Book Review: Rising Strong

by Andrew Downing

In Rising Strong, Brené Brown examines what happens in the moment after we fail. She delves into what we feel and how we move past those feelings to rise again. 

Everyone loves a hero that fails but keeps fighting until they succeed. In life, we are all the heroes of our own stories. We fail, and then we rise. But what happens in that moment between the fall and the rise needs to be examined. We must unpack the emotions we experience because they hold the key to improving our lives. 

There’s nothing odd about failure. What’s odd is that some overcome it, while others get stuck. The difference is that those that get stuck are lost in the emotions of failure. Too often, that shame stops us from rebounding, and there’s no one better than Brown to teach us about shame and vulnerability.

Leaders can learn a lot from Rising Strong. Every leader experiences failure, and Brown teaches us how to examine our own stories of failure with self-awareness. When we are aware of how we experience failure, it helps us get past the feelings of shame, accept our vulnerability, learn from the experience, and move on.