a single way of knowing. It’s our ability to hold space for uncertainty and our willingness to trust the many ways we’ve developed knowledge and insight including instinct, experience, faith, and reason.” Recently I have realized how often I have ignored my intuition and the shame body that thickened in the absence of trust in myself to keep me safe. Growing up, faith was just a word I saw on my friend’s living room wall in seventh grade. It wasn’t a feeling or belief I witnessed in my childhood. Brene Brown says, “Faith is a place of mystery where we can find the courage to believe in the things we cannot see and the strength to let go of the fear of uncertainty.”

Guidepost 6

Guidepost six is Cultivating Creativity and Letting Go of Comparison. Like Theodore Roosevelt said, “Comparison is the thief of joy.” When I’ve been asked about art, drawing, and being creative, I have often said, “I’m not artsy,” “Drawing isn’t my strong suit,” and even, “I suck at being creative.” Brene Brown’s explanation about creativity “There’s no such thing as creative people and non-creative people. There are only people who use their creativity and people who don’t.” I choose to create something every day.

Guidepost 7

Guidepost seven is Cultivating Rest and Play and Letting Go of Exhaustion As A Status Symbol and Productivity As Self-Worth. I’ll admit, I grew up too quickly. I viewed rest as laziness and play as a waste of time. Often juggling two or three jobs, I didn’t intend to slow down. I believed that my exhaustion proved how hard I worked. I believed it showed how much I cared and how worthy I was of everyone’s love. Brene Brown says that rest and play are grouped because after research, “Play is as essential to our health and functioning as rest.”

Guidepost 8

Guidepost eight is Cultivating Calm and Stillness and Letting Go of Anxiety As A Lifestyle. Anxiety is a feeling I know well. I suffered from debilitating anxiety for two decades. I was using medication to numb a feeling that was urging me to recognize that something was wrong. Once I looked at my anxiety as an alarm instead of a state of mind, I learned to turn the alarm off. After listening to Brene Brown’s teachings about anxiety, it was clear that I had not been functioning properly. She gave helpful tips on breathing, non-reactive responses, and slowing down to create calmness and decrease anxiety.

Guidepost 9

Guidepost nine is Cultivating Meaningful Work and Letting Go of Self-Doubt and Supposed To. Brene summarizes how part of the problem is that our society places too much importance on what we do for a living as opposed to how we feel or what we love. She brings up the slash career effect, waitress/writer in my case. Similar to an experience Brene had, I also “Don’t feel writer enough.” She states “Overcoming self-doubt is all about believing that you’re enough and letting go of what the world says we’re supposed to be and what we’re supposed to call ourselves.”

Guidepost 10

Guidepost ten is Cultivating Laughter, Song, and Dance: Letting Go of Being Cool and Always In Control. Brene says that laughter, song, and dance create an emotional and spiritual connection. They remind us of the one thing that really matters when we are searching for comfort, celebration, inspiration, or healing. We are not alone.” On my habit tracker, a 5-minute dance party is line 2; if I can’t afford five minutes to move my body to music, I am ungrounded.

Brene explains that “Laughing hysterically can make us feel a little out of control, and singing out loud can make some of us feel subconscious, but for many of us there is no form of self-expression that makes us feel more vulnerable than dancing.” On my bedroom mirror, among my rainbow stickers is a picture of me at age six holding a microphone, smiling with my whole face, my cousin off to the side shyly. I wasn’t afraid of not looking cool in this picture and I love it.

What’s Next?

Next up is Brene Brown’s Rising Strong! Thanks for reading!