Mark: Alright, Michelle, you go first. Rising Strong. Five words only. Michelle: Face-planting is a feature, not a bug. Mark: Ooh, I like that. Mine is: Your brain lies, check your sources. Michelle: Okay, I'm intrigued. That sounds like a warning label for my own thoughts. Let's get into it. Mark: We are diving into Rising Strong by the one and only Brené Brown. And what's fascinating about her is that she's not just a self-help guru; she's a research professor. This book isn't just based on feelings; it's grounded in years of social science data, which is probably why it became a massive bestseller and resonated so deeply with people. Michelle: Right, she gives you the 'why' behind the 'what'. It's not just 'think positive,' it's 'here's how your brain actually processes failure.' It’s a backstage pass to our own emotional wiring. Mark: Exactly. And she starts with a concept that flips our whole idea of bravery on its head: the physics of vulnerability.

Mark: Brown’s foundational argument is this: if we are brave enough, often enough, we will fall. It's not a possibility; it's a mathematical certainty. This is the physics of vulnerability. Michelle: Okay, but that sounds a little grim. 'Be brave, prepare to fail!' Isn't the point to succeed? It feels like a pretty tough sales pitch for courage. Mark: That’s the exact misconception she wants to dismantle. She says, "Vulnerability is not winning or losing; it’s having the courage to show up and be seen when we have no control over the outcome." The goal isn't to avoid the fall. The goal is to get good at getting back up. Michelle: So it’s less about being bulletproof and more about being… bounce-able? Mark: Perfectly put. And she had this incredible 'aha' moment about it while watching TV, of all things. She was sick, laid up on the couch, watching an episode of the BBC's Sherlock. In the episode, Sherlock gets shot. But instead of just collapsing, time freezes. He enters his "mind palace." Michelle: I love that show. He goes inside his own head to solve the problem of his own impending death. Mark: Precisely. Inside his mind, he consults with experts—a coroner, a forensics expert, his brother—and they walk him through the physics of the fall, the effects of shock, how to stay conscious. He’s literally studying the process of falling in order to survive it. And for Brené, a lightbulb went off. She realized that's what we need to do with our emotional falls. We need to slow down the process, get curious about what’s happening, and understand the mechanics of it. Michelle: That’s a brilliant metaphor. Because our instinct when we fail or get hurt is to do the opposite. We either pretend it didn't happen, or we just curl up in a ball. We don't pause and analyze the trajectory of our own emotional face-plant. Mark: We don't. And culture encourages that. Brown talks about this "Gilded Age of Failure," where we love a good comeback story, but we want to skip the messy, ugly, painful middle part. We want to see the hero rise, but we don't want to see them bleeding in the dirt, questioning everything. Michelle: It's the gold-plating of grit. We see the shiny trophy, but we don't see the sweat, the tears, the moment they almost gave up. We sanitize the struggle. Mark: And by doing that, we rob ourselves of the most important part of the lesson. The real work, the real growth, happens in that messy middle. It happens when you're down, trying to figure out what just happened and how on earth you're going to get back on your feet.

Michelle: Okay, so we've fallen. We're in the arena, covered in dust, as she likes to say. What happens next? How do we actually start getting up? Because that's the hard part. Mark: This is where she introduces the heart of the process, which has two parts. The first is The Reckoning. This is simply recognizing that you're feeling something. You're hooked by an emotion—anger, shame, grief, disappointment. Instead of ignoring it or lashing out, you just get curious. You say, "Okay, I'm feeling something big right now. What's going on?" Michelle: That alone is a huge step for most people. We're trained to either stuff our emotions down or let them explode. Just pausing to acknowledge them feels revolutionary. Mark: It is. But the next step is where the magic really happens. It's called The Rumble. And the rumble is all about challenging the story you're telling yourself about why you're feeling this way. Because, as she proves with her research, in the absence of data, our brains create a story. And it's almost always a terrible one. Michelle: A conspiracy theory starring ourselves as the main victim. Mark: Exactly. Our brain becomes a frantic conspiracy theorist, and its first draft of the story is what she hilariously calls the "shitty first draft," or SFD. And she shares this painfully relatable story about it from her own life. Michelle: Oh, this is the Lake Travis story, isn't it? Mark: It is. She and her husband, Steve, are on vacation. They decide to go for a swim across a cove, something they haven't done together in years. Brené is feeling this deep sense of connection and joy. She turns to Steve in the water and says something really vulnerable, like, "I'm so glad we're doing this. This is amazing." Michelle: A classic bid for connection. She's opening up. Mark: A huge bid. And Steve, a man of few words, just looks at her and says... "Yeah. Water's good." Michelle: Ouch. That is a lead balloon of a response. I can feel the cringe from here. Mark: It’s brutal. And instantly, her brain writes an SFD. The story she tells herself in that split second is: "He's disgusted by me. He thinks I'm old and out of shape in this swimsuit. He's not attracted to me anymore. Our marriage is a lie. I'm a fool for being vulnerable." It's a complete narrative of rejection and shame. Michelle: Oh, I have written that SFD a thousand times! It's the 'they secretly hate me' novel. It’s amazing how fast our brains can write a full-blown tragedy based on three words. The fact that she's so honest about that moment is incredible. Mark: It’s what makes her work so powerful. So she spends the entire swim back to the dock stewing in this story, feeling hurt and angry. When they get to the dock, she's ready for a fight. But instead of launching into an attack, she tries to practice what she preaches. She starts with the phrase, "The story I'm making up right now is..." Michelle: Which is such a disarming way to start. It's not an accusation; it's a confession of your own internal narrative. Mark: Exactly. It gives the other person a window into your reality without blaming them for it. And when she finally gets Steve to talk, the truth comes out. He wasn't being dismissive at all. He was in the middle of a full-blown panic attack. He'd had a nightmare the night before about their kids drowning, and being in the deep, dark water had triggered this overwhelming fear. His "Water's good" was all he could manage to say without completely losing it. Michelle: Wow. So his story wasn't about her at all. It was about his own terror. And her brain, in that moment of hurt, made it entirely about her inadequacy. Mark: That's the Rumble. It's the process of taking your "shitty first draft"—that story you make up in a moment of pain—and holding it up to the light. You get curious. You ask questions. You separate the facts from the confabulations. And you create the space for the real story to emerge. That moment on the dock, she says, revolutionized their marriage.

Mark: And that moment on the dock, that's the beginning of The Revolution. The revolution is taking what you learned in the Rumble and actually changing how you live, love, parent, and lead. It's about integrating these hard-won lessons into your being. Michelle: So it's not just about having a single good conversation. It's about building a new operating system for your relationships and your life. Mark: Precisely. And a huge part of this revolution is a framework she calls "Living BIG." The acronym stands for Boundaries, Integrity, and Generosity. Boundaries are about what's okay and what's not okay. Integrity is about choosing courage over comfort and practicing your values. But the G, Generosity, is the trickiest one. Michelle: Let me guess. This is where the "people are doing the best they can" idea comes in? Mark: You got it. The most generous assumption we can make about others is that they are, in fact, doing the very best they can with the tools they have. Michelle: Hold on. That's a tough pill to swallow. What about people who are genuinely malicious, or hurtful, or just plain lazy? Are they really doing their best? I mean, some critics of her work point this out, that it can feel like it overlooks real harm or systemic issues. Mark: That is the number one pushback she gets, and it's a valid question. She addresses it with a fantastic story from a workshop she did with military leaders at West Point. She asked them to think of someone they were judging, someone who was failing, and then to assume that person was doing their best. One officer got really frustrated. He said, "I have a guy on my team who is just not cutting it. If this is his best, it's pathetic." Michelle: I can relate to that officer. Mark: So Brené pushed him. She said, "Okay, let's assume he is doing his best. What does that mean for you as his leader?" And after a long pause, the officer had this breakthrough. He said, "Well, if he's doing his best and it's still not enough, then I've got him in the wrong role. My job isn't to keep kicking the rock and yelling at it to move faster. My job is to move the rock to a place where it can be useful." Michelle: Ah, so it's not about letting people off the hook. It's about having better boundaries and holding them accountable for what they can do, while generously assuming they aren't actively trying to fail. That's a huge shift. It moves you from judgment to problem-solving. Mark: It's a complete reframe. It forces you to get clear on your own boundaries. If someone's "best" is still hurting you, the generous and boundary-led response is to protect yourself, not to endlessly judge them for their shortcomings. It's about accountability, not blame. And that applies to leadership, parenting, and our own self-talk. Michelle: It’s about composting the failure, isn't it? Taking the messy, smelly stuff and turning it into something that actually nourishes new growth. Mark: That's the revolution. It's taking the falls, the hurts, the failures, and rumbling with them until you find the nutrients. Then you fold those nutrients back into your life, and you grow stronger, more compassionate, and more whole.

Mark: Ultimately, Rising Strong isn't a manual for avoiding pain. It's a revolutionary practice for integrating our failures into our lives. The revolution isn't about becoming invincible; it's about becoming whole. Michelle: It’s a process, not a destination. And it's messy. It requires us to be brave enough to fall, and then curious enough to figure out why. It’s not about perfection; it’s about practice. Mark: And that practice changes everything. It changes how you lead at work, how you argue with your partner, how you talk to your kids. It's about owning your story, all of it, so you can write a braver ending. Michelle: It makes you wonder, what's one 'shitty first draft' you've been telling yourself this week? That story about your boss's email, or your friend's text, or your own mistake. And what might happen if you got curious about it instead of just believing it? Mark: That's the perfect question to leave with. We'd love to hear your thoughts. Join the conversation and share your own 'rising strong' moments with the Aibrary community. Michelle: This is Aibrary, signing off.