Tag Archives: NVC

Holy crap. 20 minutes to peace

This TED talk really made my jaw hit the floor.

You may not know this about me, but… my life has been rough. I don’t mean I’m a victim. I mean I’ve been unhappy. Like 20-years-on-Prozac unhappy. (And other meds too.) I sought peace, not as a researcher, like this woman, but as a desperate human being. It was very literally a matter of life and death.

Now, I live in a state of joy. That doesn’t mean nothing ever bugs me, but it does mean that I know who I am and that it’s ok for me to live in this world. I know how to love and be loved. This is no small thing.

Brene Brown did a bunch of research to find out what “wholehearted” people are like. The first thing she discovered is that they believe they are worthy. I remember discovering this. I looked around at the people who weren’t living the kind of horrific life I was living. To my shock, near as I could tell, they weren’t actually “better” than me. They were messy people like me, but they didn’t decide from this that they didn’t deserve to exist. They lived without (so much) shame, and I lived in deep shame. I thought “what if I just believe that it’s ok for me to be here?”

It changed everything.

But you know what? I’m going on and on here, and that’s not my intent. I want to tell you that the reason the video dropped my jaw was that I am stunned that she managed to talk about these hard, shocking lessons, in one little twenty minute talk. I’ve been trying to figure out how to talk about them for years.

I guess that’s what TED talks are all about. She’s maybe condensed the most important ideas in the world into twenty minutes. Here. Take a look.