Yet since 2010, her TED talks on listening to shame and the power of vulnerability have become a viral sensation, in no small part precisely because of her plainspoken honesty about her own struggles with the subject matter. To date, Brown's rousing pleas for humanity to move from a culture of shame, scarcity and numbness toward a more authentic, compassionate and "wholehearted" approach have been viewed over 5 million times on YouTube. But not by Brown herself, who confesses, "It still makes me feel really uncomfortable."

In other words, she gets it. She knows how hard it is for us to put down our emotional armor, how great the fear of failure and criticism -- from both within and without – can be. Yet she plunges on, persuasively making the case that a bolder, braver way of living isn't just happier and more fulfilling. She thinks it's a key component of rising above the tide of debt, addiction and what Brown repeatedly refers to as the painful curse of "disengagement."

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