The Power of Vulnerability: Teachings of Authenticity, Connections and Courage

No one reaches out to you for compassion or empathy so you can teach them how to behave better. They reach out to us because they believe in our capacity to know our darkness well enough to sit in the dark with them.

How much we know ourselves is extremely important but how we treat ourselves is the most important.

You can't numb those hard feelings without numbing the other affects, our emotions. You cannot selectively numb. So when we numb those, we numb joy, we numb gratitude, we numb happiness. And then we are miserable, and we are looking for purpose and meaning, and then we feel vulnerable, so then we have a couple of beers and a banana nut muffin. And it becomes this dangerous cycle.

When we lose our tolerance for vulnerability, joy becomes foreboding.

Oversharing? Not vulnerability; I call it floodlighting. ... A lot of times we share too much information as a way to protect us from vulnerability, and here's why. I'm scared to let you know that I just wrote this article and I'm under total fire for it and people are making fun of me and I'm feeling hurt -- the same thing that I told someone in an intimate conversation. So what I do is I floodlight you with it - I don't know you very well or I'm in front of a big group, or it's a story that I haven't processed enough to be sharing with other people - and you immediately respond "hands up; push me away" and I go, "See? No one cares about me. No one gives a s*** that I'm hurting. I knew it." It's how we protect ourselves from vulnerability. We just engage in a behavior that confirms our fear.

Cuando las personas que amamos, o aquellas por las que sentimos una profunda conexión, dejan de preocuparse por nosotros, de prestarnos atención, de invertir tiempo o de luchar por la relación, la confianza empieza a esfumarse y se abren las heridas. La desconexión desencadena vergüenza y nuestros peores temores: el temor al abandono, a no ser merecedores, a no ser dignos de ser amados. Lo que hace que esta traición encubierta sea mucho más

para cultivar una relación, levantar una familia, crear una cultura organizativa, dirigir un colegio, alimentar la fe en la comunidad…, todo ello de un modo que básicamente se opone a las normas culturales que marca la escasez, hace falta ser consciente, comprometerse y trabajárselo... todos los días.