Just read the most amazing article about vulnerability in our every day lives and how crucial it is to move us closer to our authentic self. Being vulnerable is the key to true connection with a fellow human being, by exposing your perceived imperfections you allow love to flow. You open yourself up to someone else and show them everything, the good, the bad and the ugly and guess what happens? The other person opens up in return and there you have it genuine connection! Such a powerful tool.
We have a dilemma inside of us which is why vulnerability feels so uncomfortable. Many of us feel embarrassed or ashamed of our perceived imperfections, we want to hide them but to have connection with another person we need to be vulnerable so we have an internal too and fro. People cope with this dilemma in many ways, firstly they become perfectionists. By being a perfectionist we control every last detail of our lives and therefore we believe we are controlling others perceptions of ourselves. If we have everything 'just so' then others will see us a certain way. This is an exhausting approach to maintain. You can see how this puts up huge barriers around you and others don't feel they can get the sense of who you really are behind all that perfection.
The second method is to blame others for having faults, then we become involved in helping others with these faults. We immerse ourselves in others issues and give our time and energy to these issues thereby avoiding facing our own internal conflict. You can spend a lot of time being involved in others problems and not your own.
The third and most common strategy people use is to numb their vulnerability. We eat, drink, medicate, work, spend, shop and entertain ourselves all in the name of avoiding those uncomfortable feelings. As the article points out, "we are the most in debt, obese, addicted and medicated adult cohort in US history" and the same goes for Australia. Problem with this is that you cannot selectively numb and you effectively end up numbing all your emotions including the pleasant ones. On a personal note I can say if I am having a challenging day I find myself wanting to engage in a lot of these activities, shopping being my weapon of choice. However I find no matter how hard I try to avoid them, the uncomfortable emotions come out one way or another so I am slowly learning to process them rather than run from them.
So what can we do to cultivate vulnerability? There are three particular personal qualities that can be encouraged to allow our vulnerability to shine and invite the human connection we crave. Courage, compassion and authenticity.
Courage means to accept ourselves as we are and be willing to be imperfect. Then we need to take this further and show our imperfections to the world. We don't hide. We keep taking the risks to step forward into friendship, family and intimacy. To have love and belonging you have to feel worthy of it.
To encourage feeling worthy we need to develop the second quality, compassion. Compassion not just to others but first and foremost to yourself. This starts with the littlest of things; is the voice in your head kind to you or are you letting it get away with being a tyrant? Do you take time out to listen to yourself and how you feel or are you just relentlessly pushing yourself? Once you practice self compassion it opens the gateway to living in the moment. It frees you from the exhausting task of constantly living in denial and allows you to just be. As a Mum I think we are so caught up in the well being of others we sometimes forget about the most important person, but we do our whole family a favour when we are compassionate to ourselves because we all know when Mum falls apart everything falls apart it is crucial to be kind to yourself.
The last quality to cultivate is authenticity. Letting go of the person you try to be and just being who you really are- warts and all. How liberating is that? Here is where vulnerability becomes powerful, once you show your true self to others they cannot help but to love and respect you and feel a deep connection towards you. Revealing your true self can be scary and uncomfortable but like all things in life once you move through these hurdles the rewards are endless.
Enjoy the adventure of being vulnerable, experiment with it and see how it makes you feel and how it changes the dynamic of your relationships, new and old. It feels a bit weird at first but I promise its worth it, trust me I reveal my vulnerability nearly every week in this blog and it has been incredibly rewarding!
With love
L xox
We have a dilemma inside of us which is why vulnerability feels so uncomfortable. Many of us feel embarrassed or ashamed of our perceived imperfections, we want to hide them but to have connection with another person we need to be vulnerable so we have an internal too and fro. People cope with this dilemma in many ways, firstly they become perfectionists. By being a perfectionist we control every last detail of our lives and therefore we believe we are controlling others perceptions of ourselves. If we have everything 'just so' then others will see us a certain way. This is an exhausting approach to maintain. You can see how this puts up huge barriers around you and others don't feel they can get the sense of who you really are behind all that perfection.
The second method is to blame others for having faults, then we become involved in helping others with these faults. We immerse ourselves in others issues and give our time and energy to these issues thereby avoiding facing our own internal conflict. You can spend a lot of time being involved in others problems and not your own.
The third and most common strategy people use is to numb their vulnerability. We eat, drink, medicate, work, spend, shop and entertain ourselves all in the name of avoiding those uncomfortable feelings. As the article points out, "we are the most in debt, obese, addicted and medicated adult cohort in US history" and the same goes for Australia. Problem with this is that you cannot selectively numb and you effectively end up numbing all your emotions including the pleasant ones. On a personal note I can say if I am having a challenging day I find myself wanting to engage in a lot of these activities, shopping being my weapon of choice. However I find no matter how hard I try to avoid them, the uncomfortable emotions come out one way or another so I am slowly learning to process them rather than run from them.
So what can we do to cultivate vulnerability? There are three particular personal qualities that can be encouraged to allow our vulnerability to shine and invite the human connection we crave. Courage, compassion and authenticity.
Courage means to accept ourselves as we are and be willing to be imperfect. Then we need to take this further and show our imperfections to the world. We don't hide. We keep taking the risks to step forward into friendship, family and intimacy. To have love and belonging you have to feel worthy of it.
To encourage feeling worthy we need to develop the second quality, compassion. Compassion not just to others but first and foremost to yourself. This starts with the littlest of things; is the voice in your head kind to you or are you letting it get away with being a tyrant? Do you take time out to listen to yourself and how you feel or are you just relentlessly pushing yourself? Once you practice self compassion it opens the gateway to living in the moment. It frees you from the exhausting task of constantly living in denial and allows you to just be. As a Mum I think we are so caught up in the well being of others we sometimes forget about the most important person, but we do our whole family a favour when we are compassionate to ourselves because we all know when Mum falls apart everything falls apart it is crucial to be kind to yourself.
The last quality to cultivate is authenticity. Letting go of the person you try to be and just being who you really are- warts and all. How liberating is that? Here is where vulnerability becomes powerful, once you show your true self to others they cannot help but to love and respect you and feel a deep connection towards you. Revealing your true self can be scary and uncomfortable but like all things in life once you move through these hurdles the rewards are endless.
Enjoy the adventure of being vulnerable, experiment with it and see how it makes you feel and how it changes the dynamic of your relationships, new and old. It feels a bit weird at first but I promise its worth it, trust me I reveal my vulnerability nearly every week in this blog and it has been incredibly rewarding!
With love
L xox
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