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“ ”One of the signature mistakes with empathy is that we believe we can take our lenses off and look through the lenses of someone else. We can’t. Our lenses are soldered to who we are. What we can do, however, is honor people’s perspectives as truth even when they’re different from ours. That’s a challenge if you were raised in majority culture — white, straight, male, middle-class, Christian — and you were likely taught that your perspective is the correct perspective and everyone else needs to adjust their lens. Or, more accurately, you weren’t taught anything about perspective taking, and the default — My truth is the truth — is reinforced by every system and situation you encounter.
About Brené Brown
Casandra Brené Brown (born November 18, 1965) is an American research professor, lecturer, author, and podcast host. Brown is known in particular for her research on shame, vulnerability, and leadership. A long-time researcher and academic, Brown became famous following a widely viewed TED talk in 2010. Since then she has written six number-one New York Times bestselling books, hosts two podcasts and has filmed a lecture for Netflix. Brown holds the Huffington Foundation's Brené Brown Endowed Chair at the University of Houston's Graduate College of Social Work and is a visiting professor in management at McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin.
Biography information from Wikiquote
Additional quotes by Brené Brown
Nothing has transformed my life more than realizing that it’s a waste of time to evaluate my worthiness by weighing the reaction of the people in the stands.
"Courage is a heart word. The root of the word courage is cor - the Latin word for heart. In one of its earliest forms, the word courage meant "To speak one's mind by telling all one's heart." Over time, this definition has changed, and today, we typically associate courage with heroic and brave deeds. But in my opinion, this definition fails to recognize the inner strength and level of commitment required for us to actually speak honestly and openly about who we are and about our experiences — good and bad. Speaking from our hearts is what I think of as "ordinary courage.
When we pretend that we can avoid vulnerability we engage in behaviors that are often inconsistent with who we want to be.