Daring Greatly Part 5

Never in my life before that moment did I think about men feeling vulnerable about s.e.x. Never did I consider that their self-worth was in any way on the line. I didn't understand. So I interviewed many more men about the topic of s.e.xuality, shame, and worthiness, including mental health professionals. In one of my final interviews on the topic, I sat down with a therapist who had spent more than twenty-five years working with men. He explained that from the time boys are eight to ten years old, they learn that initiating s.e.x is their responsibility and that s.e.xual rejection soon becomes the hallmark of masculine shame.

He explained, "Even in my own life, when my wife isn't interested, I still have to battle feelings of shame. It doesn't matter if I intellectually understand why she's not in the mood. I'm vulnerable and it's very difficult." When I asked him about his work around addiction and p.o.r.nography, he gave me an answer that helped me understand that issue in an entirely new light. He said, "For five bucks and five minutes, you think you're getting what you need, and you don't have to risk rejection."

The reason that response was so revelatory to me was because it was so utterly different from what women felt. After interviewing women for a decade, it was clear that women see the issue of men and p.o.r.nography as having to do with their own inadequate appearance and/or their lack of s.e.xual expertise. At the end of my interview with this wonderful and wise man, he said, "I guess the secret is that s.e.x is terrifying for most men. That's why you see everything from p.o.r.n to the violent, desperate attempts to exercise power and control. Rejection is deeply painful."

Cultivating intimacy-physical or emotional-is almost impossible when our shame triggers meet head-on and create the perfect shame storm. Sometimes these shame storms are directly about s.e.x and intimacy, but often there are outlying gremlins wreaking havoc in our relationships. Common issues include body image, aging, appearance, money, parenting, motherhood, exhaustion, resentment, and fear. When I asked men, women, and couples how they practiced Wholeheartedness around these very sensitive and personal issues, one answer came up again and again: honest, loving conversations that require major vulnerability. We have to be able to talk about how we feel, what we need and desire, and we have to be able to listen with an open heart and an open mind. There is no intimacy without vulnerability. Yet another powerful example of vulnerability as courage.

THE WORDS WE CAN NEVER TAKE BACK.

Too close for missiles, I'm switching to guns.

-Top Gun When I talk to couples, I can see how shame creates one of the dynamics most lethal to a relationship. Women, who feel shame when they don't feel heard or validated, often resort to pushing and provoking with criticism ("Why don't you ever do enough?" or "You never get it right"). Men, in turn, who feel shame when they feel criticized for being inadequate, either shut down (leading women to poke and provoke more) or come back with anger.

For the first few years of our marriage, Steve and I fell into this pattern. I remember one argument when we were both angry beyond belief. After ten minutes of endless chiding on my part, he turned to me and said, "Leave me alone for twenty minutes. I'm done. I won't do this anymore." When he shut and locked the door, I got so mad that I actually banged on the door and said, "Get back out here and fight with me." In that moment, when I heard myself, I saw what was happening. He was on the verge of shutting down or raging, and I was feeling unheard and misunderstood. The result was mutual desperation.

Steve and I are heading into our eighteenth year of marriage, and this year we'll celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of our first date. He is, without question, the best thing that's ever happened to me. When we got married, neither one of us had any idea what a good partnership looked like or what it took to make it work. If you asked us today what we believe is the key to our relationship, the answer would be vulnerability, love, humor, respect, shame-free fighting, and blame-free living. We learned some of that on our own through good ol' trial and error, but we also learned from my work and the research partic.i.p.ants who were brave enough to share their stories with me. I'm so grateful to them.

I think we can all agree that feeling shame is an incredibly painful experience. What we often don't realize is that perpetrating shame is equally as painful, and no one does that with the precision of a partner or a parent. These are the people who know us the best and who bear witness to our vulnerabilities and fears. Thankfully, we can apologize for shaming someone we love, but the truth is that those shaming comments leave marks. And shaming someone we love around vulnerability is the most serious of all security breaches. Even if we apologize, we've done serious damage because we've demonstrated our willingness to use sacred information as a weapon.

In The Gifts of Imperfection, I share the definition of love that I developed based on my data. Here it is: We cultivate love when we allow our most vulnerable and powerful selves to be deeply seen and known, and when we honor the spiritual connection that grows from that offering with trust, respect, kindness, and affection.

Love is not something we give or get; it is something that we nurture and grow, a connection that can only be cultivated between two people when it exists within each one of them-we can only love others as much as we love ourselves.

Shame, blame, disrespect, betrayal, and the withholding of affection damage the roots from which love grows. Love can only survive these injuries if they are acknowledged, healed, and rare.

Developing this definition was one of the hardest things I've ever done. Professionally, it just seemed arrogant to try to define something as big and important as love. It felt like an endeavor best left to the poets and artists. My motivation was not to "nail it," but to start a conversation about what we need and want from love. I don't care if I'm wrong, but let's talk about love. Let's have some conversations about the experience that gives meaning to our lives.

Personally, I fought the data with everything I have. Over and over, I heard the idea of self-love as a prerequisite to loving others, and I hated it. Sometimes it's so much easier to love Steve and the kids than it is to love myself. It's so much easier to accept their quirks and eccentricities than it is to practice self-love around what I see as my deep flaws. But in practicing self-love over the past couple of years, I can say that it has immeasurably deepened my relationships with the people I love. It's given me the courage to show up and be vulnerable in new ways, and that's what love is all about.

As we think about shame and love, the most pressing question is this: Are we practicing love? Yes, most of us are really good at professing it-sometimes ten times a day. But are we walking the talk? Are we being our most vulnerable selves? Are we showing trust, kindness, affection, and respect to our partners? It's not the lack of professing that gets us in trouble in our relationships; it's failing to practice love that leads to hurt.

BECOMING REAL.

Do you remember how I mentioned earlier in the chapter that researchers found that attributes such as nice, thin, and modest were qualities that our culture a.s.sociates with femininity? Well, when looking at the attributes a.s.sociated with masculinity in the US, the same researchers identified the following: winning, emotional control, risk-taking, violence, dominance, playboy, self-reliance, primacy of work, power over women, disdain for h.o.m.os.e.xuality, and pursuit of status.

Understanding these lists and what they mean is critically important to understanding shame and cultivating resilience. As I explained in the beginning of the chapter, shame is universal, but the messages and expectations that drive shame are organized by gender. These feminine and masculine norms are the foundation of shame triggers, and here's why: If women want to play by the rules, they need to be sweet, thin, and pretty, stay quiet, be perfect moms and wives, and not own their power. One move outside of these expectations and BAM! The shame web closes in. Men, on the other hand, need to stop feeling, start earning, put everyone in their place, and climb their way to the top or die trying. Push open the lid of your box to grab a breath of air, or slide that curtain back a bit to see what's going on, and BAM! Shame cuts you down to size.

I think it's important to add that for men there's also a cultural message that promotes h.o.m.ophobic cruelty. If you want to be masculine in our culture, it's not enough to be straight- you must also show an outward disgust toward the gay community. The idea of "do this or dislike these people if you want to be accepted into our group" emerged as a major shame setup in the research.

It doesn't matter if the group is a church or a gang or a sewing circle or masculinity itself, asking members to dislike, disown, or distance themselves from another group of people as a condition of "belonging" is always about control and power. I think we have to question the intentions of any group that insists on disdain toward other people as a membership requirement. It may be disguised as belonging, but real belonging doesn't necessitate disdain.

When I look at those eleven attributes of masculinity, that's not the kind of man I want to spend my life with and that's not how I want to raise my son. The word that comes to my mind when I think about a life built around those qualities is lonely. The picture in my mind goes back to the Wizard of Oz. He's not a real person with human needs, but a "great and powerful" projection of what a man is supposed to be. Lonely, exhausting, and soul-sucking.

When I talk to men and women with high levels of shame resilience, they are keenly aware of these lists. They keep those strictures in mind so that when shame starts creeping up on them, or they find themselves fully in shame, they can reality-check these "norms," thus practicing the second element of shame resilience-critical awareness. Basically, they can choose consciously not to play along.

The man in shame says, "I'm not supposed to get emotional when I have to lay off these people."

The man practicing shame resilience responds, "I'm not buying into this message. I've worked with these guys for five years. I know their families. I'm allowed to care about them."

Shame whispers in the ear of the woman who's out of town on business, "You're not a good mother because you're going to miss your son's cla.s.s play."

She replies, "I hear you, but I'm not playing that tape today. My mothering is way bigger than one cla.s.s performance. You can leave now."

One of the most powerful ways that our shame triggers get reinforced is when we enter into a social contract based on these gender straitjackets. Our relationships are defined by women and men saying, "I'll play my role, and you play yours." One of the patterns revealed in the research was how all that role playing becomes almost unbearable around midlife. Men feel increasingly disconnected, and the fear of failure becomes paralyzing. Women are exhausted, and for the first time they begin to clearly see that the expectations are impossible. The accomplishments, accolades, and acquisitions that are a seductive part of living by this contract start to feel like a Faustian bargain.

Remembering that shame is the fear of disconnection-the fear that we're unlovable and don't belong-makes it easy to see why so many people in midlife overfocus on their children's lives, work sixty hours a week, or turn to affairs, addiction, and disengagement. We start to unravel. The expectations and messages that fuel shame keep us from fully realizing who we are as people.

Today, I look back and feel so grateful to women and men who have shared their stories with me. I'm thankful for the people who were brave enough to say, "These are my secrets and my fears, here's how they brought me to my knees, and here's how I learned to stand in my worthiness again." I'm also indebted to the man in the yellow Izod sweater. His vulnerability and honesty set in motion work that has forever changed my career and, more importantly, my life.

As I look back on what I've learned about shame, gender, and worthiness, the greatest lesson is this: If we're going to find our way out of shame and back to each other, vulnerability is the path and courage is the light. To set down those lists of what we're supposed to be is brave. To love ourselves and support each other in the process of becoming real is perhaps the greatest single act of daring greatly.

I'll leave you with this pa.s.sage from the 1922 children's cla.s.sic The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams. My friend DeeDee Parker Wright sent it to me last year with a note that said, "This is what being Wholehearted is all about." I agree. It's a beautiful reminder of how much easier it is to become real when we know we're loved: "Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but really loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real, you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out, and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real, you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

CHAPTER 4.

THE VULNERABILITY.

ARMORY.

As children we found ways to protect ourselves from vulnerability, from being hurt, diminished, and disappointed. We put on armor; we used our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors as weapons; and we learned how to make ourselves scarce, even to disappear. Now as adults we realize that to live with courage, purpose, and connection-to be the person whom we long to be-we must again be vulnerable. We must take off the armor, put down the weapons, show up, and let ourselves be seen.

THE word persona is the Greek term for "stage mask." In my work masks and armor are perfect metaphors for how we protect ourselves from the discomfort of vulnerability. Masks make us feel safer even when they become suffocating. Armor makes us feel stronger even when we grow weary from dragging the extra weight around. The irony is that when we're standing across from someone who is hidden or shielded by masks and armor, we feel frustrated and disconnected. That's the paradox here: Vulnerability is the last thing I want you to see in me, but the first thing I look for in you.

If I were directing a play about the vulnerability armory, the setting would be a middle school cafeteria and the characters would be our eleven-, twelve-, and thirteen-year-old selves. I pick this age because armor can be hard to see on adults. Once we've worn it long enough, it molds to our shape and is ultimately undetectable-it's like a second skin. Masks are the same way. I've interviewed hundreds of partic.i.p.ants who have conveyed the same fear: "I can't take the mask off now-no one knows what I really look like. Not my partner, not my kids, not my friends. They've never met the real me. I'm not even sure who I am under here."

Preteens or tweens, though, are much different. Upper elementary school and middle school was where most of us started to try on new and different forms of protection. At this tender age, the armor is still awkward and ill fitting. Kids are clumsy in their efforts to hide fear and self-doubt, which makes it easier for observers to see exactly what armor they are using and why. And depending on the level of shame and fear, most kids have yet to be convinced that the heaviness of the armor or the suffocating nature of a mask is worth the effort. They put on and take off personas and protection without hesitation, sometimes in the same sentence: "I don't care what those people think. They're so stupid. The dance is stupid. Can you call their moms and find out what they're wearing? I hope I get to dance."

The after-school specials of my youth seemed to be dedicated to exploring just these ideas. They brought us the mean boy who really just wanted to be included and the know-it-all girl who was showing off at school to hide her misery over her parents' recent divorce. Our protection mechanisms may be more sophisticated now that we're adults, but most of us learned about armor during these raw and impressionable years, and most of us can be brought back to that place in a heartbeat.

From my personal experiences, I can tell you that the most difficult thing about parenting a daughter in middle school is coming face-to-face with the awkward, sweaty-palmed seventh-grader who lives inside me. My instinct back then was to duck and run, and I often feel that impulse creeping up on me when Ellen is in a struggle. I swear there are times when she's describing a situation at school that I can actually smell my middle school cafeteria.

Whether we're fourteen or fifty-four, our armor and our masks are as individualized and unique as the personal vulnerability, discomfort, and pain we're trying to minimize. That's why I was surprised to discover that we all share a small array of common protection mechanisms. Our armor may be custom-made, but certain parts of it are interchangeable. By prying open the doors of the armory, we can expose to daylight the more universal bits and pieces and also rummage through the closets that house less universal, but often dangerous, items of vulnerability protection.

If you're like me, it's tempting to take this information and create your own after-school special. As these shared mechanisms started to emerge from the data, my first instinct was to label behavior and cast the people around me as stereotypes: "She so wears this mask, and my neighbor totally uses this armor." It's human nature to want to categorize and oversimplify, but I think this misses the point. None of us uses just one of these shared defenses. Most of us will be able to relate to almost all of them, depending on the different circ.u.mstances we navigate. My hope is that a peek inside the armory will help us to look inside ourselves. How do we protect ourselves? When and how did we start using these defense mechanisms? What would it take to make us put the armor away?

THE "ENOUGH" MANDATE For me the most powerful part of this research was discovering the strategies that seem to empower people to take off the masks and armor that I'm about to describe. I a.s.sumed that I'd find unique strategies for each protection mechanism, similar to what emerged in the ten guideposts I write about in The Gifts of Imperfection. But that wasn't the case here.

In the first chapter, I talked about "enough" as the opposite of scarcity, and the properties of scarcity as shame, comparison, and disengagement. Well, it appears that believing that we're "enough" is the way out of the armor-it gives us permission to take off the mask. With that sense of "enough" comes an embrace of worthiness, boundaries, and engagement. This lay at the core of every strategy illuminated by the research partic.i.p.ants for freeing themselves from their armor: I am enough (worthiness versus shame).

I've had enough (boundaries versus one-uping and comparison).

Showing up, taking risks, and letting myself be seen is enough (engagement versus disengagement).

As you read through this chapter, I think it's helpful for you to know that every single person I interviewed spoke about struggling with vulnerability. It's not as if there are lucky people among us who can openly embrace vulnerability without reservation, hesitation, or fear. When it comes to uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure, what I heard over and over were descriptions of people trying on some kind of armor before finally letting it go: "My first instinct is to ____________, but that never worked, so now I _______________, and that's changed my life."

"I spent years ___________________ until one day I tried ________________, and it made my marriage stronger."

Last year I gave a talk on vulnerability to 350 SWAT team officers, parole officers, and jailers. (Yes, it was as intimidating as it sounds.) A SWAT officer walked up to me after the talk and said, "The only reason we listened to you is because you're just as bad at being open as we are. If you didn't wrestle with being vulnerable, we wouldn't trust you one bit."

Not only did I believe him, but I totally agreed. I trust the strategies that I'm writing about here for two reasons. First, the research partic.i.p.ants who shared them with me had wrestled with the same gremlins, discomfort, and self-doubt that we all face. Second, I've practiced these strategies in my own life and know for a fact that they aren't just game changers-they're lifesavers.

The three forms of shielding that I am about to introduce are what I refer to as the "common vulnerability a.r.s.enal" because I have found that we all incorporate them into our personal armor in some way. These include foreboding joy, or the paradoxical dread that clamps down on momentary joyfulness; perfectionism, or believing that doing everything perfectly means you'll never feel shame; and numbing, the embrace of whatever deadens the pain of discomfort and pain. Each shield is followed by "Daring Greatly" strategies, all variants on "being enough" that have proved to be effective at disarming the three common forms of shielding.

THE COMMON VULNERABILITY SHIELDS.

THE SHIELD: FOREBODING JOY.

Given that I study emotions like shame, fear, and vulnerability, I hardly expected to one day be telling you that exploring the construct of joy turned my professional and personal life upside down. But it's true. In fact, having spent several years studying what it means to feel joyful, I'd argue that joy is probably the most difficult emotion to really feel. Why? Because when we lose the ability or willingness to be vulnerable, joy becomes something we approach with deep foreboding. This shift from our younger self's greeting of joy with unalloyed delight happens slowly and outside of our awareness. We don't seem to even know that it's happening or why. We just know that we crave more joy in our lives, that we are joy starved.

In a culture of deep scarcity-of never feeling safe, certain, and sure enough-joy can feel like a setup. We wake up in the morning and think, Work is going well. Everyone in the family is healthy. No major crises are happening. The house is still standing. I'm working out and feeling good. Oh, s.h.i.t. This is bad. This is really bad. Disaster must be lurking right around the corner.

Or we get promoted, and our first thought is Too good to be true. What's the catch? We find out we're pregnant, and we think, Our daughter is healthy and happy, so something really bad is going to happen with this baby. I just know it. We're taking our first family vacation, but rather than being excited, we're making plans for the plane to go down or the ship to sink.

We're always waiting for the other shoe to drop. That expression originated in the early 1900s, when new immigrants and people flooding to the cities were crammed into tenement housing where you could literally hear your upstairs neighbor taking off his shoes at night. Once you heard the first shoe hit the floor you waited for the other shoe to drop. Even though the world today is much safer in many ways than it was in the early part of that century, and our life expectancy is far greater than that of the folks who were listening for a second shoe to hit the floor, the stakes feel so much higher to us. Most of us today think of the other shoe as something terrifying: a terrorist attack, a natural disaster, an E. coli outbreak in our local grocery store, a school shooting.

When I started asking partic.i.p.ants about the experiences that left them feeling the most vulnerable, I didn't expect joy to be one of the answers. I expected fear and shame, but not the joyful moments of their lives. I was shocked to hear people say they were at their most vulnerable when: Standing over my children while they're sleeping Acknowledging how much I love my husband/wife Knowing how good I've got it Loving my job Spending time with my parents Watching my parents with my children Thinking about my relationship with my boyfriend Getting engaged Going into remission Having a baby Getting promoted Being happy Falling in love Not only was I shocked to hear these answers, I knew I was in trouble.

Before my 2007 breakdown spiritual awakening, foreboding joy was one of my own unconscious pieces of armor. When I first made the connection between vulnerability and joy reported by partic.i.p.ants, I could barely breathe. I had considered my constant disaster planning as my little secret. I was convinced that I was the only one who stood over my children while they slept and, in the split second that I became engulfed with love and adoration, pictured something really terrible happening to them. I was sure that no one but me pictured car wrecks and rehea.r.s.ed the horrific phone conversations with the police that all of us dread.

One of the first stories I heard was from a woman in her late forties. "I used to take every good thing and imagine the worst possible disaster," she told me. "I would literally picture the worst-case scenario and try to control all of the outcomes. When my daughter got into the college of her dreams, I just knew something bad would happen if she moved too far away. I spent the entire summer before she left trying to convince her to go to a local school. It crushed her confidence and took the fun out of our last summer. It was a painful lesson. Now I cross my fingers, stay grateful, pray, and try like h.e.l.l to push the bad images out of my head. Unfortunately, I've pa.s.sed that way of thinking down to my daughter. She's increasingly afraid to try new things, especially when her life is going well. She says she doesn't want to 'tempt fate.'"

A man in his early sixties told me, "I used to think the best way to go through life was to expect the worst. That way, if it happened, you were prepared, and if it didn't happen, you were pleasantly surprised. Then I was in a car accident and my wife was killed. Needless to say, expecting the worst didn't prepare me at all. And worse, I still grieve for all of those wonderful moments we shared and that I didn't fully enjoy. My commitment to her is to fully enjoy every moment now. I just wish she was here, now that I know how to do that."

These stories ill.u.s.trate how the concept of foreboding joy as a method of minimizing vulnerability is best understood as a continuum that runs from "rehearsing tragedy" to what I call "perpetual disappointment." Some of us, like the woman in the first story, scramble to the bleakest worst-case scenario when joy rears its vulnerable head, while others never even see joy, preferring to stay in an unmoving state of perpetual disappointment. What the perpetual-disappointment folks described is this: "It's easier to live disappointed than it is to feel disappointed. It feels more vulnerable to dip in and out of disappointment than to just set up camp there. You sacrifice joy, but you suffer less pain."

Both of these ends of the continuum tell the same story: Softening into the joyful moments of our lives requires vulnerability. If, like me, you've ever stood over your children and thought to yourself, I love you so much I can barely breathe, and in that exact moment have been flooded with images of something terrible happening to your child, know that you're not crazy nor are you alone. About eighty percent of the parents I've interviewed acknowledged having that experience. The same percentage holds true for the thousands of parents I've spoken to and worked with over the years. Why? What are we doing and why on earth are we doing it?

Once we make the connection between vulnerability and joy, the answer is pretty straightforward: We're trying to beat vulnerability to the punch. We don't want to be blindsided by hurt. We don't want to be caught off-guard, so we literally practice being devastated or never move from self-elected disappointment.

For those of us who rehea.r.s.e tragedy, there's a reason those images flood into our mind the second we're overwhelmed with joy. When we spend our lives (knowingly or unknowingly) pushing away vulnerability, we can't hold s.p.a.ce open for the uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure of joy. For many of us, there's even a physiological response-a "coming out of our skin" feeling. We're desperate for more joy, but at the same time we can't tolerate the vulnerability.

And our culture a.s.sists in this doom-filled rehearsal: Most of us have a stockpile of terrible images that we can pull from at the instant we're grappling with vulnerability. I often ask audience members to raise their hands if they've seen a graphically violent image in the past week. About twenty percent of the audience normally raises their hands. Then I reframe the question: "Raise your hand if you've watched the news, CSI, NCIS, Law & Order, Bones, or any other crime show on TV." At that point about eighty to ninety percent of the audience hands go up. We have the images we need to activate foreboding joy right at our neurological fingertips.

We're visual people. We trust, consume, and mentally store what we see. I remember recently being in the car with Steve and the kids as we headed to San Antonio for a long weekend. Charlie was performing his new kindergarten knock-knock joke routine for us, and we were all cracking up-even his older sister. I started welling up with joy, and in the split second that vulnerability, joy's constant companion, hit me, I shuddered, recalling an image from the news that showed an overturned SUV on I-10 and two empty car seats lying on the ground next to the truck. My laughter turned to panic, and I remember blurting out, "Slow down, Steve." He looked at me with a puzzled expression and said, "We're stopped."

DARING GREATLY: PRACTICING GRAt.i.tUDE.

Even those of us who have learned to "lean into" joy and embrace our experiences are not immune to the uncomfortable quake of vulnerability that often accompanies joyful moments. We've just learned how to use it as a reminder rather than a warning shot. What was the most surprising (and life changing) difference for me was the nature of that reminder: For those welcoming the experience, the shudder of vulnerability that accompanies joy is an invitation to practice grat.i.tude, to acknowledge how truly grateful we are for the person, the beauty, the connection, or simply the moment before us.

Grat.i.tude, therefore, emerged from the data as the antidote to foreboding joy. In fact, every partic.i.p.ant who spoke about the ability to stay open to joy also talked about the importance of practicing grat.i.tude. This pattern of a.s.sociation was so thoroughly prevalent in the data that I made a commitment as a researcher not to talk about joy without talking about grat.i.tude.

It wasn't just the relationship between joy and grat.i.tude that took me by surprise. I was also startled by the fact that research partic.i.p.ants consistently described both joyfulness and grat.i.tude as spiritual practices that were bound to a belief in human connectedness and a power greater than us. Their stories and descriptions expanded on this, pointing to a clear distinction between happiness and joy. Partic.i.p.ants described happiness as an emotion that's connected to circ.u.mstances, and they described joy as a spiritual way of engaging with the world that's connected to practicing grat.i.tude. While I was initially taken aback by the relationship between joy and vulnerability, it now makes perfect sense to me, and I can see why grat.i.tude would be the antidote to foreboding joy.

Scarcity and fear drive foreboding joy. We're afraid that the feeling of joy won't last, or that there won't be enough, or that the transition to disappointment (or whatever is in store for us next) will be too difficult. We've learned that giving in to joy is, at best, setting ourselves up for disappointment and, at worst, inviting disaster. And we struggle with the worthiness issue. Do we deserve our joy, given our inadequacies and imperfections? What about the starving children and the war-ravaged world? Who are we to be joyful?

If the opposite of scarcity is enough, then practicing grat.i.tude is how we acknowledge that there's enough and that we're enough. I use the word practicing because the research partic.i.p.ants spoke of tangible grat.i.tude practices, more than merely having an att.i.tude of grat.i.tude or feeling grateful. In fact, they gave specific examples of grat.i.tude practices that included everything from keeping grat.i.tude journals and grat.i.tude jars to implementing family grat.i.tude rituals.

Actually, I learned the most about grat.i.tude practices and the relationship between scarcity and joy that plays out in vulnerability from the men and women who had experienced some of the most profound losses or survived the greatest traumas. These included parents whose children had died, family members with terminally ill loved ones, and genocide and trauma survivors. One of the questions I'm most often asked is "Don't you get really depressed talking to people about vulnerability and hearing about people's darkest struggles?" My answer is no, never. That's because I've learned more about worthiness, resilience, and joy from those people who courageously shared their struggles with me than from any other part of my work.

And nothing has been a greater gift to me than the three lessons I learned about joy and light from people who have spent time in sorrow and darkness: Joy comes to us in moments-ordinary moments. We risk missing out on joy when we get too busy chasing down the extraordinary. Scarcity culture may keep us afraid of living small, ordinary lives, but when you talk to people who have survived great losses, it is clear that joy is not a constant. Without exception, all the partic.i.p.ants who spoke to me about their losses, and what they missed the most, spoke about ordinary moments. "If I could come downstairs and see my husband sitting at the table and cursing at the newspaper..." "If I could hear my son giggling in the backyard..." "My mom sent me the craziest texts-she never knew how to work her phone. I'd give anything to get one of those texts right now."

Be grateful for what you have. When I asked people who had survived tragedy how we can cultivate and show more compa.s.sion for people who are suffering, the answer was always the same: Don't shrink away from the joy of your child because I've lost mine. Don't take what you have for granted-celebrate it. Don't apologize for what you have. Be grateful for it and share your grat.i.tude with others. Are your parents healthy? Be thrilled. Let them know how much they mean to you. When you honor what you have, you're honoring what I've lost.

Don't squander joy. We can't prepare for tragedy and loss. When we turn every opportunity to feel joy into a test drive for despair, we actually diminish our resilience. Yes, softening into joy is uncomfortable. Yes, it's scary. Yes, it's vulnerable. But every time we allow ourselves to lean into joy and give in to those moments, we build resilience and we cultivate hope. The joy becomes part of who we are, and when bad things happen-and they do happen-we are stronger.

It took me a couple of years to understand and integrate this information, and to start to cultivate a grat.i.tude practice. Ellen, on the other hand, seemed to intuitively understand the importance of acknowledging and owning joy. When she was in the first grade, we played hooky one afternoon and spent the day at the park. At one point we were on a paddleboat, feeding ducks stale bread that we had brought from home, when I realized that she had stopped pedaling and was sitting perfectly still in her seat. Her hands were wrapped around the bread sack, her head was tilted back, and her eyes were closed. The sun was shining on her uplifted face and she had a quiet smile on her face. I was so struck by her beauty and her vulnerability that I could barely catch my breath.

I watched for a full minute, but when she didn't move, I got a little nervous. "Ellie? Is everything okay, sweetie?"

Her smile widened and she opened her eyes. She looked at me and said, "I'm fine, Mama. I was just making a picture memory."

I had never heard of a picture memory, but I liked the sound of it. "What's that mean?"

"Oh, a picture memory is a picture I take in my mind when I'm really, really happy. I close my eyes and take a picture, so when I'm feeling sad or scared or lonely, I can look at my picture memories."

I'm not as eloquent or poised as my then six-year-old daughter, but I've been practicing. For me, expressing grat.i.tude is still b.u.mpier than it is graceful or fluid. I still get overwhelmed with vulnerability in the midst of joyful experiences. But now I've learned to literally say aloud, "I'm feeling vulnerable and I'm so grateful for _________________."

Okay, this can be fairly awkward in the middle of a conversation, but it's much better than the alternative-catastrophizing and controlling. Just recently, Steve told me that he was thinking about taking the kids to his family's farmhouse in Pennsylvania while I was out of town for work. I immediately thought it was a great idea, until I started boarding the crazy train of Oh, my G.o.d, I can't let them fly without me; what if something happens? Rather than picking a fight, being critical, or making up something to quash the idea without revealing my unreasonable fears (e.g., "That's a terrible idea. Airfare is really high right now," or, "That's selfish. I want to go too."), I just said, "Vulnerability. Vulnerability. I'm grateful for...for...the kids getting to spend alone time with you and explore the country outside."

Steve smiled. He's well aware of my practice, and he knew I meant it. Before I put this research on countering foreboding joy into practice, I never knew how to get past that immediate vulnerability shudder. I didn't have the information to get from what I feared, to how I actually felt, and to what I really craved: grat.i.tude-fueled joy.

THE SHIELD: PERFECTIONISM.

One of my favorite features on my blog is my Inspiration Interviews series. It's special to me because I only interview people whom I find truly inspirational-people who engage with the world in a way that inspires me to be more creative and a little bit braver with my own work. I've always asked interviewees the same group of questions, and after the Wholehearted research emerged, I started asking questions about vulnerability and perfectionism. As a recovering perfectionist and an aspiring good-enough-ist, I'm always finding myself skimming down the list to read the answer to this question first: Is perfectionism an issue for you? If so, what's one of your strategies for managing it?

I ask this question because, in all of my data collecting, I've never heard one person attribute their joy, success, or Wholeheartedness to being perfect. In fact, what I've heard over and over throughout the years is one clear message: "The most valuable and important things in my life came to me when I cultivated the courage to be vulnerable, imperfect, and self-compa.s.sionate." Perfectionism is not the path that leads us to our gifts and to our sense of purpose; it's the hazardous detour.