Brené Brown is really one of our favourites at Switched ON Living. She speaks with such research authority and talks so easily about topics the rest of us find it so difficult to articulate.

In this video extract of a longer interview from the Oprah Daily series by Opray Winfrey, Brené talks about the prerequisites we need to make meaningful connections with others.

The first may seem obvious, but it’s a lesson we all very often need to relearn – we our emotional beings and it’s our emotions that drive our thoughts and behaviours.

If our emotions are in the driver’s seat of our lives, that means our thoughts and actions are ‘hog-tied’ in the boot as Brené said, using a metaphor straight-out of the Texas prairie.

Our emotions might be the dominant actor in our lives, but Brené calls out a conundrum that effects so many of us – our inability to recognise and articulate our emotional drivers.

And because it’s Brené telling the story, we know there has to be academic research that shows our poor ability to identify and describe our emotions – a study of 7000 respondents could come-up with only three: happy, sad and mad.

The world of emotions is so difficult, it’s even confounded Brené herself, after 22 years and several bestselling books trying to develop an academic framework for connection between people, she came across the Buddhist concept of the ‘near enemy.’

Of course, Brené talks about it best but if we think of a time when we’re in crisis and we reach out to friend for support, an emotional ‘distant enemy’ would be outright rejection by our ‘friend.’

By contrast, a ‘near enemy’ emotional response would be pity rather than the compassion we seek.

The emotional realm is messy, sometimes counterintuitive, and often illogical. It’s very lucky for us to have an effective spokesperson and storyteller as Brené Brown.