Reflections on Brene Brown's Power of Vulnerability: Why We Struggle

          Brene's lecture on "'How To' Doesn't Work" opens with her sharing, "If 'HOW TO' worked none of us would be struggling." In today's world with immediate access to information at the swipe of a finger, learning how to do it yourself has become a phenomena. But even with open access to all this information, why is the world not yet perfect? Why do we still have obesity, depression, illness, unhealthy habits, bad credit, and all the other problems we should be able to fix because we have "How To" articles and Youtube videos? Personally, "How To" doesn't work all the time for me. However, it is a good resource when I feel as though I'm lacking in something. Ultimately following these "how to" instructions are not effective if an individual cannot understand why the problem exist in the first place. I can't recall at the moment where I heard this from, but this struck a chord with me instantly upon hearing it, "when you don't know why, you are powerless."

"We live in a culture today where somehow this idea that if we're not doing extraordinary, huge, public things, that we are not enough."

        The feeling of inadequacy often discourages me; not having enough, not being enough, not giving enough, ... enough, enough, enough! Why do I feel that I what I have and what I am is not enough; where does this come from?

"…we live in a culture of deep scarcity defined by this: Never enough."

        Living in a world where materialistic things symbolize social status and wealth, no wonder we struggle, because nothing will ever be enough. Envy and competition will increase the demand for individuals to be better than the other. What is better will than set standards defined by the winner ... and even then, those standards of perfection will be gone like the next trend because nothing is never enough. 

       And so it makes me wonder, what are we living for? Why do we struggle with (fill in the blank)? What’s feeding this deep scarcity? If I have the bare necessities to be alive, why is it not just enough to exist? Because we are human. We are a species that long for connection and value. We are a people that need meaningful and purposeful relationships.