DARING GREATLY by Brene Brown

Here is a famous self-help book that I decided to give a whirl. The first three chapters were kind of good, but then it got kind of repetitious. The insight is basically that we often do not reach our full potential because we are too afraid of taking a risk, and espeially the risk of what other people will think.

This is a painfully true observation. The worst part I think is that probably we are often not even aware that we are limiting ourselves. If it was conscious, it would be easier to change. So I guess we have to continually challenge ourselves to remember it. I could tell you a lot more about what’s in the book, but the idea is best expressed in the speech by Theordore Roosevelt after which it is named. If you’ve never read it, here it is, you can thank me later:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.