[ Applause ]

>> So I'm going to start by walking you into a scene

in a movie and then I want y'all to tell me what happens next.

Okay, here's my black, Christmas eve, beautiful night,

light snowfall, young family of four in the car on the way

to grandma's house for dinner.

They're listening to the radio station,

the one that starts playing the Christmas music

like right at Halloween.

[laughter] Jingle Bells comes on.

The kids in the backseat goes crazy,

everyone breaks into song.

The camera pans in on the faces of the kids, the mom,

dad, what happens next?

Car crash, 60% of people say car crash, 60%.

Another 10% to 15% have equally fatalistic answers [laughter]

but more creative.

[laughter] I have the camera cuts to the oncologist

who is just looking at the bad news that he is going

to share the day after Christmas.

I have they get to grandmother's house, everyone is dead,

a serial killer is on the loose.

[laughter] And I had one dude who worked

in a shark attack, I did.

What's interesting to me about this

and it's an indictment a little bit of the media,

which I wouldn't so much care about except

that I'm a vulnerability researcher

and I've spent the last 10 years studying vulnerability

and I cannot tell you how many hundreds and hundreds of stories

that I've collected from people

who that is their response not just to media

but in their real lives.

How many parents I've interviewed who will say

and I'm looking at my children and they're sleeping and I'm

on this verge of bliss

and I picture something horrible happening.

Do you know this?

Yes. I get the promotion and I get to fly

up to headquarters you know to find out about my new job

and what's going to happen, plane crashes.

The fatalistic response is not universal.

We're not all like that.

But it is a symptom of an issue that is both universal

and I believe profoundly dangerous.

And that is we are losing our tolerance for vulnerability.

And in our culture we, what do we think is synonymous

with vulnerability, weakness.

Y'all are an excellent audience.

[laughter] It's almost as if I trained you.

It's perfect.

Weakness, and I'm going to talk

about how that's not the case tonight.

Vulnerability is absolutely at the core of fear and anxiety

and shame and very difficult emotions that we all experience

but vulnerability is also the birthplace of joy, of love,

of belonging, of creativity, of faith,

and so it becomes very problematic

when as a culture we lose our capacity to be vulnerable.

So this kind of fatalistic car crash is a symptom.

I refer to it as foreboding joy.

One of the symptoms that we're losing our capacity

for vulnerability is that joy actually becomes foreboding.

Something good happens or we're looking at someone we love

or we're thinking about something we care about

and then we become compelled to beat vulnerability to the punch.

Other symptoms, disappointment as a lifestyle,

it is much easier to live disappointment then it is

to feel disappointment and so this is the person in the

after school movie that I don't want to play your stupid game

because it's dumb and boring and because really maybe

because nobody will ask me.

We sidestep getting excited about something

because we're not sure it's actually going to happen.

Low grade disconnection, is another symptom

of vulnerability avoidance.

We go through the motions.

It's like low grade fever.

It may not kill us but it keeps us pretty miserable.

Perfection is one of the, I call it the 200 pound shield,

how can anything go wrong if my life looks like an ad?

I'm going to perform and please

and make sure everything's perfect.

And perfectionism has nothing to do with striving for excellence.

It's nothing to do with healthy striving.

Healthy strive, people who I interview

who are absolutely accomplished and people who strive

for excellence are the biggest negotiators and compromisers

that I've ever interviewed.

Perfection is a tool to protect ourselves.

Extremism is a very simple equation,

faith minus vulnerability equals extremism.

Faith is the vulnerability that flows

between the shores of certainty.

Faith without vulnerability,

spirituality is inherently vulnerable.

It is believing in things we don't understand

or really can't see.

And last I believe the most universal way

that we are dealing with an intolerance for vulnerability

in our culture is that we numb and I'll talk

about this in a minute.

Let's go to a bigger question

and that is what is driving this intolerance

for vulnerability in us?

And I believe the answer is scarcity.

We live in a culture that tells us that there is never enough.

That we are not enough, that we are not good enough,

that we are not safe enough,

that we can never be certain enough,

that we're not perfect enough and maybe the one

that we really don't talk

about that I think is perhaps the most dangerous is

that we are not extraordinary enough.

In this world somehow an ordinary life has become

synonymous with a meaningless life.

And so often we are missing what is truly important

because we are on the quest for what is extraordinary,

not understanding that in our ordinary lives,

in the ordinary moments of our lives is really

where we can find the most joy.

One of the things that happens I think in our culture

of scarcity is that we are constantly collecting images

and messages and experiences, I think it's unconscious.

I really don't think that we're aware of how many messages

and images of scarcity that we collect every day.

And I want to tell a story about something that happened

about six months ago that I think really illustrates this.

So I have to catch a flight to go do a talk somewhere

and my daughter's, you know I have a five year old

and an 11 year old, and my daughter is really struggling

with a school project.

I am definitely in the scarcity mode.

I shouldn't be going.

I'm not a good enough mom.

I can't balance all of this.

I have to go to my bank, which is inside of a grocery store,

which is, I don't know if that happens here

but in Texas all the banks have moved inside the grocery stores.

[laughter] So I walk into the grocery store sliding glass,

you know the sliding glass doors

and there's a big code Adam sticker, which tells,

if you don't know what that is,

it's an incredibly important program but it's a program

that says this store and its employees are trained

that when a child has gone missing or nabbed,

everything in the store shuts down.

So I look at that and I think oh God, okay, just stay focused,

Renee, no one is going to nab your kids while you're away.

I go and get my money.

I get back in the car and get on the freeway toward the airport

and I pass the Amber Alert, keep driving, Renee, keep driving.

About two miles past the Amber Alert there's a sign

that tells me that 39 people have been killed

on that specific stretch of highway [laughter]

and please wear my seatbelt.

Then I get to the airport and of course I'm in line

to security getting naked

and I hear the threat code has been moved to orange.

And then I go through this thing that I'm like oh my God,

holy crap, is it always orange.

You know I was like I'm going to start writing on my hand

with a Sharpie, it's always orange.

Orange is not, you know, hasn't gone bad.

I'm like what is it?

Okay so I'm like orange, okay, it's orange.

I think it was orange yesterday.

[laughter] Maybe something happened

and I was busy reading the Amber Alert,

then trying to find a license plate.

So I get to my gate and I sit down and they're

like do not leave unattended baggage, you know and I look

down and there's a bag.

[laughter] And I'm like oh my God, wait, it's a diaper bag

and I know that mother is like 10 feet away chasing her kid

and I'm like but I saw this on Law and Order [laughter]

and I'm going to board that plane

and then the next thing you're going to hear is chink, chink,

that Law and Order chink and then we're going to blow up.

So I get on the plane and I'm really getting ready to start,

I'm in kind of what you would call,

I would say, an anxiety attack.

So I'm having an anxiety attack and a guy comes in,

I'm flying business class and a guy comes in

and he's sitting next to me.

He turns out to be a supply chain manager consultant.

And so he looks over and he's like, are you okay?

I'm good. What's up?

And my phone rings and my son's face pops up.

Well he's five so that means his school is calling.

Hello, Charlie's got a fever.

Can you come get him?

So I'm like you know I text my husband.

I take care of it.

And the guy next to me says really, are you okay?

By this time you know the cabin doors are closed.

And I said you know what, I'm good.

But I'm having that thing

where I can't decide whether my gut is saying get off the flight

something's going to happen or I'm just freaking out

and I'm trying to figure out how to do something crazy enough

to get off the flight but to not end up on the no fly list.

[laughter] So this, I'm a super blast to fly with.

[laughter] So then he said let me get you a drink.

And I said you know, I don't drink.

And he goes Xanax?

And I was like, no, I don't do Xanax either,

which is a shame but I don't.

But then when I realize is it really makes me think

about my work because we numb vulnerability.

Now had he said chips and queso,

that would have been a completely different issue.

[laughter] Evidence of the numbing,

we are the most addicted, we are the most medicated,

obese and in debt adult cohort in human history.

We're numbing and this doesn't even include business.

I didn't even put the busy slide up.

You know when they start having busy recovering meetings they'll

have to, busy 12 step meetings, they'll have to rent

out football stadiums because we just stay so busy that the truth

of our lives just can't catch up but that's the plan.

And so what are the consequences of numbing vulnerability?

What are the consequences of trying

to beat vulnerability to the punch?

Here's the consequence to numbing that I've learned.

You know as a vulnerability researcher I've spent the first

six years of my research studying shame, empathy

and courage and the last four years studying joy,

authenticity, love and belonging.

And one of the things that I learned that was very startling

for me personally and everyone I've ever met is

that you cannot selectively numb emotion.

When we numb the dark emotion, when we numb vulnerability

and fear and shame of not being good enough,

we by default numb joy.

We cannot selectively just numb the dark emotions.

We have interesting research around this.

We have research that shows us in addition studies

that an intensely positive experience is as likely

to trigger relapse as an intensely negative experience.