About research and vulnerability

Vulnerability, a scary word. Research. Scary word as well. Brené Brown researched vulnerability. And this is what happened.

“So, I’ll start with this: a couple of years ago, an event planner called me because I was going to do a speaking event. And she called, and she said, “I’m really struggling with how to write about you on the little flier.”   And I thought, “Well, what’s the struggle?”

And she said, “Well, I saw you speak, and I’m going to call you a researcher, I think, but I’m afraid if I call you a researcher, no one will come, because they’ll think you’re boring and irrelevant.”

And I was like, “Okay.”

And she said, “But the thing I liked about your talk is you’re a storyteller. So I think what I’ll do is just call you a storyteller.”

And of course, the academic, insecure part of me was like, “You’re going to call me a what?”

And she said, “I’m going to call you a storyteller.”

And I was like, “Why not magic pixie?” I was like, “Let me think about this for a second.” I tried to call deep on my courage. And I thought, you know, I am a storyteller. I’m a qualitative researcher. I collect stories; that’s what I do. And maybe stories are just data with a soul. And maybe I’m just a storyteller. And so I said, “You know what? Why don’t you just say I’m a researcher-storyteller.”

And she went, “Haha. There’s no such thing.”

So I’m a researcher-storyteller, and I’m going to talk to you today — we’re talking about expanding perception — and so I want to talk to you and tell some stories about a piece of my research that fundamentally expanded my perception and really actually changed the way that I live and love and work and parent. And this is where my story starts.”

 

 

And this is the link in case you can’t see the video.

Do you want to know what vulnerability and perfectionism have in common? 

I am curious to find out how you feel about this, please let me know!

 

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