Life's Instruction Manual?

Charlottesville

October 29, 2025

There are several books that I have read over the past several years that have had a profound impact on me. They have awakened me to ideas and practices that have changed the way I approach my life -- at least hopefully much of the time. I often wonder why I did not learn these "life hacks" when I was growing up, or at least way before starting eight years ago. Perhaps, I wonder, is it because I never stepped outside of myself and thought, "Is there a better way?" Was it that I just carried on, thinking that I intuitively had the skills and mindset to deal with life? If that was the case, I was clearly very wrong.

I am now a firm believer that it makes no sense to live life without the benefit of lessons learned. And that the earlier we take advantage of the insights from those lessons learned the more fulfilling, enriching and meaningful life we can live..

One of the books that has had a tremendous influence on me is "Daring Greatly" by Brene Brown. I read it the first time when I was lost. It was a 2x4 to my dense skull that woke me up to, as Ms. Brown writes, "it's not just me." I have pulled together the following excerpts from the book -- the nuggets that have changed my life.

(I'm still learning to express myself adequately in writing. There's still a disconnect between the thoughts in my mind and what comes through my computer's keyboard. The old me would have said, "I suck at writing." The current me understands that I am a work in progress and the more I write the more I increase my chances of accurately translating my thoughts into typed words.)

Excerpts From “Daring Greatly” By Brene Brown

The imperfect book that gets published is better than the perfect book that never leaves my computer.

Dare Greatly

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory or defeat.

It's worse to spend your life on the outside looking in, wondering what if, than it is to try and dare greatly and risk the chance of failure.

Dare greatly; get in the arena and try.

Sometimes the bravest and most important thing you can do is just show up.

Wholehearted Living

Wholeheartedness is living a life of worthiness, courage, compassion, and connection, which involves embracing vulnerability and authenticity. It is a practice of engaging fully with life, accepting imperfections, and believing "I am enough" despite being imperfect and sometimes afraid. 

Key tenets of wholehearted living:

Worthiness:   At its core, wholehearted living is about believing in your own worthiness. This means waking up and going to bed each day knowing that your imperfections do not change the fact that you are brave and worthy of love and belonging.

Vulnerability:  Vulnerability is not weakness, but the courage to be authentic and engage with others. It is the willingness to show up and share your true self, even when there is no control over the outcome. 

Authenticity:   Instead of trying to fit in, wholehearted living requires cultivating authenticity and letting go of the need for external approval. This means choosing to be your true self, even when it feels difficult. 

Courage and compassion:  Wholeheartedness involves cultivating the courage to tell your story and the compassion to treat yourself and others with kindness

In “The Gifts of Imperfection,” I defined ten “guideposts” for Wholehearted living that point to what the Wholehearted work to cultivate and what they work to let go of: 

1. Cultivating Authenticity: Letting Go of What People Think

2. Cultivating Self-Compassion: Letting Go of Perfectionism 

   
   

3. Cultivating a Resilient Spirit: Letting Go of Numbing and Powerlessness

   
   

4. Cultivating Gratitude and Joy: Letting Go of Scarcity and Fear of the Dark

   
   

5. Cultivating Intuition and Trusting Faith: Letting Go of Need for Certainty

   
   

6. Cultivating Creativity: Letting Go of Comparison

   
   

7. Cultivating Play and Rest: Letting Go of Exhaustion as a Status Symbol and Productivity as Self-Worth 

   
   

8. Cultivating Calm and Stillness: Letting Go of Anxiety as a Lifestyle 

   
   

9. Cultivating Meaningful Work: Letting Go of Self-Doubt and “Supposed To”

10.  Cultivating Laughter, Song, and Dance: Letting Go of Being Cool and “Always in Control” 

Wholehearted living is about engaging in our lives from a place of worthiness. It means cultivating the 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 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.

Wholeheartedness. There are many tenets of Wholeheartedness, but at its very core is vulnerability and worthiness; facing uncertainty, exposure, and emotional risks, and

knowing that I am enough.

Those who feel lovable, who love, and who experience belonging simply believe they are worthy of love and belonging. I often say that Wholeheartedness is like the North Star: We never really arrive, but we certainly know if we're headed in the right direction.

Vulnerability

I define vulnerability as uncertainty, risk and emotional exposure.

There are three keywords to vulnerability:

1. Courage

You have to be willing to put yourself out there. Show up to trade shows, put your music out, write your articles, be willing to broadcast it to the world. Show people what you've got, show them your going after your dreams. You might even inspire people with your courage.

We can choose courage or we can choose comfort, but we can't have both. Not at the same time.

2. Compassion

Being able to acknowledge that you're not the only person struggling. Everybody struggles in life. Other people have been in the same shoes as you. Having compassion is relatable.

3. Connection

Realizing we are all on this planet working together. Someone may have a certain skill that can be helpful to you and you may have skill that someone else may be able to utilize. Working together, we have the ability to achieve more.

Connection is why we're here; it is what gives purpose and meaning to our lives. The power that connection holds in our lives was confirmed when the main concern about connection emerged as the fear of disconnection; the fear that something we have done or failed to do, something about who we are or where we come from, has made us unlovable and unworthy of connection.

Living a connected life ultimately is about setting boundaries, spending less time and energy hustling and winning over people who don’t matter, and seeing the value of working on cultivating connection with family and close friends.

We’re all grateful for people who write and speak in ways that help us remember that we’re not alone.

Belonging: Belonging is the innate human desire to be part of something larger than us. Because this yearning is so primal, we often try to acquire it by fitting in and by seeking approval, which are not only hollow substitutes for belonging, but often barriers to it. Because true belonging only happens when we present our authentic, imperfect selves to the world, our sense of belonging can never be greater than our level of self-acceptance.

Connection is the energy that is created between people when they fee

seen, heard, and valued; when they can give and receive without judgment. 

Belonging is the innate human desire to be part of something larger than

us. Because this yearning is so primal, we often try to acquire it by fitting in

 and by seeking approval, which are not only hollow substitutes for

 belonging, but often barriers to it. Because true belonging only happens

when we present our authentic, imperfect selves to the world, our sense of

belonging can never be greater than our level of self-acceptance.

Vulnerability is not knowing victory or defeat, it's understanding the necessity of both; it's engaging. It's being all in.

Vulnerability is not winning or losing; it's having the courage to show up and be seen when we have no control over the outcome. Vulnerability is not weakness; it's our greatest measure of courage.

Vulnerability is the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, courage, empathy, and creativity. It is the source of hope, empathy, accountability, and authenticity. If we want greater clarity in our purpose or deeper and more meaningful spiritual lives, vulnerability is the path.

As I look back on what I’ve learned about shame, gender, and worthiness, the greatest lesson is this: If we’re going to find our way out of shame and back to each other, vulnerability is the path and courage is the light. To set down those lists of what we’re supposed to be is brave. To love ourselves and support each other in the process of becoming real is perhaps the greatest single act of daring greatly.

Worthiness

You either walk inside your story and own it or you can stand outside your story and hustle for your worthiness.

The important thing to know about worthiness is that it doesn't have prerequisites. Most of us, on the other hand, have a long list of worthiness prerequisites—qualifiers that we've inherited, learned, and unknowingly picked up along the way. Most of these prerequisites fall in the categories of accomplishments, acquisitions, and external acceptance. It's the if/when problem ("I'll be worthy when ..." or "I'll be worthy if ...").

Scarcity

For me, and for many of us, our first waking thought of the day is “I didn’t get enough sleep.” The next one is “I don’t have enough time.” Whether true or not, that thought of not enough occurs to us automatically before we even think to question or examine it. We spend most of the hours and the days of our lives hearing, explaining, complaining, or worrying about what we don’t have enough of. ...Before we even sit up in bed, before our feet touch the floor, we’re already inadequate, already behind, already losing, already lacking something. And by the time we go to bed at night, our minds are racing with a litany of what we didn’t get, or didn’t get done, that day. We go to sleep burdened by those thoughts and wake up to that reverie of lack. ...This internal condition of scarcity, this mind-set of scarcity, lives at the very heart of our jealousies, our greed, our prejudice, and our arguments with life.

Perfectionism

Perfectionism is not the same thing as striving for excellence. Perfectionism is not about healthy achievement and growth. Perfectionism is a defensive move. It’s the belief that if we do things perfectly and look perfect, we can minimize or avoid the pain of blame, judgment, and shame.

When we spend our lives waiting until we’re perfect or bulletproof before we walk into the arena, we ultimately sacrifice relationships and opportunities that may not be recoverable, we squander our precious time, and we turn our backs on our gifts, those unique contributions that only we can make. Perfect and bulletproof are seductive, but they don’t exist in the human experience.

There’s a great quote from the movie Almost Famous that says, “The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you’re uncool.

Shame

The secret killer of innovation is shame. You can’t measure it, but it is there. Every time someone holds back on a new idea, fails to give their manager much needed feedback, and is afraid to speak up in front of a client you can be sure shame played a part. That deep fear we all have of being wrong, of being belittled and of feeling less than, is what stops us taking the very risks required to move our companies forward. If you want a culture of creativity and innovation, where sensible risks are embraced on both a market and individual level, start by developing the ability of managers to cultivate an openness to vulnerability in their teams. And this, paradoxically perhaps, requires first that they are vulnerable themselves. This notion that the leader needs to be “in charge” and to “know all the answers” is both dated and destructive. Its impact on others is the sense that they know less, and that they are less than. A recipe for risk aversion if ever I have heard it. Shame becomes fear. Fear leads to risk aversion. Risk aversion kills innovation.

When we apologize for something we’ve done, make amends, or change a behavior that doesn’t align with our values, guilt—not shame—is most often the driving force. We feel guilty when we hold up something we’ve done or failed to do against our values and find they don’t match up. It’s an uncomfortable feeling, but one that’s helpful. The psychological discomfort, something similar to cognitive dissonance, is what motivates meaningful change. Guilt is just as powerful as shame, but its influence is positive, while shame’s is destructive. In fact, in my research I found that shame corrodes the very part of us that believes we can change and do better.

We judge people in areas where we're vulnerable to shame, especially picking folks who are doing worse than we're doing. If I feel good about my parenting, I have no interest in judging other people's choices. If I feel good about my body, I don't go around making fun of other people's weight or appearance. We're hard on each other because we're using each other as a launching pad out of our own perceived shaming deficiency.

Empathy

Empathy is a strange and powerful thing. There is no script. There is no right way or wrong way to do it. It’s simply listening, holding space, withholding judgment, emotionally connecting, and communicating that incredibly healing message of “You’re not alone.

Empathy is connecting with the emotion that someone is experiencing, not the event or the circumstance.

When we feel good about the choices we're making and when we're engaging with the world from a place of worthiness rather than scarcity, we feel no need to judge and attack.

Self-Compassion

Self-Compassion: Stop Beating Yourself Up and Leave Insecurity Behind.

Self-kindness: Being warm and understanding toward ourselves when we suffer, fail, or feel inadequate, rather than ignoring our pain or flagellating ourselves with self-criticism. 

Mindfulness

Common humanity recognizes that suffering and feelings of personal inadequacy are part of the shared human experience—something we all go through rather than something that happens to “me” alone. 

Mindfulness: Taking a balanced approach to negative emotions so that feelings are neither suppressed nor exaggerated. We cannot ignore our pain and feel compassion for it at the same time. Mindfulness requires that we not “overidentify” with thoughts and feelings, so that we are caught up and swept away by negativity.

Parenting

The real questions for parents should be: "Are you engaged? Are you

paying attention?" If so, plan to make lots of mistakes and bad decisions.

Imperfect parenting moments turn into gifts as our children watch us try

to figure out what went wrong and how we can do better next time.

The mandate is not to be perfect and raise happy children. Perfection

doesn't exist, and I've found what makes children happy doesn't always

prepare them to be courageous and engaged.