Vulnerability.

A word that instantly makes me want to crawl into a little space and wrap myself in the safety I can find in anonymity.

"Daring Greatly" is a book written by TED talk speaker, Brené Brown. I sincerely believe this book is one that every person should read and learn from.

Our culture is so saturated with lies. The lie of needing to reach a certain level of success. The lies of needing to be attractive enough. The lies that we need to have our junk together 24/7. The lies that love is all we need to be happy. Lies that our mistakes and mess-ups are to be hidden.

These lies, and so many more, have wounded our culture... wounded you, and certainly wounded me.

Here is how she defines vulnerability:

“I define vulnerability as uncertainty, risk and emotional exposure. With that definition in mind, let’s think about love. Waking up every day and loving someone who may or may not love us back, whose safety we can’t ensure, who may stay in our lives or may leave without a moment’s notice, who may be loyal to the day they die or betray us tomorrow—that’s vulnerability.”

Uncertainty. Risk. Exposure. None of those are words that we wake up every morning hoping, or striving, to feel.

Heck no.

They are hated feelings.

Life itself is vulnerable, as the author put into such good words in the previous quote. Life is a game of continually balancing risk and investing in things (or people) when you don’t know the end of the story.

“When we stop caring about what people think, we lose our capacity for connection. When we become defined by what people think, we lose our willingness to be vulnerable. If we dismiss all the criticism, we lose out on important feedback, but if we subject ourselves to the hatefulness, our spirits gets crushed. It's a tightrope, shame resilience is the balance bar, and the safety net below is the one or two people in our lives who can help us reality-check the criticism and cynicism.”

You and I will spend our lives learning to walk this line well. To love without fear of the result, consider others without the worry of what they think of us, to uphold a reputation true to who we are but not lean on that alone.

“Vulnerability is not knowing victory or defeat, it’s understanding the necessity of both; it’s engaging. It’s being all in.”

This is it.

This is what living a vulnerable lifestyle is.

It is putting down the measuring stick down, no longer measuring ourselves against others or even ourselves.

It is embracing the mess, the unexpected, the tears and joys.

It is learning to love yourself so truly that you can love others where they’re at.

“Living a connected life ultimately is about setting boundaries, spending less time and energy hustling and winning over people who don’t matter, and seeing the value of working on cultivating connection with family and close friends.”

High school certainly isn’t the only place we continually find ourselves seeking, throwing ourselves into, the “populars”.

In our businesses, in our churches, in our neighborhoods, in our social media lives. We need to look up at the people around us, put down the need for acceptance, and love where we are at, and who that brings.

Vulnerability is a need part of community. Community is a needed part of a healthy life. We have become so prided on self-sufficiency that we have forgotten that we aren’t supposed to function like an island, alone. We have become so invested in people’s thoughts of us that we’ve forgotten to let people really into who we are.

We (yes, me too) need to be stepping out of our comfortable and protected bubbles that isolate and step in the open and scary unknown. We need to find authenticity within ourselves and open the floor for others to engage with us genuinely.

We need to lay down our judgement first of ourselves, and then of others.

We need to foster a culture that doesn’t thrive on living perfectly “filtered” lives, but a culture that is permeated with raw and genuine communities.

You need to Dare Greatly, as do I.

Let's Dare Greatly together.