So, I'll start with this.
A couple of years ago, an event planner called me
because I was going to do a speaking event,
and she called and said:
"I'm really struggling with how to write about you on the little flyer."
I thought, "Well, what's the struggle?"
and she said: "Well, I saw you speak,
and I am going to call you a researcher, I think,
but I'm afraid if I call you a researcher, no one will come
because they'll think you're boring and irrelevant." (Laughter)
And I was like "OK."
She said: "But the thing I liked about your talk
is that you're a storyteller.
So I think what I'll do is call you a storyteller."
And of course the academic, insecure part of me was like,
"You're going to call me a what?" (Laughter)
And she said: "I'm going to call you a storyteller."
And I was like, "Oh, why not magic pixie?" (Laughter)
I was like: "Let me think about this for a second."
And so, I tried to call deep on my courage
and I thought,
"You know, I am a storyteller. I'm a qualitative researcher.
I collect stories; that's what I do.
Maybe stories are just data with a soul, and maybe I'm just a storyteller."
So I said: "You know what?
Why don't you just say I'm a researcher storyteller."
And she went, "Ha ha! There's no such a thing."
(Laughter)
So I'm a researcher storyteller, and I'm going to talk to you today
- we're talking about expanding perception -
and so I want to talk to you and tell you some stories
about a piece of my research that fundamentally expanded my perception
and really actually changed the way that I live, love, work, and parent.
And this is where my story starts.
When I was a young researcher, a doctoral student,
my first year I had a research professor
who, on one of his first days of class, he said to us:
"Here's the thing. If you cannot measure it, it doesn't exist."
And I thought he was just sweet-talking me,
I was like, "Really?" And he was like, "Absolutely."
And so you have to understand that I have a bachelor's in Social Work,
a Master's in Social Work, and I was getting my PhD in Social Work,
so my entire academic career was surrounded by people
who kind of believed in the "Life is messy; love it."
And I'm more of the "Life's messy, clean it up," (Laughter)
organize it, and put it into a bento box."
(Laughter)
And so to think I had found my way, to found a career that takes me -
really one of the big sayings in social work
is "Lean into the discomfort of the work,"
and I'm like, knock discomfort upside the head
and move it over and get all As. (Laughter)
That was my mantra.
So I was very excited about this.
And so I thought, this is the career for me,
because I am interested in some messy topics
but I want to be able to make them not messy.
I want to understand them.
I want to hack into these things that I know are important
and lay the code out for everyone to see.
So where I started was with connection.
Because by the time you're a social worker for ten years,
what you realize is that connection is why we're here.
It's what gives purpose and meaning to our lives.
This is what it's all about.
It doesn't matter whether you talk to people who work in social justice
and mental health and abuse and neglect.
What we know is that connection, the ability to feel connected
is neurobiologically that's how we're wired.
It's why we are here.
So I thought, "You know what. I'm going to start with connection."
Well, you know that situation
where you get an evaluation from your boss.
And she tells you 37 things that you do really awesome
and one thing that you kind of you know, an "opportunity for growth?"
(Laughter)
And all you can think about is that "opportunity for growth," right?
Well, apparently this is the way my work went as well.
Because when you ask people about love they tell you about heartbreak.
When you ask them about belonging,
they'll tell you about their most excruciating experiences
of being excluded.
And when you ask people about connection,
the stories they told me were about disconnection.
So very quickly about six weeks into this research,
I ran into this unnamed thing that absolutely unraveled connection.
In a way that I didn't understand or had never seen.
And so I pulled back out of the research and thought:
"I need to figure out what this is."
And it turned out to be shame.
And "shame" is really easily understood
as the fear of disconnection.
Is there's something about me that if other people know it or see it,
that I won't be worthy of connection?
The things I can tell you about it is: it's universal, we all have it.
The only people who don't experience shame
have no capacity for human empathy or connection.
No one wants to talk about it,
and the less you talk about it the more you have it.
What underpinned this shame,
this "I'm not good enough," which we all know that feeling,
that "I'm not blank enough, I'm not thin enough, rich enough,
beautiful enough, smart enough, promoted enough."
The thing that underpinned us was this excruciating vulnerability.
This idea of "In order for connection to happen,
we have to allow ourselves to be seen, really seen."
And you know how I feel about vulnerability, I hate vulnerability.
And so I thought, this is my chance to beat it back with my measuring stick.
I'm going in; I'm going to figure this stuff out;
I am going to spend a year; I'm going to totally deconstruct shame;
I'm going to understand how vulnerability works;
I'm going to outsmart it.
So I was ready and I was really excited!
As you know it's not going to turn out well.
(Laughter)
You know this.
I could tell you a lot about shame,
but I'd have to borrow everyone else's time.
But here's what I can tell you it boils down to.
This may be one of the most important things I've learned
in the decade of doing this research.
My one year turned into six years.
Thousands of stories, hundreds of long interviews, focus groups.
At one point, people were sending me their journal pages,
sending me their stories, thousands of pieces of data in six years.
And I kind of got a handle on it,
I kind of understood this is what shame is, and how it works.
I wrote a book, I published a theory but something was not okay.
And what it was,
is that if I roughly took the people I interviewed,
and divided them into people who really have a sense of worthiness
- that is what this comes down, a sense of worthiness -
they have a strong sense of love and belonging.
And the folks who struggle for it,
the folks who are always wondering if they're good enough.
There was only one variable that separated the people
who had a strong sense of love and belonging, and really struggle for it:
That was the people who have a strong sense of love and belonging,
believe that they are worthy of love and belonging.
That's it.
They believe they're worthy.
And to me, the hard part of the one thing that keeps us out of connection
is our fear that we're not worthy of connection
was something that personally and professionally
I feel like I needed to understand better.
So what I did is I took all of the interviews,
where I saw worthiness,
where I saw people living that way, and just looked at those.
What did these people have in common?
I have a slight office supply addiction but that's another talk.
(Laughter)
So I had a manila folder and a sharpie,
I was like, "What am I going to call this research?"
And the first words that came to my mind were "wholehearted."
These are kind of wholehearted people living from this deep sense of worthiness.
I wrote at the top of the manila folder, and I started looking at the data.
In fact, I did it first in a four-day very intensive data analysis,
where I went back and I pulled all these interviews,
pulled the stories and pulled the incidents.
"What's the theme? What's the pattern?"
My husband left town with the kids (Laughter)
because I was kind of going into this Jackson Pollock crazy thing.
Where I'm just writing and just in my researcher mode.
And so here's what I found.
What they had in common was a sense of courage.
And I want to separate courage and bravery for you for a minute.
Courage, the original definition of courage
when it first came into the English language,
- it's from the Latin word, cor, meaning heart -
the original definition was to tell the story of who you are
with your whole heart.
And so these folks, very simply, had the courage to be imperfect.
They had the compassion to be kind to themselves first
and then to others, and as it turns out
we can't practice compassion with other people
if we can't treat ourselves kindly.
And the last was they had connection
- and this was the hard part -
as a result of authenticity,
they were willing to let go of who they thought they should be
in order to be who they were,
which you have to absolutely do that for connection.
The other thing that they had in common was this:
They fully embraced vulnerability.
They believed that what made them vulnerable made them beautiful.
They didn't talk about vulnerability being comfortable
nor did they talk about it being excruciating
as I had heard earlier in the shame interviewing.
They just talked about it being necessary.
They talked about the willingness to say "I love you" first.
The willingness to do something where there are no guarantees.
The willingness to breathe through
waiting for the doctor to call after your mammogram.
They're willing to invest in a relationship
that may or may not work out.
They thought this was fundamental.
I personally thought it was betrayal.
I could not believe I had pledged allegiance to research, where our job -
the definition of research is to control and predict,
to study phenomena
for the explicit reason to control and predict.
And now my mission to control and predict had turned up the answer
that the way to live is with vulnerability.
And to stop controlling and predicting.
This led to a little breakdown.
(Laughter)
which actually looked more like this : [breakdown. spiritual awakening]
(Laughter)
And it did.
And it led to what I called a breakdown,
and my therapist called a "spiritual awakening."
(Laughter)
Spiritual awakening sounds better, but I assure you it was a breakdown.
I had to put my data away and go find a therapist.
And let me tell you something, you know who you are
when you call you friends and say, "I think I need to see somebody.
Do you have any recommendations?"
Because about five of my friends were like,
"Woooh, I wouldn't want to be your therapist." (Laughter)
I was like, "What does that mean?"
And they're like, "I'm just saying, you know.
Don't bring your measuring stick!"
(Laughter)
I was like, "Okay".
And so I found a therapist.
And in my first meeting with her, Diana,
I brought in my list of the way wholehearted live.
And she sat down and said, "How are you?"
And I said, "I'm great. I'm okay."
And she said, "Well what's going on?"
And this is a therapist who sees therapists,
because we have to go to those because their BS meters are good.
(Laughter)
And so I said, "Here's the thing, I'm struggling."
And she said, "What's the struggle?"
And I said, "I have a vulnerability issue.
And I know that vulnerability is kind of the core of shame and fear
and our struggle for worthiness but it appears that it's also
the birthplace of joy, creativity, belonging, love,
and I think I have a problem, and I need some help."
I said, "Here's the thing, no family stuff, no childhood shit,
(Laughter)
I just need some strategies."
(Laughter)
(Applause)
Thank you.
So she goes like this.
(Laughter)
Then, I said, "It's bad right?"
And she said, "It's neither good nor bad.
(Laughter)
It just is what it is."
And I said, "Oh my God, this is going to suck!"
(Laughter)
And it did and it didn't.
And it took about a year.
And you know how there are people
that, when they realize that vulnerability and tenderness are important
that they kind of surrender and walk into it:
A) That's not me.
B) I don't even hang out with people like that.
(Laughter)
For me it was a yearlong street fight. (Laughter)
It was a slugfest. Vulnerability pushed, I pushed back.
I lost the fight but I probably won my life back.
Then I went back into the research and spend the next couple of years
really trying to understand what they, the whole-hearted,
and what choices they were making and what we are doing with vulnerability.
Why do we struggle with it so much?
Am I alone in struggling with vulnerability?
No.
So this is what I learned.
We numb vulnerability.
When we're waiting for the call -
It's funny, I guess, on Wednesday I sent something on Twitter and Facebook,
"How would you define vulnerability and what makes you feel vulnerable?"
and within an hour and a half I had 150 responses.
I wanted to know what's out there.
"Having to ask my husband for help because I'm sick and we're newly married."
"Initiating sex with my husband."
"Initiating sex with my wife."
"Being turned down." "Asking someone out."
"Waiting for the doctor to call back."
"Getting laid off."
"Laying off people."
This is the world we live in.
We live in a vulnerable world.
And one of the ways we deal with it is we numb vulnerability.
And I think there's evidence, and it's not the only reason
this evidence exists but it's a huge cause.
We are the most in debt,
obese,
addicted,
and medicated adult cohort in U.S. history.
The problem is - and I learned this from the research -
is that you cannot selectively numb emotion.
You can't say, "Here's the bad stuff.
Here's vulnerability, here's grief, here's shame,
here's fear, here's disappointment. I don't want to feel these.
I am going to have a couple of beers and a banana nut muffin."
(Laughter)
I don't want to feel these!
And I know that's knowing laughter,
I hack into your lives for a living. That's "Haha, God!"
(Laughter)
You can't numb those hard feelings
without numbing the other affects, or emotions.
You cannot selectively numb.
So when you numb those,
we numb joy; we numb gratitude; we numb happiness.
And then, we are miserable, and looking for purpose and meaning,
and then we feel vulnerable,
and so we have a couple of beers and a banana nut muffin.
And it becomes this dangerous cycle.
One of the things that I think we need to think about is why and how we numb,
and it doesn't just have to be addiction.
The other thing we do is make everything that's uncertain certain.
Religion has gone from a belief in faith and mystery to certainty.
"I'm right, you're wrong. Shut up."
That's it.
Just certain.
The more afraid we are, the more vulnerable we are,
the more afraid we are.
This is what politics looks like today,
There's no discourse any more; there's no conversation.
There's just blame.
You know how blame is described in the research?
"A way to discharge pain and discomfort."
We perfect.
Now let me tell you,
if there's anyone who wants to have their life look like this,
it would be me.
But it doesn't work.
Because we take fat from our butts and put it into our cheeks.
(Laughter)
Which doesn't work!
I hope in a hundred years people will look back and go, "Wow!"
(Laughter)
And we perfect, most dangerously, our children.
Let me tell you very quickly what we think about children.
They're hardwired for struggle when they get here.
When you hold those perfect little babies in your hands, our job is not to say,
"Look at them, look at her, she is perfect.
My job is just to keep her perfect,
and make sure she makes the tennis team by 5th grade
and Yale by 7th grade."
That's not our job, our job is to look and say,
"You're imperfect and hard-wired for struggle,
but you are worthy of love and belonging."
That's our job. Show me a generation of kids raised like that,
and we'll end the problems that we see today.
We pretend that what we do doesn't have an effect on people.
We do that in our personal lives, we do that corporate
whether it's a bail out or an oil spill, or a recall.
We pretend like,
what we're doing doesn't have a huge impact on other people.
I would say to companies, "This isn't our first rodeo, people."
We just need you to be authentic and real and say,
"We're sorry; we'll fix it."
But there's another way, and I'll leave you with this.
This is what I've found:
to let ourselves be seen, deeply seen, vulnerably seen.
To love with our whole hearts even though there's no guarantee.
And that's really hard,
I can tell you as a parent, that's excruciatingly difficult.
To practice gratitude and joy
in those moments of terror when we're wondering,
"Can I love you this much? Can I believe in this as passionately?
Can I be this fierce about this?"
Just to be able to stop
and instead of catastrophizing about what might happen,
to say, "I'm just so grateful.
Because to feel this vulnerable means I'm alive."
And the last, which I think is probably the most important,
is to believe that we're enough.
Because when we work from a place that says, "I'm enough,"
then we stop screaming, and we start listening.
We're kinder and gentler to the people around us,
and we're kinder and gentler to ourselves.
That's all I have. Thank you.
(Applause)