My Vulnerability Aha Moment

I just had an aha moment about one of my most favourite subjects: vulnerability. Vulnerability is a popular cornerstone career concept for leadership and for life. 

I fervently follow Dr. Brené Brown’s work in this area. And this particular moment arose while I was listening to one of her recent Unlocking Us podcasts. I made a connection that I never made before. And I love when I think about something in a totally different way. Especially when it’s around an idea that I am already quite comfortable with. How could I suddenly be surprised? I think it happens when we open our self up in a new way, even for a familiar idea.

Vulnerability, according to Dr. Brown, refers to uncertainty, risk and emotional exposure. My personal affinity toward vulnerability is that it’s considered the birthplace of love, joy and empathy. Being an empath, this is of particular interest to me. Empaths deeply feel what another person is experiencing from within their own frame of reference. 

Understanding more about myself and developing self-awareness about how my emotional operating system (EOS) functions, including my emotional and social intelligence skills, has always intrigued me in order to get a better handle on my frame of reference.

A frame of reference, also considered our worldview, is a sum total of our values and beliefs gained through life experience. It’s the lens of perspective through which we perceive every new experience. It’s pretty important because we entrust the outcome for every interaction upon the context and quality of it, whether we realize it or not. And this holds true at home, for work, and everywhere in between. 

So my aha moment is that choosing vulnerability implies that for the present moment, we are not showing up as our authentic self. In that moment, we unconsciously slipped back into social convention mode, or ego mode, or any mode that makes it easier to feel accepted and that we are worthy of belonging.

Sometimes our need for belonging and our need to be seen as our true self feel mutually exclusive. 

It’s startling to discover the almost infinite number of imperceptibly minuscule ways that we are willing to betray our truth, our self, to justify our claim to belong or adhere to social norms.

If we were showing up in the truth of who we are, there would be no need to summon vulnerability because our EOS would already be tuned for uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure. When we fall out of authenticity, and this happens because it can feel exhausting and scary to be there, the gateway back is to choose vulnerability. 

So why exactly do we fall out of authenticity? Why is it so scary to set our EOS default to reflect our true self at all times? Since we all long to be seen for who we are, and since this is where our self-worth resides, why not just be who we are?

Sometimes our needs for belonging and to be seen as we are feel mutually exclusive.

I have spent 35+ years trying to unlock this mystery. 

The best I can come up with is that in the well-meaning construct of social order, judgment arises as a way to catalogue, compare and rank stories and experiences. The massive problem with judgment however is that it is subjective, shrewdly belying a way to render punishment in the form of shame for not being enough in some context, the foundation for feeling unworthy of belonging. 

And I definitely know a thing or two about shame. Not from the academic research side; more from the personal experience of it.

I believe that each of us is born with the birthright of self-worth and belonging. It does not take long, unfortunately though, for judgment to erode our innate sense of self, tiny betrayal by tiny betrayal. 

In some way, each of us is on our own Hero’s Journey. The Hero’s Journey is a classic literary structure that's shared by stories worldwide. Coined by academic Joseph Campbell in 1949, it refers to a range of narratives in which a protagonist ventures out searching for what they need, faces conflict, and ultimately triumphs over adversity to become transformed. 

My personal Hero’s Journey, spanning decades, has been a quest for worth.

I believe that each of us is borth with the birthright of self-worth and belonging.

I didn’t fall into working with emotional intelligence (EI) as a random career path, or by coincidence. Just the opposite. I discovered the science of EI 20+ years ago on my long and winding quest for self-worth, and began practicing it daily, along with mindfulness. Joseph Campbell is also credited for saying that, “The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.” 

It’s a privilege that for some of us becomes our life's work.

EI, or the learned ability to inform my responses and reactions in alignment with my recalibrated EOS saved me from continuing to overcomplicate life, and from perpetuating a story about myself that was never true. 

EI helped me discover that my frame of reference was cracked. That my perspective was marred by residual bits of shame and fear. And that when our EOS operates in alignment with our true core self, and we choose to show up and be seen as we are, that’s when life is most simple. When we master our self, we master our life. In every realm of it, from the kitchen table to the boardroom table. 

My own Hero’s Journey is kind of a mess. That’s true. I’ve attached a link to it for anyone who is interested in reading further. 

Equally true too is that every Hero’s Journey is also a story of healing, transformation, perseverance, an unwavering belief in present moment awareness (mindfulness) and in the cosmic intelligence of the universe that tells us self-worth is our birthright. 

We are as beautiful as we are unique, as Rumi, a 13th-century poet, scholar and Sufi mystic taught, “The wound is the place where the light enters you.” And that’s a human truth we all share. 

Best wishes for your journey. It’s never easy. We start where we are. But the truth, and our knowing that we are always worth it, is simple.