This is a deeply profound book. It’s almost biblical. In the introduction alone, there is a handful of lines you can spend ages breaking down and interpreting. Just about everything is quotable.

This book is sort of the hard, data driven science, behind the Christian maxim of redemption of the soul is to be found in truthful speech. This work also helps to explain the LOGOS (the creative power behind words/truthful speech).

Language is our portal to meaning making, connection, healing, learning, and self awareness. Having access to the right words can open up entire universes. When we don’t have the language to talk about what we are experiencing, our ability to make sense of what’s happening and share it with others is severely limited. Without accurate language, we struggle to get the help we need, we don’t always regulate or manage our emotions and experiences in a way that allows us to move through them productively, and our self awareness is diminished. Language shows us that naming and experience doesn’t give the experience more power, it gives us the power of understanding and meaning….

Language speeds and strengthens connections in the brain when we are processing sensory information. But newer research shows that when our access to emotional language Is blocked, our ability to interpret incoming emotional information is significantly diminished. Likewise, having the correct words to describe specific emotions makes us better able to identify those emotions in others, as well as to recognize and manage the emotional experiences when we feel them ourselves.

Brene Brown