Have you ever had an idea present itself in your life, and you think “That’s interesting. I should look into that,” and then life sweeps you up in its next wave and you forget about it? But then the same concept presents itself from a totally different source and you start to pay attention. When it happens a third time it is the proverbial kick in the butt to go delve right into it.
This happened to me recently. What the universe was prodding me to explore was vulnerability. I saw a mention of a book by Brené Brown called The Gifts of Imperfection. I took note of the author, downloaded the book, and promptly forgot about it. Then someone else mentioned the same author. I got out my e-reader, opened the book, a kid screamed, and that was that. Then a few weeks later someone presented the idea to me that vulnerability may not be a bad thing. Hunh? She asked if I had seen Brené Brown’s TED talks. Okay Universe, I’m listening now.
After the kids had gone to bed I sat down and watched these two TED talks. TEDx Houston, TED talk. Amazing. Life Changing. Perfectly timed smack upside the head. Funny how the universe works like that.
Brené Brown is a researcher. She studies shame, vulnerability, and human connection. I’m sure I can’t even begin to do her work justice, but all I can say is it resonated with me (and I’m guessing the 28 million other people who have viewed her first TEDx Houston talk) in a way few other things have.
Although I think people around me see me as strong and able to put forth my ideas without worrying what other people think, it’s completely untrue. I too am vulnerable to the “shame gremlins” as Brown calls them. Namely “I’m not good enough” and “Who do you think you are?” To be vulnerable is to present yourself and your ideas to the world as is ……. and take the crap that comes back in the form of the opinions of others.
In my professional world my approach goes completely against the grain. I am waaaaay out there, and as far as I can see pretty much unique in how I look at things. In the physiotherapy world I am a pariah in that my approach is not supported by empirical research and a lot of it cannot be measured. I know from my clients that this in no way means what I do doesn’t work, but because I do things differently those gremlins are always there in the background.
So how is being vulnerable a good thing? Brown sums it up in this Teddy Rosevelt quote:
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
To be in the arena is to make yourself vulnerable. It opens you to all the critics, and believe me they are out there, particularly in this digital world where they can easily hide behind anonymity. But to be in the arena also means putting yourself and your ideas out in the open. It means innovation. It means invention. It means creation. It means doing things that aren’t yet “proven”. None of these are possible without vulnerability.
If you want to talk vulnerability, look at Galileo. He was labelled a heretic and nearly beheaded by the Spanish Inquisition for supporting the idea that the earth revolved around the sun and not vice versa. Look at Steve Jobs. I’m sure more than one person told him he was a nut case for presuming that he could take on the established techno giants and make the whole computer experience more user friendly. Consider that as 90 percent of you read this on an Apple device.
You see, the more revolutionary the idea the bigger the arena is, and the more filled it is with stone throwers. What Galileo and Steve Jobs had that most of us struggle with is the understanding that the only protection you need against the hundreds of thousands of stone throwers is the firm belief that you and your ideas are worthy of respectful consideration – that elusive concept of self-worth.
Many of us, myself included, have read dozens of self-help books that talk about the importance of self-worth. As parents it is definitely something we want to instil in our children. But until Brown’s work I’ve never seen anybody make it clear WHY this is so important. The “why” of it, to me, looks like this. When your five year old invites six of her kindergarten classmates to her birthday party, she steps into the arena. When your eight year old raises his hand in class to answer a question, he steps into the arena. When you move into a new neighbourhood and search out friends in your new community, you step into the arena.
To do this makes us real. It makes us human. It makes us vulnerable. When we stop doing this because we have no protection and the stones hurt too much, we lose our authenticity. We lose our heart. We lose our connection to other people.
So how do we teach our children self-worth? In this interview Brown talks about how the most resistance she gets to her research findings is when she tells people that you can’t love someone else, including your children, more than you love yourself. She says that parents of young children are horrified by this and refuse to believe that just because they have things about themselves that they don’t love it can’t possibly affect the love they have for their children. But interestingly, parents of adolescents will reflect and say that the things that they struggle most about with their children are the very things that they have trouble accepting in themselves.
Vulnerability is also facing the biggest and most prolific stone thrower of them all – the one in the mirror – and saying, “Hey look, I AM GOOD ENOUGH. Just like this. As I am.” If we want to teach our children self-worth we have to model it for them. We have to be kinder to ourselves and accept all of our own imperfections. To err is human and so forgiving (including ourselves) should be too. Forget the divine. It’s unattainable.
This whole blog post was inspired by something that happened to me this week, just to hammer this whole lesson home. Thank you again Universe. Did I mention I was listening? In a Facebook group for small business owners to which I belong, the moderator invited everyone to post their stories. The authenticity and openness with which people came forward was astounding. Some expressed enthusiasm, others expressed doubt. Some expressed contentedness, others expressed outright terror at the future. These people threw their true hearts out there into an arena filled mostly with virtual (literally) strangers. What could possibly be more courageous and invite more connection than that? It was with tremendous honour and a huge lump in my throat that I read each and every story. I would like to thank every one of those people for helping me learn this invaluable lesson about vulnerability and the importance of daring greatly, for no greatness is ever achieved without failure and no true human connection can ever be made without baring your soul in all its naked authenticity.
