Being vulnerable is a super power

Let's get real

For most of us, the waters we have been sailing in for the past four years have felt a bit deep and wide with a murkiness to them. It’s taken an incredible amount of courage (and support from great people) for us to navigate these waters. Many of us have had to get cozy and comfortable with feelings of vulnerability and uncertainty, feelings I spent a lifetime pushing away. Can you relate?

The thing is…if we make a commitment to ourselves to be radically honest and transparent with ourselves, everything can change. Why? Because pushing our deeper truths under the surface and trying to ignore or avoid them every day actually leaves us more vulnerable in life, not less, because the people we are closest to don't know what's really up with us. It's also exhausting. Ignoring and avoiding truths takes a ton of energy that can certainly be used in more supportive ways.

Our capacity to choose which road we travel is ultimately what gives us our freedom. I said that in 2013 (in The Six Sacred Gifts) and still hold it as true today. We always have choice. What stops us from making it is often fear, doubt or shame yet there is always a choice. And sometimes a bold choice is needed to break us out of our prison so we can step into our power.

A solution

So how about this instead—we find the courage to surrender to our deeper truths, open to our emotional insides, and get real with ourselves. This notion may sound or feel scary but it’s also incredibly empowering and relieving. In my experience, getting real with ourselves is totally worth it in the long run.

Going one step further, let’s start learning how to be more vulnerable, transparent, and authentic with the right people in our lives. Notice that I said “with the right people” and not with everybody. That’s because it’s unwise to open ourselves to everybody, but it’s fulfilling to do so with the right people in our lives. You know, safe people. Trustworthy people. Awake and present people. People who can go there with us.

Consider that not doing so means we hide our most authentic self from the people we're closest to and keep all our other relationships at a safe (and somewhat lonely) emotional distance in life. The greater rub with this is that it also keeps our capacity for authentic loving at a distance. Something that’s increasingly showing up in clients and the people around me is this: We are tired of that game. We realize that it is lonely and unfulfilling long-term.

Basic human needs

People crave authentic love and belonging. In fact, years of psychological research clearly show that a sense of love and belonging in life is a foundational human need. Without it we suffer, struggle to survive and thrive, and tend to experience things like loneliness, anxiety, depression, lack of purpose, unhealthy risk-taking, mental distress, and physical vulnerability.

When we take a radically honest look, humans want true connections, transparency and meaningful relationships, not ones that are based on hiding important parts of ourselves from each other or on the subconscious coping patterns, defensive strategies, or masks that keep us all at an emotional distance from each other. We all have them. No human grows up unscathed because every single one of us takes on psychic distortions, hurts, and untruths through our familial and societal histories, experiences, and conditioning. There's no getting around that. It's part of the reality humans have created since the dawn of time.

Changing the paradigm

The great news is that each one of us is capable of moving beyond this situation. We can change the dynamic within ourselves which then changes the dynamic outside ourselves. When enough of us do so, the reality in which we all live shifts into a new, more fulfilling paradigm all the way around.

It’s a blessing in life to realize and repair the ways our childhood wounds may have hijacked our capacity to be vulnerable, transparent and authentic with ourselves and each other. It’s not that we've spent our entire life being fake but that we’ve spent it unable to clearly see the ways we’ve hidden important parts of ourselves from the people we love and world around us—something we do to stay “safe” without realizing it actually renders us feeling alone and more vulnerable in the end.

I believe that miracles happen when we find the courage to confront ourselves, embrace ourselves with loving compassion, and grow. I mean our whole selves—our buried feelings, our pains, our secrets, our desires, our hurts, our struggles, our regrets, our dreams, our truths. When we do that in a safe and supportive container, everything has a chance to heal and we have a chance to soar.