Brené Brown — Striving versus Self-Acceptance, Saving Marriages, and More (#409)

Tim,

For starters, thank you. Your podcast is always thought provoking and intriguing and has led me to learn more about a number of your guests, most recently Brene Brown (whose work I’ve recommended to my wife). And quite frankly, it has turned my work commute in LA into a productive use of my time, which is nothing short of a miracle.

You made a comment during this podcast that you worried about losing some of your audience as you dive into topics like self-awareness and self-acceptance. Speaking only for myself, and I admit I have only discovered your work just recently, I can assure you I’m very much looking forward to more such conversations.

On a personal level, I’v made it through my 41 years putting up a strong front and being resilient, in part to overcompensate for some traumatic events that occurred earlier in life that I had no interest in dealing with. As I have found, this method had an expiration date and my body gave me some loud and clear signals this was not sustainable (side note, I have a copy of The Body Keeps the Score on reserve at my local library thanks to your recommendation). So while this old way of thinking got me to this point, it was simply time to change in order to move forward in a positive manner.

I likened this to a real world example that we are all facing right now. Our use of fossil fuels has undoubtedly led to an untold number of technological advances that without them we would have never achieved. Ironically enough, it’s renewable energy that may prove to be the most important. So our choice is to stick with the old source of energy, despite that fact it may ruin us, or shift gears now and embrace a newer source of energy that can take us the next leg higher in the journey of human civilization. We are going to have to make this decision whether we are ready or not.

All of that is to say please continue with your current work. If the ideas and topics that you got you to this point no longer move you, embrace these more current topics that seem to be a continuation of your current state of mind. You might lose some of your audience, but perhaps that’s only because they are not ready to here this message yet. But you may also gain an audience that your previous work didn’t resonate with and I would view that as equally if not more important than trying to appease the current following, since this subject matter is more meaningful and comes at a time when our society needs it most.

Thanks again for the great work, looking forward to more of it.

Tim, great talk .Did you have a list to share of things you changed your mind about , excited about and interesting ?

Hi Tim,

Fan of both you and Brené Brown, so happy you had her back on. Loved the exploration of self-acceptance vs complacency. As a career coach, I work with a lot of young people who have been trained to be so focused on achieving, outcomes, perfectionism and external validation that they have no idea what makes them happy or fulfilled. But, trying to guide them to unpack those beliefs can be challenging because the water they swim in (our culture) tells them that is what is most valued and rewarded. I think they may look at your life and say, “but now he has all the money and success so it’s easy to say all that striving isn’t worth it anymore. Would you change those years that brought you all those fruits?” What would you say to the young person who has been programmed to achieve at all costs when they see the rewards that brought you in your life?

Thank you for your work and I’m a fan who loves the direction you’ve taken and agree with Brené, these are the most important conversations we need to be having.

Shannon

Love this interview. Really thought provoking and so genuine. I had to pause numerous times to process the conversation.

Hi Tim,
absolutely loved the episode. Struck a lot of chords with me, personally and professionally.
If you are going to spend more time on the topic of being (self-)loving and (self-)caring AND contributing something worthwhile to this world at the same time, I’ll definitely listen to more of your episodes.
I feel like that’s the sweet spot of life after all. I’d also love to hear your and other inspiring people’s thoughts on how to combine those two goals in a corporate world where the immense pressure to maximize performance often leaves the caring part in the dust.
To leave you with a quote: “If you wonder why it’s getting tougher and tougher to chop down the trees, maybe you should pause and sharpen your axe.“ (roughly taken from Jorge Bucay)
All the best,
Max

Beautiful conversation!

Brene, Tim – your conversation around outdated armor made me think of Thich Nhat Hanh’s book, Reconciliation: Healing the Child Within, and also Transformation and Healing. In both, he talks about much the same thing, and offers a few exercises to help address these sorts of things. Thought you may be interested – check them out!

All the best – cheers

Tim, please check out Dr. Krstin Neff’s self compassion researches! Her findings can answer many of your questions about complacency and self acceptance. She’s at University of Austin, too!

i’m all in on the self-acceptance guru tim ferriss, enjoying these episodes and i feel a lot of people are wanting to hear it.

Tim, we really need that book dude.

The lessons from T4HWW at the very least mean you must test the demand a book on the inner game by you. Right?..

It’s your curiosity mixed with you pursuit for the practical, pragmatic and proven which would mean a book on this subject from you so great. But if your not convinced please just construct a test.

I always assumed that the reason why you automated your first business and was to provide the resources (time, money and crucially headspace) to pursue both sides of success personal enhancement and inner contentment.

Either way, I’m grateful to witness your journey doing the inner work. Your as inspirational as you’re informative. Regardless on whether you create a ‘playbook’, Thanks for creating a platform to share all this wisdom.

Tim,

You mentioned in your podcast that you’re worried about losing your audience because your focus has shifted from skill development to a more introspective reflection of one’s consciousness and character. You’re worried about losing your initial audience, but, you you’re willing to make that trade off if it meant helping people develop in a more personal and conscious manner. Personally, I don’t think you would lose any fragment of your audience, because we’re growing with you. I forget if it was mentioned in this podcast, but with someone like you who’s been a public figure for so long now, it’s only natural for you to develop personally, and thus have that development be reflected professionally. How you develop as a person is how your audience will connect with you on a deeper level. Expanding your focus will give us more points to empathize with you. Especially as a creator, your work will highlight your current thoughts and focuses, if you allow it to. Like you said, you’ve been focusing on self reflection and self acceptance. You’ve been bringing mental health to the forefront of your platform. These are all things you’re currently passionate about. If you weren’t doing this and kept sticking to your developmental four-hour guns despite having this desire to put out new and different content, you’d be lying to yourself, and would in a way be complacent. Striving for the dichotomies is a life long struggle that everyone must embrace. Thanks for being you, and thanks for helping me become a better me, while also reminding me to enjoy the current me, as I am today, and as I will be tomorrow.

Acceptance vs. self indulgence? I think it is a matter of depth. Meaning: Are you only accepting the surface, the situations or are you also accepting your feelings about them? If you accept your self deeply enough, two things happen.

First: Where you have problems and accept your feelings involved in that, you get to the root cause of the issues and have a chance to resolve them.

Second: When you accept your deepest feelings about situations you also get in touch with your deepest values and desires, meaning with your true potential. This drives you to move forward and take action. There is no contradiction between complete self acceptance and self improvement. Complete self acceptance is the bases for authentic self enfolding and improvement.

Suprised that Brené didn’t say, so I’m gonna put it here. It’s brave to talk about your own uncertainties regarding the shift from gogogo to the inner game.

Tim, I had to pause in my listening of this episode to write a quick comment here. While I obviously cannot speak to the entirety of your audience, I can assure you that many of us will most certainly remain ardent followers as you continue your explorations of these newest queries. Almost every high-achieving individual I know, myself included, has suffered with self-loathing, often as a primary means of propulsion, and it’s absolutely destroying us from within.

In fact, your voice resonants with us; your willingness to delve into these subjects inspires us, and the wisdom and knowledge you find and share helps us all breath a collective sigh of relief and begin to alter our destructive mindsets with often previously incomprehensible compassion. Despite the fear, I sincerely hope you will continue exploring and questioning expectations and reality as we perceive it.

You have no idea how much joy it brought me to hear you be TikTok pranked with what are also my two favorite jokes from TikTok! Seriously thank you for the laughs!

I’m only an occasional podcast listener but I had caught your first episode with Brene a while back and liked it, and I’m so glad I listened to this second one. This is such a great episode. The discussion about getting past self loathing to making lasting changes and the idea of letting go of armor as the major developmental milestone of midlife all resonated with me so much. I actually went back and listened to it twice, and I NEVER do that with podcasts.

Tim, I certainly can’t really speak for your other listeners, but I would welcome a shift in your content to more topics like this one that tackle harder emotional and mental issues. Rather than losing me, I think I’d be more likely to tune in on a regular basis.

Thank you for making this ep! Really gave me a lot to think about and do.

I appreciate you are heading more inner Tim. You may loose some. You may gain many more.

Tim, I’ve been a listener for a few years and this podcast with Brene Brown resonated with me like no other podcast ever. I listened to your podcast while navigating Orange county traffic on my way to work and the part where Brene was talking about our armor and how it doesn’t serve us anymore in middle age and we should replace it with curiosity – wow did that hit me……I was literally sobbing while I was driving to work and I had to sit in the parking lot of where I work for a few minutes to compose myself. Keep up the great work my friend and thanks so much – your podcasts make a difference to me and my life

Tim, who are you dating?!? You’ve mentioned her a few episodes.. who is this lucky mystery woman???

I found your blog a couple months ago. Since then I’ve been listening to many past episodes and felt like each one was meant for me to find to help me find myself again. Four years ago I had a paradigm shifting life challenge. Working through it helped me look at the past 40+ years of my life in a different light and try to start improving myself for me and my family. But in the past year or so progress has stalled and I regressed. So much so that I would find myself standing frozen at home just not able to process where I was in life. I assumed this is what a midlife crisis felt like. I sought help from a therapist for the first time in my life. It helped some, but I did not implement any of the tools to change despite seeing how they might be valuable. A busy job has been my excuse, but I now believe it was fear of the work and what might happen. Finding your blog has given me a jolt to start trying again.

Lately I’ve been looking for episodes that catch my eye as listening to your entire library would be nearly impossible at this point. Although I may need to go back to some of the earlier episodes out of curiosity. I had never heard of Brene Brown (neither had my wife…I asked) but figured I’d give it a listen. Wow, am I glad I did! Halfway through I knew I was going to listen again, which I’ve never had the urge to do for any podcast ever.

After she finished the bit about the universe whispers I was physically shook. It was like it was she was talking directly to me. I have listened to that part numerous times since. It is so powerful! I think it’s time to start dropping my armor because it definitely is not serving me well anymore.

I am also glad to read others pointing out the high points of this conversation that I picked up on also. Especially the fact that they support the possible new direction of exploring more self-acceptance. As you can imagine I would completely support that as well. However, I have gained something from every one of your podcasts I’ve listened to so far so I’m sure whatever your choose it will be beneficial to your listeners.

I have a long ways to go, but felt the need to make my first comment on your blog to be about this episode as it feels like the starting point of a good direction for me. For that I thank you!

Tim … fyi … I’ve been a somewhat fan and appreciated your work for sometime … but it was a little too win-win-win for me to become a true fan. Your direction into the “inner game” may lose you some audience but gain you others … like me. Thank you for the podcasts along this line … especially in this time of deep introspection brought to us by an unseen virus.

Hey Tim, you mentioned that you were worried that you are losing your audience due to the turn in content. The more inner facing content, like this interview is what drew me back toward your podcast. We are all people on a journey, and maybe its better that those people who don’t want to continue with yours go elsewhere. I would argue that we all can use podcasts, or videos like this, that help us forward and let us know we are not alone. Mike Posner figured that out, and it seems to be working for him.

Thanks for what you’re doing.

Rich