Vulnerability

This is good. . a testament to something I am struggling with daily. . and something that consistently changes my life for the better when I allow it to seep in. . .
Thanks Brené Brown. . .

Find the TED Talks video here


The highlights (the best is at the end) from the speech (haphazardly typed down). .

"And shame is really easily understood as the fear of disconnection - is there something about me that if other people know it or see it, that I won't be worthy of connection. The things I can tell you about it is: it's universal, we all have it. The only people who don't experience shame have no capacity for human empathy or connection."


.there was only one variable that separated the people who had a strong sense of love and belonging and really struggle for it and that was that people who have a strong sense of love and belonging believe they're worthy of love and belonging. That's it. They believe they're worthy.

And so to me, the hard part of the one thing that keeps us out of connection is our fear that we're not worthy of connection.

What the wholehearted people had in common was a sense of courage. And I want to separate courage and bravery. Courage, when it first came into the English Language - it's from the Latin word - cour, meaning, heart). And the original definition was to tell the story of who you are with your whole heart.

And so these folks, very simply, had the courage to be imperfect. They had the compassion to be kind to themselves first. And then others, because as it turns out, we can't practice compassion with other people if we can't treat ourselves kindly.
And the last was they had connection - and this was the hard part - as the result of authenticity. They were willing to let go of who they thought they should be in order to be who they were, which you absolutely have to do for connection. The other thing that they had in common was this - they fully embraced vulnerability. They believed that what made them vulnerable made them beautiful. They didn't talk about vulnerability being comfortable nor did they talk about it being excruciating, They just talked about it being necessary. They talked about the willingness to say, "I love you" first. The willingness to do something where there are no guarantees. . . .the willingness to invest in a relationship that may or may not work out. They thought this was fundamental."

And now my mission to control and predict had turned up the answer that the way to live is with vulnerability and to stop controlling and predicting.


And I now know that vulnerability is the core of shame and fear and our struggle for worthiness, but that it's also the birth place of joy, creativity, belonging, love.


We live in a vulnerable world and one of the ways we deal with it is we numb vulnerability. And I think there's evidence. We are the most in debt, obese, addicted, and medicated adult cohort in US history.
Why? The problem is, and I learned this from the research. is that you cannot selectively numb emotion. You cannot say , "here's all the bad stuff - vulnerability, here's grief, shame, fear, disappointment. I don't want to feel these. You can't numb those hard feelings without numbing the other feelings - joy, gratitutde, happiness. And then we are miserable and we're looking for purpose and meaning.

The other thing we do is make everything uncertain, certain. Religion has gone from a belief in faith and mystery to certainty. "I'm right, you're wrong. Shut up." That's it. The more afraid we are, the more vulnerable we are, the more afraid we are."

Our job is to look at our children and say, "You're imperfect and hard-wired for struggle, but you are worthy of love and belonging." That's our job. Show me a generation of kids that grows up like that and we'll end the problems that we see today.

And this is what I've found. To let ourselves be seen, deeply seen, vulnerably seen. To love with our whole hearts even though there's no guarantee. To practice gratitude and joy. In those moments of terror when we're wondering, "Can I love you this much? Can I believe in this this passionately. Can I be this fierce about this? Just to be able to stop and instead of catastrophizing about this say - "I'm just so grateful because to feel this vulnerable means I'm alive." And the last, which I believe is most important, is to believe that we're enough. Because when we work from a place that says, "I'm enough" then we stop screaming and we start listening. We're kinder to the people around us and we're kinder and gentler to ourselves.