The key ideas

Rising Strong: The Reckoning. The Rumble. The Revolution.

Brené Brown, 2015

Stories about courage usually stop at the leap. Brené Brown studied what happens after the fall, and found that people who get up stronger than they were tend to walk the same path. She breaks it into three steps and shows how to catch yourself in an imagined hurt before it damages a relationship.

Who it is for

For anyone who once took a risk and fell: a project that failed, a breakup, a rejection. And for anyone who, after being hurt, keeps replaying the same dark story in their head.

If we are brave enough often enough, we will fall.

Why brave people fall more often

Picture someone who finally went for it: applied for the dream job, told someone they loved them, started their own business. And it didn't work out. This is usually where stories about courage end. We see the leap and then, right away, the triumphant finish. The hardest part, what happens between the fall and the next step, stays off screen.

Brené Brown has spent years studying shame, courage and vulnerability at the University of Houston. In her earlier books she argued that it is worth taking risks and showing up as who we really are. This book came out in 2015, and it is about the next step. Brown says it plainly: if we are brave enough often enough, we will fall. She calls this the physics of vulnerability.

So the question that drew her in was this: what do people who get up stronger than they were have in common? The answer took the shape of a path in three steps. First comes the reckoning: noticing that something has hit you. Then the rumble with the story you tell yourself about it. And finally the revolution, when a new truth changes the way you live.

Ahead are a summer lake in Texas, a lunch at Pixar, a hotel room with a very unpleasant roommate, and a question that made Brown angry but changed how she judges people. And one sentence that helps you catch yourself in an imagined hurt before it ruins a conversation.

Failure without the pain is gold-plating

In the business world it is fashionable to praise failure. People call it valuable experience and a stepping stone to success, and it all sounds upbeat. Brown notices that these speeches skip the main thing: falling hurts. After a failure you may feel ashamed, scared and alone, and those feelings are not in the way of the climb. They are the part of the path you have to walk through.

She has an image for this approach: gold-plating grit. Shiny on the outside, hollow inside. You hear that falling is fine, but nobody tells you what to do with the pain that comes after. And if you feel bad, it is easy to suspect there is something wrong with you.

Brown offers a different kind of honesty. To dare is to know in advance that one day you will fall, and to go all the way anyway. And if falling is part of the price of courage, you need the skill of getting up.

In Brown's research, people who rise stronger don't go around the pain. They go through it, along the same path, and that path can be learned. Brown writes that the way we get up after a fall tells us more than anything else about who we are.

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About the author

Brené Brown is an American researcher at the University of Houston who has spent years studying shame, courage and vulnerability. Her TED talk on the power of vulnerability is one of the most watched in the world.

All books by this author: Brené Brown

Terms from the book

  • Dopamine
  • Anderson
  • Pixar
  • Burton
  • box breathing
  • Physics of vulnerability: An image from the book, not a scientific term: if you often choose to be brave, falls are bound to happen, as surely as a law of physics.
  • Reckoning: The first step of the path Brown describes: noticing that something has hit you and getting curious about that feeling. The author's term.
  • Rumble: The second step in Brown's model: honestly taking apart the story you told yourself about what happened, and looking for the truth in it. The author's term.
  • Revolution: The third step in Brown's model: the new lesson becomes a habit and changes the way you live. The author's term.
  • Gold-plating: Gold-plating grit, Brown's image: talking up the benefits of failure while staying silent about the pain and fear that failure brings.
  • Permission slip: A Brown technique: a short note to yourself about which feelings you are allowed to have in a hard situation.
  • Travis: Lake Travis, a reservoir on the Colorado River in Texas, near the city of Austin.
  • Alley: Steve Alley, Brené Brown's husband, a pediatrician.
  • Conspiracy: In Brown's language, a story built on a handful of facts, with everything else filled in by fears and beliefs.
  • Confabulation: A lie told honestly: you sincerely believe an explanation you made up yourself, without knowing the real reason.
  • Lamott: Anne Lamott, an American writer. In Bird by Bird, her book on the craft of writing, she advises not to fear a bad first draft.
  • SFD: Brown's shorthand for the first, uncensored version of your story about what happened, written down just as it comes. She takes the idea from Anne Lamott's rough first drafts.
  • Delta: In Brown's language, the gap between the first story you made up and the truth that came out later. That gap is where the lesson hides.

All terms

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