Of high profile in the therapy world these days is Brene Brown. She is researcher in the area of vulnerability and shame. Her Ted Talk  “The Power of Vulnerability,” from 2010 has been viewed by 17.8 million people. That’s roughly the same amount of views as an mildly popular cat video. Except, this video is 20 minutes long and has nothing cute about it. It describes raw human experience. Its good. Really good.

Millions have been inspired by the video. She has several books which are also popular. One of my favorite quotes from her book says:

“When we can let go of what other people think and own our story, we gain access to our worthiness—the feeling that we are enough just as we are and that we are worthy of love and belonging. When we spend a lifetime trying to distance ourselves from the parts of our lives that don’t fit with who we think we’re supposed to be, we stand outside of our story and hustle for our worthiness by constantly performing, perfecting, pleasing, and proving. Our sense of worthiness—that critically important piece that gives us access to love and belonging—lives inside of our story.”

This hustling does the opposite thing than we want. When we hustle we reject our inherent worthiness of love, belonging, and acceptance. We are undermining its existence by trying to earn it another way. You don’t earn worthiness, you own it.

Brene Brown has learned through research that people who are the happiest in life and feel the most love are people who feel they are deserving of that love. One of the ways to be feel deserving of love is to sharing parts of yourself with people. In other words, you can’t be fully loved by someone until they know you.

Sometimes we let perfect become the enemy of good. We prefer the pretense of prefect. Perfect is a mask that we think hides the shamefulness of our humanity. Then are crestfallen when we remember our own pretense and imperfection. The beauty of pushing away pretense and owning your story is immense. The fight the shame of being human is to recognize the beauty in humanity, the goodness of your story, and your worthiness to be loved as is.

The simplicity of this idea is reminds me of a line from East of Eden by John Steinbeck:

“Now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good.”

I would add: … and you can be loved.

Try sharing parts of your story with those whom you want to share a deeper relationship. The holiday season is the perfect time to start.