Vulnerabilities - weakness or strength?

The Power of our Vulnerabilities

Understanding, acknowledging and being comfortable with your own vulnerabilities, allows you to understand yourself, your opponents, and be more compassionate to the most vulnerable.

People are often afraid of being vulnerable or exposing their vulnerabilities, for fear of it being a sign of weakness or an opening for someone else to attack, not understanding that it often is just a reflection of another’s vulnerabilities shared by many, making one more relatable, approachable and more fully understood.  Vulnerability can be a motivator for greatness or it can propel darkness fear and hiding leading to missteps, and a cloak of incorrect action.

You see, you are either willing to confront what scares you and become vulnerable, believing that such vulnerability will open you up to a greater connection and understanding and ability to do the work necessary to evoke change, or you cower away from the fear of exposing what you believe makes you most vulnerable thereby creating divisions, walls and an attackable façade not grounded in truth to be scrutinized and ridiculed by others, the very thing you were afraid of and seeking to avoid in the first place. In actuality being vulnerable often opens you up to the greatest gifts in your life, love, compassion, connection, acceptance, and understanding.  The easiest example lies in the fact that without being vulnerable no one would experience love. True love always comes with exposing and sharing vulnerabilities with your partner, your love which bonds and connects and strengthen that love.

As a business person, without understanding, acknowledging and speaking your vulnerabilities with your team, you cannot plan to protect and correct the sources of such vulnerabilities, or see the power of such vulnerabilities, which can be great assets rather than pitfalls.  The athlete must reflect on her vulnerabilities to grow and evolve, the lawyer must understand the vulnerabilities in her arguments in order to solidify and strengthen her case, society must not turn away from its most vulnerable people or most vulnerable resources or it is doomed to collapse, doomed for failure. 

Vulnerabilities are strengths, not weakness, they empower and build-up not breakdown, they evoke growth, evolution and change. When you Google “vulnerable” you get “susceptible to physical or emotional attack or harm”, and “vulnerability” you get “the quality or state of being exposed to the possibility of being attacked or harmed, either physically or emotionally.” This is accurate, except it is your framing or lack of understanding of the source of your vulnerabilities that opens you up for such attack, not the vulnerability itself. Confront and explore your vulnerabilities, as we all have them, we share many of them, they aren’t unique to you, and as such neither is the power or solution or greatness that lies within to discover.

There are many great tools and writers on this subject, one of which I would recommend if you are ready to explore is Brene Brown. In her book, Daring Greatly, Brene Brown helps you to more fully understand the greatness that lies within the embrace of the vulnerable.

Noted Suggestion: Whenever a book is recommend, for those that desire a more immediate less time-consuming method, then seek out the YouTube video clips of the recommended authors.