Is your vulnerability on autopilot?

What is it to be vulnerable anyway? Sure, we hear the word often around emotional and relational intelligence circles. We hear that vulnerability is our pathway to connection and I agree. But after so many iterations, the word itself can begin to defy its own nature. It begins to belong to an expression, an idiom, a default mode. The idea, as with many, is shared so widely that its overuse can lead to its demise. Over time, its impact dulls and we aren’t experiencing vulnerability as the sincere conduit for connection it stands for. So what does it mean to be vulnerable? Maybe it’s questioning the way you’ve been doing things just a little bit. Maybe it’s allowing yourself to redefine what vulnerability has meant to you so far in your life. Maybe it’s expanding the definition of vulnerable beyond the scope you’ve grown used to.

Redefine vulnerability by redefining how you apply it in your own self-inquiry. Like mining for raw minerals in the earth, we cannot work on parts of ourselves until they’ve been excavated. We choose to discover them from beneath the surface. Now they can be weathered.

And so when you show up to a conversation vulnerably what part of you wishes to expand its definition? What longs to be redefined? To be vulnerable on behalf of expanding your approaches to everyday choices is to show up courageously in what you don't yet know. And the unknown is extremely vulnerable.

You may be thinking you don't know your vulnerability. But I assure you, your vulnerability knows you.