Brene Browns best seller, Daring Greatly, is one of about a dozen books I flip back and forth between. But today I realized several of these books I’ve chosen have a similar underlying theme – shame.

Shame affects every one of us, and yet we choose to pretend it doesn’t exist. It affects the way we interact with others; it affects the way we do our jobs and how we work with others; it even affects the way we enjoy our downtime. Because ultimately, shame drives the internal script that tells us what we think about ourselves.

In one chapter of Daring Greatly, Brene mentions that Harry Potter thought he might be bad because he was angry all the time and had dark feelings. Another book I’m reading would call Harry’s thoughts “critical script”. And we do it too – we tell ourselves we aren’t good and we decide other people think we are bad too. We repeat those messages over and over and ultimately, we lose hope – in ourselves, and in each other.

Sirius Black told Harry “You’re not a bad person, you’re a good person who bad things have happened to.” We all need to remind ourselves that we are good…and it sure would be nice if others would remind us of that too.

So if you’re feeling a little down today, feeling shame because you can’t do the things you’d like to do, feeling like you’re not a good person or your not worthy of being liked and loved – hear these words:

We all have struggles, we all have good and bad inside us, we have all had bad things happen to us – the key is whether we let the bad control our thoughts and actions, or maybe we can find the courage to set aside shame and let the good in us do the talking.

You are good. You are worthy. You deserve a little joy in your life.