What is vulnerabilty?

Vulnerable....
I used to think that I knew what this meant. I thought that it was about being in some sort of danger, susceptible to something unpleasant and being vulnerable was something that you didn't want to be.

A couple of years ago I felt that kind of vulnerability and it was crippling. It was uncomfortable, definitely unpleasant and dis-empowering. 
In the middle of this chaos I started a new job and one day I remember sitting in yet another training session trying to focus on listening in on how to create a positive culture in leadership. The session started with a video, this was my cue to zone out for a bit but something about the speaker in the video caught my attention. A woman was talking about vulnerability. She said

"vulnerability is not weakness, it is our greatest measure of courage"

In my head being courageous is a good thing but I had never considered being vulnerable as being courageous, so I was intrigued by this. So intrigued, that after the training session I went and bought a book written by this speaker - "Braving the Wilderness". I read the book on a 24 hour flight a few days later. I devoured the pages. I even read some pages twice - I was that hooked. So I came to learn and understand that vulnerability is actually a strength.
Easy right? Just re-wire my brain to this 'new' definition and I'll connect and build trust and creativity and lots of other positives and life will be fine and dandy!

Then the crunch... or as it is written in the book,

"Here's the crux of the struggle:

Vulnerability is courage in you and inadequacy in me. 
I'm drawn to your vulnerability but repelled by mine."

Oh my goodness, that's it! How did this woman get into my head?

I have now known this for too long, but I haven't been able to shift. My walls became so high to protect myself from being seen as vulnerable (my old definition!) that I dared not peep over to view what's outside.

Then the spiral..... so that must mean I'm not courageous? So if I'm not courageous, I must be cowardly and weak and that is something that I don't want to be so I'll just build that wall a bit higher to hide behind.

I've been behind my wall for a while. 
I know that I have retreated and have become stuck. I also know that it was perfectly ok to do that for a period of time. I needed the silence. In an effort to not expose too much of my life I somehow decided that the answer was to share next to nothing and to enable that, it was about doing next to nothing!

I wrote the first part of this post a year ago. I remember feeling full of good intentions of throwing myself into 2019 with energy and enthusiasm. Then I didn't.... I can't really explain why. There didn't seem to be any obvious obstacles so why did it feel so hard? Why did I question everything and ponder over decisions only to end up not actually doing anything in the end? 

It's a bit like this blog. Full of good intentions to share and capture life events, only to freeze over the publish button. Questions, questions  - is it a bit narcissistic to write about my life, my thoughts, my feelings? Is sharing being vulnerable? Is that a good thing....? So again, I retreated. Too caught up in keeping everything together, not doing anything wrong, not showing any weakness. In turn, 2019 became a year of nothing.  I don't want that again, so I am putting myself out there this year. Big statement. In fact, huge statement! Life goes by so fast so I'm going to capture the moments again. Find my camera, take photos, go places, write about things. 

I have just spent a few hours reading through old blog posts and Facebook entries. I think I miss some of that interaction so here goes, this is courageous vulnerability..... and for some reason it feels a bit unpleasant and uncomfortable.

Bring on 2020.


The speaker and writer that I referred to is Brené Brown