We live in a society that uses shame far too often. We use it in school, at work, when parenting and in our greater society in politics and religion. Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent and Lead by Brené Brown, besides having a very long name teaches both how to learn to live in that society and how to change it in the places where we have control.

One story that best exemplifies the misuse of shame is in describing one of the more absurd situations I ever heard of at a workplace. Brené Brown tells the story of a boss that decided each quarter everyone would get to pick new offices based on their sales numbers. So the person with the best sales numbers would pick an office first, then the second, and so on. The person telling the story had had the best numbers for six quarters and still felt the fear of humiliation and shame. More than that, his boss came in after he was first again and told him he had to pick a new office because he wanted the other people to be afraid. And this isn’t the only story, it’s just the one that stuck out.

This is an excellent book, and one that is well balanced. She tells people not just to be more vulnerable but the difference between being vulnerable and over sharing. And in one important point to me as a writer she discusses how she balances telling personal stories in public, because if you’re writing anything more personal than a refrigerator repair manual you’re sharing some of who you are when you do it. She also points out that telling someone to do something while you’re not doing it yourself isn’t likely to work well, especially when you’re talking about children. So you can’t tell your kid to stop being ashamed of the way he looks while spending your time being ashamed of how you look and expect it to work.

The only real negative in this book for me was that weren’t particularly relevant to me. The first section was much more general and full of things I will use, and the part about shame in the workplace was both interesting and marginally more relevant because while I am self-employed I’ve worked for people in the past and hope that I may even have employees someday. But the part on parenting while I believe to be excellent advice was largely not applicable to me. I do not have, nor plan to have children, nor am I going to be a teacher. But even then I interact with children from time to time and being reminded of the difference between them doing something bad and them being bad is worthwhile.

Living in this world takes courage. Sometimes more than others and trying to break out of the boxes we live in and thrive takes even more courage. Daring Greatly won’t give you courage, but it helps to remind you how important it is to use the courage you have and how to both create more in yourself and avoid driving it out of others, and one point that is beyond argument is that you can’t succeed if you’re afraid to try, and trying is a success even when you fail. Besides, I’m tired of being afraid.