Daring Greatly

Brown's central argument: vulnerability is not weakness but the truest measure of courage. Daring Greatly is where she lays that argument out in full, drawing on twelve years of research on shame, worthiness, and what she calls "scarcity culture."

Drawing on twelve years of research on shame and worthiness, Brown traces what she calls the "scarcity culture" — the constant background sense of never being enough — and proposes a different posture in response: choosing to be seen, to speak honestly, to put work into the world before knowing how it will be received. The title comes from a 1910 Theodore Roosevelt speech: credit belongs to the one who is actually in the arena, who at worst fails while daring greatly. The book introduces concepts that have since become widely used — the arena, "wholeheartedness," shame resilience, and the "vulnerability armory" people use to protect themselves from feeling exposed. Stands as the foundational vulnerability book in her catalog; Dare to Lead, written seven years later, applies the same framework specifically to leadership.

Details

• Author: Brené Brown, PhD, LMSW
• Publisher: Avery (Penguin Random House); originally Gotham Books
• Published: 2012
• Pages: 287

About the Author

Brené Brown

Research professor at the University of Houston, where she holds the Huffington Foundation Endowed Chair at the Graduate College of Social Work, and visiting professor at the McCombs School of Business at UT Austin. Brown has spent over two decades studying courage, vulnerability, shame, and empathy. She is the author of multiple #1 New York Times bestsellers including The Gifts of Imperfection, Daring Greatly, Rising Strong, Braving the Wilderness, Dare to Lead, and Atlas of the Heart. Her 2010 TEDx talk "The Power of Vulnerability" has been viewed over 50 million times and is one of the most-watched TED talks in history.