Brené Brown is an American best selling author, academic, podcaster and speaker who discusses topics like gratitude, leadership and more. I’ve pulled some of the Brené Brown gratitude quotes that I found helpful from her books.
I hope you can take some inspiration from them and I’ve also included which books the quotes came from. Enjoy!
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Brené Brown gratitude quotes
From The Gifts of Imperfection
Here are some beautiful quotes from her book: The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You’re Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are (2010).
“I can’t separate the concepts of love and belonging because when people spoke of one, they always talked about the other. The same holds true for the concepts of joy and gratitude.” – Brené Brown
“The research has taught me that happiness and joy are different experiences. In the interviews, people would often say something like, “Being grateful and joyful doesn’t mean that I’m happy all of the time.” On many occasions I would delve deeper into those types of statements by asking, “What does it look like when you’re joyful and grateful, but not happy?” The answers were all similar: Happiness is tied to circumstance and joyfulness is tied to spirit and gratitude.” – Brené Brown
“Joy and gratitude can be very vulnerable and intense experiences. We are an anxious people and many of us have very little tolerance for vulnerability. Our anxiety and fear can manifest as scarcity.” – Brené Brown
“I gave an example of standing over my daughter watching her sleep, feeling totally engulfed in gratitude, then being ripped out of that joy and gratitude by images of something bad happening to her.” – Brené Brown
“It’s easy to see how difficult it is to make time for the important things such as creativity, gratitude, joy, and authenticity when we’re spending enormous amounts of energy conforming and competing.” – Brené Brown
From Daring Greatly
These quotes are from: Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead (2015).
“Every participant who spoke about the ability to stay open to joy also talked about the importance of practicing gratitude.” – Brené Brown
“It wasn’t just the relationship between joy and gratitude that took me by surprise. I was also startled by the fact that research participants consistently described both joyfulness and gratitude as spiritual practices that were bound to a belief in human connectedness and a power greater than us.” – Brené Brown
“If the opposite of scarcity is enough, then practicing gratitude is how we acknowledge that there’s enough and that we’re enough.” – Brené Brown
“When I asked people who had survived tragedy how we can cultivate and show more compassion for people who are suffering, the answer was always the same: Don’t shrink away from the joy of your child because I’ve lost mine. Don’t take what you have for granted—celebrate it. Don’t apologize for what you have. Be grateful for it and share your gratitude with others. Are your parents healthy? Be thrilled. Let them know how much they mean to you.” – Brené Brown
From Date to Lead
I love this Brené Brown gratitude quote from: Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts (2018).
“Something as simple as starting or ending meetings with a gratitude check, when everyone shares one thing they’re grateful for, can build trust and connection, serve as container-building, and give your group permission to lean into joy.” – Brené Brown
From Atlas of the Heart
These are quotes from Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience (2021).
“Call me a qualitative researcher, but I’m starting to see a trend here. It appears that many of the emotions that are good for us—joy, contentment, and gratitude, to name a few—have appreciation in common.” – Brené Brown
“While gratitude is an emotion, if we want to experience its full power, we must also make it a practice. Over the past two decades, the research has taught me that, despite the catchy phrase “an attitude of gratitude,” gratitude is a practice. It’s tangible. An attitude is a way of thinking; a practice is a way of doing, trying, failing, and trying again.” – Brené Brown
“The research participants that I interviewed over the years described keeping gratitude journals, doing daily gratitude meditations or prayers, creating gratitude art, using gratitude check-ins with their teams at work, even stopping during their stressful, busy days to actually say these words out loud: “I am grateful for…” In our house, we go around the table at dinner and take turns sharing one gratitude. It’s small, but it’s also big. It gives me a window into the lives of the people I love the most. It’s celebrating goodness.” – Brené Brown
“… gratitude is not a cure for anything and we need to be wary of any single practice or approach that’s sold as fixing or curing complex mental health issues.” – Brené Brown
I’ve gone through many of her books and these four talk a lot about gratitude. I just love these quotes and I truly hope you find some inspo from them.
In essence, according to the author and her research participants, gratitude is all about putting in the time to practice it and feeling joy and happiness as a result of the practice.
How beautiful is that?
If you enjoy practicing gratitude, hop on over to my morning gratitude list. There’s a long list of light and fun things to think about and be grateful for in your everyday life.
Want more gratitude quotes? Check out these from Buddha, Rumi and Thich Nhat Hanh.
