A bunch of my friends from church have decided to start a book club.

Last month was our first one and a book was chosen, but then in the interest of including  as many women as possible, it was broadened to include any book by the author, Brené Brown.

Love. Her.

I also love that there are a ton of ted talks, you tube videos, and interviews with her!! 

My first exposure to Brené Brown was her Ted talk on Vulnerability. After that, I read as much as I could about her and watched a ton of videos. I loved how she talked about Roosevelt’s “Man in the Arena”. I talked about it here when I was choosing a poem for Zach. 

I have read bits and pieces of  her books, (about 3/4 of “Daring Greatly” and hope to finish soon!) and they are all so good.

I especially love her arena analogy, based on “Man in the Arena”. She says:

If you’re not in the arena also getting your a** kicked, I’m not interested in your feedback.

If you have constructive criticism you want to give me, I want it.

But if you’re in the cheap seats, not putting yourself on the line, and just talking about how I can do it better, I’m not interested in your feeback.

Love. Love. Love.

How easy it is to be in the cheap seats handing out feedback.

But she goes on to say, it is important to have some critics in your arena. We do need to care how some people think about us. We do need growth, and support. But we need to choose who takes those front row seats. She does a great job at outlining the people in the arena – and I can’t remember all the details (so go look it up yourself -ha!) 

 I do remember thinking how important it is to think about my values, my beliefs, my goals, my priorities and making sure they are aligned with those of the people who get my best seats. 

Then I also need to look at those people and see what their motivation is, how much they love and respect me, and where they are coming from. I need to consider their honesty level, their level of compassion and empathy, and their willingness to go out on a limb.

I also have to make sure I reserve one of those seats for me. And need to be mindful that sometimes I can be my biggest critic – and not always in a good way:( But every single time, I need to show up. 

I do also want to see who are in the cheap seats. I like to get a sense of why they even chose to come to my arena. That will likely help me understand where they are coming from when they shout out their remarks.

This part of her analogy (like I said, she goes a lot deeper and wider with it and it is so good) has been really helpful to me in “weeding out the noise”. In specifically seeking out guidance from my front row, listening more intently to their coaching, turning to smile more at them and accept their love and guidance. It helps me not worry as much about the advice, criticism, and commentary that many others give. I can just smile and thank them for coming – or I can consider something they say if it resonates. But I know that they only paid for the cheap seats so aren’t as vested in me so I don’t need to invest more in their feedback. 

It has also made me stop and think about the feedback I give myself. My voice is an important one. I hear my voice the most (I think it’s like 60,000 thoughts we have every day?!? If my voice is mainly negative, then that’s a lot of negative thoughts!!) I may need to choose my thoughts differently and be the kind of supporter I hope for, want and expect in my front row! 

Who is in your front row? We choose who we give those seats to, so it’s a worthwhile exercise to think about who is in those seats now.  And after we make our choice, it’s important to look at who we give our best to and our most time to….sometimes the people in our front row get the leftover scraps of our time, the stressed and exhausted end of day person, and the least amount of attention.

Lots to think about….