We’ve been trained to work to be right.
Think of your school tests. Big red marker amplifying your ‘wrongness’ and a cute green checkmark accentuating your ‘rightness’. Okay, maybe some things have changed, but the development of human nature hasn’t. Most of us still have the need to be right, to hold firmly to our side or point of view, and will do whatever it takes to NOT be wrong.
Enter Vulnerability and why? (The quality or state of being exposed)
Vulnerability carries with it a few key qualities, and none of them are about giving up your capacity to be right, your views or your capacity to be self-reliant. It does, as the definition suggests, come with this precarious sense of exposing oneself. For most of us, this exposure is about being seen as wrong or not sufficient to carry out life.
Vulnerability carries with it a few elements, three of which are humility, curiosity, and connection.
Vulnerability has utility. It allows us to work better with others, take in others ideas that can magnify ours or make our ideas more efficient, as well as get what we want at a potentially accelerated rate as we infuse more hands with more skills and more knowledge.
In order to work well with others, and in order to get what you want in life, it often takes cooperation and a surrendering to the idea that you have to be right or that you have to do things on your own. In fact, if you look at most of the areas of your life, you are already cooperating and utilizing or relying partly on others to have your life organized the way it is.
Who made the bank to hold some of your money in?
How about your credit cards? Did you make them?
How about your dinner? Where did you get the food and who all was involved in that?
Did you create hydro, gas and electricity? How did things get built? Who checks on the delivery of them to ensure it all works?
Changing a tire on your own?..who made the tire? Who made the tool to torque it?
If you run a business, who buys the product?
So many, countless in fact, areas of your life are woven into the community in which you live with others and rely on others already. The reality is that very little is done on your own in the modern world.
Vulnerability and the Big Three
So to be vulnerable, requires us to surrender to the idea and notion that we need to know everything, be right about everything, and be self-reliant on everything.
So the being-ness that comes with vulnerability, which is the state of being in which we feel exposed, really is captured with the human expressions of humility, curiosity, and connection.
Humility is the recognition that each one of us, when in communion with each other, requires exposure to who we really are. We have parts that are stupid, and parts that are smart, we have parts that are rude, and parts that are pleasant, we have parts that are kind and parts that are mean. Humility is the human expression that shows others that we see them in us, and us in them. We have parts we like and don’t like, and they as well have those same parts, some they like and other they don’t like. That recognition allows an opening to receive and be seen and ultimately exposed for the parts we don’t like.
Curiosity is the capacity to ask questions and set aside for the moment, our defensive filters of being right, that keep us from being seen more authentically and more real. Curiosity is what explorers and adventurers’ use to discover and explore new ground, new ideas, new insights, and new territory. It allows novelty to enter into our life, without the need to defensively bind our life to what we think we know to be true or the attachment to have things exactly the way we think it should look. Did the early explorers need the land to look a certain way, or were they exploring for the sake of discovering that which they didn’t know?
Connection No true leader comes without a team of amazing people to assist in fulfilling a vision, and if your life is your vision, chances are it won’t get accomplished to the same capacity if there isn’t the capacity to connect with others and invite this connection to bring new ideas to the table for your benefit. A single person has limited capacity, although a single person can hold a massive vision, the execution of it generally requires a community of people with an array of skill sets, talents, and genius in their own right.
This is what it takes, humility, curiosity, and connection to invoke the state of vulnerability to ensure that your life, your dreams, and your vision come to fruition in perfect time. By accessing greater moments of vulnerability, you open the door for life to bring you the people, events and circumstances needed to lift your life to the next authentic place.
