Brené Brown vs Julie Smith - Tear Down the Walls or Fix the Leak?

[March MINDness] Daring Greatly vs Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before?

Say you just bought a new house (in this economy and at this interest rate, congratulations!). It’s not exactly new, and things aren’t going as great as you thought when you saw it at staging. Your faucet is leaking, the bathtub drains like it’s in no rush, the floors are cracking open, and you heard a sound at night that brought your mind to weird places.

Since you can’t just return the house with Amazon Prime, now you have to fix it. There are two choices:

Choice one: get yourself a handyman (or a handywoman in this case). She came out of a pickup truck carrying a huge machine that looked to be either cleaning your pipes or opening a portal to another dimension. Her vest has enough tools to build the Trump wall.

After you show her all your house’s problems, she muttered “alright” and got to work. One hour of patching, 30 minutes of supergluing, and an hour and a half of sandpapering, she tells you “you are good.” And you are. In the meantime, she hardly spoke to you and her eyebrow never moved.

Choice two: you called a Feng Shui Master. She drives a Toyota Prius but is dressed in a silk robe with a golden dragon sewn on it. You know she’s not doing Kung Fu, but she’s doing something. She came into your house, not saying a word, and definitely not paying attention to your eager explanation of all your leaks and breaks. She surveyed your living room, then walked up and down the stairs a few times, did some Eastern meditation and chants, and finally said, “The entire house’s chi is wrong. The dragon chi can’t flow, the money chi is leaking. You don’t need patches, you need a remodeling to correct the feng shui and vibe.”

Now, if you use the troubled house as an analogy for your mental state (your fear, your anxiety, your negative thinking), then these two fixers represent our two authors’ methods today. The handywoman is Julie Smith (the 16th seed), and the Feng Shui Master is Brené Brown (the 1 seed). The former has all the tools to fix your problems, the other has one tool to reshape your inner core.

Let’s dive in on each.

Brené Brown

Human psychology research professor at University of Houston. She spent two decades studying one thing: shame. Honestly, that’s like a doctor specializing in hemorrhoids, or a marine biologist studying sea cucumber feces. However, her work produced astonishing results. Her 2010 TEDxHouston talk, “The Power of Vulnerability,” is one of the five most-viewed TED talks ever. It turned her from an academic nobody into a cultural phenomenon, with #1 NYT bestsellers, Netflix special, HBO Max documentary, two podcasts, and the Vulnera perfume brand.

I made the last one up, but speaking of brand, her personal story is part of the brand. She’s a self-described perfectionist fifth-generation Texan who had a breakdown during her own research when she realized the data was telling her she needed to be more vulnerable. That honesty about her own struggle is what makes her credible.

Daring Greatly (2012)

Title comes from Theodore Roosevelt’s famous “Man in the Arena” speech. More than 2 million copies sold. The thesis: vulnerability is not weakness, it’s the most accurate measure of courage. We live in a culture of scarcity (never enough, never good enough), and the antidote is what she calls “wholehearted living,” engaging with the world from a place of worthiness rather than shame.

Core Ideas:

• Vulnerability is courage, not weakness. Showing up when you can’t control the outcome is vulnerability. Avoiding it is what actually makes you weak.

• Shame is the real enemy. Shame says “I am bad.” Guilt says “I did something bad.” Learning to recognize the difference is a survival skill.

• The armor we wear costs us. Perfectionism, numbing, cynicism. These are shields against vulnerability. But when you numb pain, you also numb joy.

• Wholehearted living. People with a deep sense of worthiness let go of what people think, embrace imperfection, and believe they are enough.

• The arena matters more than the critics. If you’re not in the arena getting your ass kicked, Brown doesn’t want your feedback.

Julie Smith

English clinical psychologist. She started posting short mental health videos on TikTok in 2019. During Covid, her audience exploded, hitting 3.5 million followers in under two years. Her videos have racked up half a billion views across TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. I can see why: she looks like Jennifer Aniston performing as a psychologist with a British accent.

Her path is essentially: real therapist → realizes most people can’t afford or access therapy → starts giving away therapy tools for free on social media → becomes one of the most followed mental health professionals on earth → writes a book that became the bestselling nonfiction book in the UK in 2022.

Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? (2022)

The thesis: you don’t need a diagnosis or a therapist’s couch to benefit from the tools clinical psychologists use every day. This is a toolkit. Practical, evidence-based strategies for the everyday mental health struggles everyone faces.

The book is structured in short, bite-sized chapters organized around specific challenges, so you can flip to whatever you’re dealing with right now.

Core Ideas:

• Thoughts are not facts. They’re suggestions your brain offers to make sense of the world. You don’t have to believe every one.

• Emotions are information, not commands. Feeling anxious doesn’t mean you’re in danger. Learn to read your emotions without being ruled by them.

• Know your cognitive distortions. Catastrophizing, black-and-white thinking, emotional reasoning. Your brain falls into these patterns automatically. Recognizing them is half the battle.

• Small actions change big feelings. In a low mood spiral, you disengage from things you enjoy, which makes it worse. One tiny change (even just getting outside) starts reversing it.

• You don’t need to be in crisis to work on your mental health. This is preventative medicine for the mind. Have tools ready before the crisis hits.

So whose idea do you like better? The shame master who wants to change your mental feng shui, or the handywoman who has a tool for every leak you have?

Brown wants to tear down the walls and rebuild from the foundation. Smith wants to fix the leak, unclog the drain, and sand the floor. One takes six months. The other takes an afternoon.

Vote here:

For Me

Now I don’t vote based on who I think should win. The #1 seed with 70M TED views, 6 bestsellers, and Netflix/HBO series should crush the #16 seed TikToker with a list of little tools.

But I vote based on this single question: “Whose idea helped me more?”

To me the answer is simple: the tool lady. Why? Because I am already overflowing with vulnerability. Two days ago I had a little quarrel with Tracy. I spent the night thinking about it, and the next day came up with a fear list and 2x2 analysis to show her my mindset.

If I get more vulnerable, I’ll overdose and be hospitalized at TED Regional Hospital.

But the tools, they are nice and practical. Here’s one of her tools that has been helpful for me: Square Breathing. Navy SEALs use it in combat. I use it to lower my blood pressure every morning when I measure it.

My vote goes to the under-underdog with a tool vest: Julie Smith!