Vulnerability: The only way to succeed in life
Being vulnerable is the only way for you to be exposed to success.
Being vulnerable is uncomfortable. Nobody wants to appear weak in this harsh society. We are all competing to see who will survive at the end of the day. We are taught to compete, achieve, and overcome.
Growing up, no one has ever taught me to become vulnerable. Vulnerable is deemed as weak, frail, and stupid. For years, I’ve avoided putting myself out there because I fear vulnerability. I fear being exposed to failure, and without myself knowing, I put myself out of opportunities.
I realize, to seize opportunities you have to expose yourself to danger. The thought of being exposed to danger used to make me shiver. Why would a sane person willingly walk towards danger? Well, because only in danger there is opportunity. Only in vulnerability, there might be success. Chances are, success will never come your way if you’ve never made yourself vulnerable.
Hence, these are a few things why you need vulnerability.
First, vulnerability helps you discover more of yourself. I have to admit, the courage to face yourself head-on isn’t effortless. In you, there lie so many things, bad and good. Sometimes, all you want is to find the beautiful and enchanting side of you, and you tend to resist the darkness in you. When you start covering one side of yourself, you’ll find yourself covering up more and more, until. . .you lost yourself. Just a suggestion, there’s nothing more terrible than not knowing yourself. Not knowing what you want, where you want to go, why you’re doing a certain thing; sooner or later you’ll start to feel empty. No sustainable success can appear out of emptiness. You need to feel whole to keep going.
Second, vulnerability enables you to take risks and start walking that talk. If you’re the kind of person that will always prevent yourself from getting hurt, you’ll automatically prevent yourself from anything risky. But, great things in life bring great risks. It’s a package. You don’t get to choose only one and abandon the other. By giving space for vulnerability, you encourage yourself to be brave enough to make decisions and walk your talk. Unless you give space for vulnerability, you’ll be stuck in dreaming the thing you wish you’d do but never had the guts to do so. Only by taking action will you ever move forward and closer to the things you want to achieve.
Third, vulnerability makes you fully understand life — that sometimes things don’t go as planned, and it’s okay. If you don’t give room for vulnerability, then you’ll end up only experiencing half of the things life offers you. By only receiving half, you won’t get the whole picture. It will leave so many blank spaces because you choose to avoid and ignore certain things in your life (mistakes, failure, disappointment, etc.) when those things might just be a valuable lesson for you to pick up in life. You’ll probably make the same mistakes numerous times without learning why and what. You have to look at life as a whole: good and bad, success and failure, satisfaction and disappointment.
It’s not too late to muster up the courage to face vulnerability. I just started, have you?
