The Four Pillars of Courage

Brené Brown's talk at South By Southwest blew me away. According to Google, SBSW is a conference/festival dedicated to helping creative people achieve their goals. Ms. Brown was speaking to a packed room of teachers and asked them if they could name the difference between these two statements:

"I made a mistake."

"I am a mistake." (20:29 - 20:41)

A chasm lies between these two statements, and that chasm overflows with guilt and shame. That's the answer to the question above: the first statement names guilt and the second statement, shame. But this talk was about more than shame. Courage, she said, is taught from the four pillars of courage: vulnerability, clarity of values, trust, and resiliency.

The talk was engaging, and I thought about children like me who felt shame. My parents loved me and actively supported my interests, so it was a mystery how I felt that much shame? How did I decide I must be a mistake? I explore those questions in my memoir and describe my earliest trauma and how I made up coping stories which led to identifiable patterns. Changing those victim-focussed narratives and behaviors into empowering ones that foster love, belonging, and joy made an incredible difference in my life.

 "Owning our story can be hard, but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it. Embracing our vulnerabilities is risky but not nearly as dangerous as giving up on love and belonging and joy—the experiences that make us the most vulnerable."

https://motivationalspeakersagency.co.uk/news/exclusive-top-global-thought-leaders

This insightful video also describes three different strategies we use to defend against our shame: hiding, people pleasing, and striking back with shaming and anger. As a child, I often used hiding and people pleasing, but not anger and shaming back. My Christian upbringing instilled a deep fear of anger and completely suppressed any impulse to fight back.

As I listened to this video, a new realization washed over me, illuminating how shame had significantly shown up in my life as a lack of courage. Growing up, I didn't stand up for myself in the face of anger and shaming behavior directed at me. I'd scurry behind my armour of people pleasing and hiding, staying quiet or diffusing anger by deflecting their attention from me back to them. No wonder my first marriage didn't last. We both lacked the courage to look at ourselves. Our lives were driven and defined by the compelling power of our childhood stories.

Courage. Over my life, even the word would send me sprinting in the opposite direction, but I could count on resilience, values, and a modicum of trust. Somehow, I also had a tiny spark of light inside that lifted me up again and again as I made my way through some tough times. Perhaps that's what our global situation needs, too. Courage means focussing on those whose lives we touch and reacting with genuine empathy to their situations and experiences. Think about it. Adult shaming behaviors are favouritism, gossip, and name-calling. Who in our lives does that?

Brené gives us a way to counteract those behaviors. Here's one of her stories:

Just five minutes into her speech to a hostile audience of white male hedge fund managers, a man rose and said, "Excuse me, we have no idea why we're here." She said, "Why am I here? What are you up against right now?" They responded, "We're a high-compliance banking industry. Our biggest problem right now is ethical decision-making." (12:05 - 13:00)

Laughter ensued from the SBSW teachers. Why? Ethical decision-making engages our courage, which relies on vulnerability, clarity of values, trust, and resiliency.

"Shame", says Brené, "will always be in our lives because the only people who don't experience shame are those who have lost the capacity for empathy or connection." (17:48 - 17:53) We're human. We all experience the painful belief that there's something about us that makes us unworthy of love and belonging. Secrecy, silence, and judgment act as catalysts, causing the intense painful feelings of shame to grow at an exponential rate. If our response to someone in pain (or those who use shame, guilt, humiliation, or embarrassment) is to be present in that moment and ask about the source of their pain, we are enrolling the only antidote to shame–empathy. They may not tell you their pain, but your empathy and presence with them will still diminish shame.

Perhaps as I was thinking about my book, I also thought about my teachers. I had a wonderful teacher in grades 2 to 6 who asked me a single question after being caught in an embarrassing act. Don't worry, it wasn't something anyone even noticed except for Mrs. Peggy Breckon. That one act, when I felt so sensitive, vulnerable, and utterly alone, I believe was a pivotal moment; it ignited a spark within me, a source of inner strength that ultimately showed me I could overcome life's obstacles and find my way forward.

Teachers, you are in a vital profession. Our children need you to have empathy and cut out shaming from your classrooms. They need you to create a culture of courage and vulnerability so they can grow up understanding and living the four pillars of courage: vulnerability, clarity of values, trust, and resiliency.

At stake is more than the health and safety of our children, "When the ability to be who we really are becomes the realm of only the privileged, we have lost our capacity to create a school, a home, and a country that we love." (14:32 - 14:49)

The Title and inspiration for this blog and all quotes are from The Motivational Speakers Agency, The Top 51 Most Inspiring Global Thought Leaders of 2025, and, 13. Brené Brown Speaker Showreel | How to deal with critics and your own self-doubt