Braving the Wilderness by Brené Brown redefines what it means to truly belong in an age of increased polarization.
With her trademark mix of research, storytelling, and honesty, Brené will again change the cultural conversation while mapping a clear path to true belonging.
You probably have heard of Brené Brown from her powerful TED talks or her 2019 Netflix special, but her books are where you want to turn to if you want to do a deep dive.
Brené Brown is a research professor at the University of Houston and she has spent the past two decades studying courage, vulnerability, shame, and empathy.
Keep scrolling to read 50 Inspirational Quotes from Braving The Wilderness by Brené Brown.
Get The Book: Braving The Wilderness by Brené Brown available now on Amazon.
ALSO READ: 40 Empowering Quotes from Dare to Lead by Brené Brown
50 Inspirational Quotes from Braving The Wilderness by Brené Brown
True belonging has no bunkers. We have to step out from behind the barricades of self-preservation and brave the wild.
Stop walking through the world looking for confirmation that you don’t belong. You will always find it because you’ve made that your mission. Stop scouring people’s faces for evidence that you’re not enough. You will always find it because you’ve made that your goal. True belonging and self-worth are not goods; we don’t negotiate their value with the world. The truth about who we are lives in our hearts. Our call to courage is to protect our wild heart against constant evaluation, especially our own. No one belongs here more than you.
True belonging is the spiritual practice of believing in and belonging to yourself so deeply that you can share your most authentic self with the world and find sacredness in both being a part of something and standing alone in the wilderness.
You are only free when you realize you belong no place—you belong every place—no place at all. The price is high. The reward is great.
But what we know now is that when we deny our emotion, it owns us. When we own our emotion, we can rebuild and find our way through the pain.
Sometimes the most dangerous thing for kids is the silence that allows them to construct their own stories—stories that almost always cast them as alone and unworthy of love and belonging.
Courage is forged in pain, but not in all pain. Pain that is denied or ignored becomes fear or hate.
Never underestimate the power of being seen.
We are wired for connection. But the key is that, in any given moment of it, it has to be real.
Not enough of us know how to sit in pain with others. Worse, our discomfort shows up in ways that can hurt people and reinforce their own isolation. I have started to believe that crying with strangers in person could save the world.
True belonging is not passive. It’s a practice that requires us to be vulnerable, get uncomfortable, and learn how to be present with people without sacrificing who we are.
Pain is unrelenting. It will get our attention. Despite our attempts to drown it in addiction, to physically beat it out of one another, to suffocate it with success and material trappings, or to strangle it with our hate, pain will find a way to make itself known.
Belonging so fully to yourself that you’re willing to stand alone is a wilderness — an untamed, unpredictable place of solitude and searching.
You will always belong anywhere you show up as yourself and talk about yourself and your work in a real way.
The mark of a wild heart is living out the paradox of love in our lives. It’s the ability to be tough and tender, excited and scared, brave and afraid—all in the same moment. It’s showing up in our vulnerability and our courage, being both fierce and kind.
The connection that we forge by judging and mocking others is not real connection.
When we are in pain and fear, anger and hate are our go-to emotions.
I can confidently say that stories of pain and courage almost always include two things: praying and cussing. Sometimes at the exact same time.
If I get to be me, I belong. If I have to be like you, I fit in.
When we own our emotion, we can rebuild and find our way through the pain.
When we’re suffering, may of us are better at causing pain than feeling it. We spread hurt rather than let it inside.
Art has the power to render sorrow beautiful, make loneliness a shared experience, and transform despair into hope.
Being ourselves means sometimes having to find the courage to stand alone, totally alone.
We can spend our entire life betraying ourself and choosing fitting in over standing alone. But once we’ve stood up for ourself and our beliefs, the bar is higher. A wild heart fights fitting in and grieves betrayal.
No one belongs here more than you.
Lying is a defiance of the truth. Bullshitting is a wholesale dismissal of the truth.
We want to be part of something, but we need it to be real – not conditional or fake or constantly up for negotiation.
Belonging is being somewhere where you want to be, and they want you. Fitting in is being somewhere where you want to be, but they don’t care one way or the other.
Belonging is being accepted for you. Fitting in is being accepted for being like everyone else.
If I get to be me, I belong. If I have to be like you, I fit in.
Spirituality is recognizing and celebrating that we are all inextricably connected to each other by a power greater than all of us, and that our connection to that power and to one another is grounded in love and compassion.
When a group or community doesn’t tolerate dissent and disagreement, it forgoes any experience of inextricable connection.
Do not think you can be brave with your life and your work and never disappoint anyone. It doesn’t work that way.
Joy is probably the most vulnerable emotion we experience in our lives.
Once we belong thoroughly to ourselves and believe thoroughly in ourselves, true belonging is ours.
We have to find our way back to one another or fear wins.
A wild heart is not something you can always see — and yet it is our greatest spiritual possession.
The way we engage with social media is like fire—you can use them to keep yourself warm and nourished, or you can burn down the barn.
You learn how to plant your damn feet is what you do. You bend and stretch and grow, but you commit to not moving from who you are.
People are hard to hate close up. Move in. Speak truth to bullshit. Be civil. Hold hands. With strangers. Strong back. Soft front. Wild heart.
The place of true belonging, it’s the bravest and most sacred place you’ll stand.
Belonging so fully to yourself that you’re willing to stand alone is a wilderness—an untamed, unpredictable place of solitude and searching.
We have to listen to understand in the same way we want to be understood.
The special courage it takes to experience true belonging is not just about braving the wilderness, it’s about becoming the wilderness.
My job is to help my children believe in and belong to themselves.
We pay for hate with our lives, and that’s too big a price to pay.
No matter how separated we are by what we think and believe, we are part of the same spiritual story.
We all have to find our own way deep into the wild.
A soft and open front is not being weak; it’s being brave, it’s being the wilderness.
True belonging doesn’t require you to change who you are; it requires you to be who you are.
Which quote from Notes on a Braving The Wilderness by Brené Brown is your favorite?