Being Vulnerable

Our society lacks a healthy view of vulnerability. Some might see it as weakness while others view it as a free pass to vomit their life story on a hapless audience. True vulnerability is proactive, even somewhat calculated, and always courageous. Like plants need sunshine, genuine personal growth and development requires healthy vulnerability.

Between my early teens and early twenties, I thought being vulnerable was a weakness. I thought by compartmentalizing emotions and learning to disconnect my feelings from circumstances I was being strong. I didn’t realize I was instead being a coward. The walls I put up to keep out pain and discomfort were the very walls that kept out connection and blessing. For over a decade, I forfeited a lot of growth and opportunities to build value for others by holding this incorrect view. The walls held my weaknesses in while they kept my strengths from reaching others.

But healthy vulnerability is not indiscriminately exposing yourself impulsively. When abused, it can be reckless and destructive. Vulnerability is allowing yourself to be in a position where you can experience pain and discomfort for a greater good, but it is also being in a place where others are able to cause you harm. Because of this, vulnerability must be used with care and caution.

Going out and starting a company instead of staying at the steady, safe, but dead-end nine-to-five job. Choosing to spend the rest of your life with someone and committing yourself to another human being in marriage. Raising kids. Investing your time and energy into someone who may waste your efforts and not apply your influence. Sharing an idea or a vision with your company and the world around you – a world which may reject and mock your dream. All these scenarios leave you in a state of vulnerability and risk. But they also put you in a position to connect and influence. Vulnerability allows you to relate to others in a more intimate way, in a manner where you can truly make an impact in someone’s life and cause ripples out into the world. Being vulnerable isn’t easy, it isn’t safe and it isn’t comfortable. But it’s necessary. It’s where growth happens. It’s where life matters most.

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