READ: Rising Strong by Brené Brown

I find power in others telling their stories and I hope you do too!

Check out It's Monday! What Are You Reading? at Book Date

For the kidlit version, visit Teach Mentor Texts and Unleashing Readers.

A couple of weeks ago, it was a super windy day. I mean gusts of winds stormed through our culdesac and I braced myself as my hair blew all around my face as I walked Perdi. It was a Wednesday. I know because it was also garbage day. 

It was garbage day and the garbage cans and recycling bins lined the end of all the driveways. Perdi and I made it to the end of the street, we did our usual loop and then headed back towards home. Up ahead, across the street from my house, our neighbor's garbage can had blown over. Contents of their garbage can now were strewn all around their part of the circle. A Pringles can was slowly clattering it's way towards us.

Ugh. I was annoyed. A voice in my head complained about people and how they can't keep things nice and can you believe they would let their garbage just take over the street and were they going to clean it up and ohmigosh, the nerve. I walked the whole way down the street so cranky and mad at them. 

And then I realized, they probably took their garbage out, went to work and had absolutely no idea the wind had taken their garbage and spread it all over the street for everyone to see and be annoyed with. And here I was judging them for something they had no control over. In Rising Strong, Brené talks about seeing people through a lens of "they're doing the best they can".

So what did I do? I pulled out a poop bag from Perdi's stash and put my hand in it like a glove and I walked on over there, took a deep breathe, and picked up the garbage. 

Yup. I did. 

And I'm damn proud that I did. 

Did I want to?

Nope. Not at all. Not one bit. I don't even want to repeat some of the things I picked up that day. 

But I did it anyway. 

Because for all I know, they were doing the best they could that morning. 

It wasn't their fault the wind was being a jerk that day.

I have so many other great takeaways from this book but this one stood out the most. It's the most useful in life. Try it for a day. Try approaching people and situations with the perspective that everyone is doing the best they can and see how it changes your mentality. It lifted a burden off of my shoulders. It's easy to tell a story, whether I'm telling a story about myself, how others see me, or how I see others. My brain likes to fill in the gaps when it doesn't know the whole story. I bet yours does too. That's kind of how brains work. That's why I love this new way of looking at things. It's much easier to be compassionate if you start with the fact that everyone is doing the best they can offer at that very moment. 

I owe a huge big thanks to Patience Bertana for sharing her love of books and knowing I would like this one enough to buy me my very own copy. She was right. It's a gem of a book. I love Brené Brown's work. I've blogged about her Ted Talk on Listening to Shame before and if you aren't familiar with her, I definitely suggest checking out her Ted Talks or her books or her website or her Instagram. Really, she's amazing anywhere you can find her!

Have you read one of Brené Brown's books?
Is there a book that has shaped the way you look at life?
I'd love to hear about it!