The Benefits of Vulnerability
I see vulnerability as sharing your inner experience with others. To me, allowing others the opportunity to understand you better by communicating what you have discovered about yourself is vulnerability.
This can feel like a double edged sword when you put yourself out there you give others the tools to take advantage of what they hear. However, the other side of this proverbial sword is that you give yourself and others the opportunity to connect with you on a deeper level than if you had not shared your internal experience. In fact, it’s not just binary, there are several other sides of the proverbial sword - or perhaps facets to this beautiful diamond - that I would like to share with you, so that you feel empowered to take a stab at sharing more of yourself when your next opportunity arises.
7 Viabilities
Note I’ve had to go through the fire and flames to discover these for myself. I”m sure there are more, but here are the first 7 that stood out to me.
Safety for Others Around You
One advantage of vulnerability is that it gives people you're interacting with the opportunity to feel safer around you because you're sharing your perspective. This helps them understand where you’re coming which helps them better understand what they can expect from you.
An Open Door For Others To Mirror Openness
Opening up creates room for others to open up. It makes people feel safer around you.
Confidence & Clarity
A lack of confidence is often driven by lack of clarity, so as you share your inner experience (itself a sign of confidence even if it doesn’t feel like that at first) you no longer have ambiguity to hide behind.
Groundedness
Most people don’t share their feelings because they think about all the potential outcomes that may happen, and scare themselves into staying closed off, but all of these “potential reactions” holding you back are hypothetical. It’s impossible to imagine all the different reactions someone can have between acceptance and rejection. In this scenario, it’s important to remember we tend toward extremes when considering the hypothetical, and often the actual outcome is a lot less radical.
Fine Tunes Your Expectations Closer To Reality
Stepping into the discomfort of sharing something of yourself gives you the actual feedback of how a person reacts. This is almost never exactly what you’re expecting, and over time will tune your expectations to be closer to reality.
Grit
And finally, being able to navigate these unsure circumstances and come out the other side alive, and most likely not as bad as you imagined, brings with it new found assurance that it’s ok and safe to share the next time an opportunity arises.
The Viability Compounds
This compounds as every interaction you experience acts as a new lesson and frame of reference that stepping into vulnerability isn’t bad, making it slightly easier the next time an opportunity arises.
For example, right now I’m afraid my ideas won't be original or eloquent enough to catch your attention and you’ll stop listening and feel that I have nothing useful to say. I make up that all my effort to organize and communicate my experience with vulnerability will be wasted time and energy. Ironically, if you’re reading this far it means I was wrong and will serve as a reminder to lean into my vulnerabilities in the future.
A Smaller View of The World
A lesson that I have learned from vulnerability however is that this fear narrows my view of the future to one possibility. I may think that the most interesting or impactful idea in this article is my simplification of the definition of vulnerability as simply sharing your inner experience with someone else, but I’ve learned that I don’t get to choose what my impact on others is.
Years later I may hear that it was a different idea that was eye opening to someone. Maybe so much so that they incorporated it into the way they live their life. For this person, perhaps what stuck was the notion that when you share your inner experience it makes people feel safer around you because they better understand where you're coming from. And, after trying it a few times it helped them truly internalize that when you step into your own discomfort and share yourself, instead of hiding your ideas so that you feel safe (EVEN when someone disagrees with you) they feel more safety and respect knowing where you're coming from.
Vulnerability creates this formula that I find shows up a lot in communication. That formula is, if you choose not to share out of fear, you do not get the benefits of the upside. Whether that is the upside of getting what you may be asking for, or the upside of feeling closer to others and them to you by sharing.
Not sharing = 0
Sharing is different. Sharing can never equate to nothing because it is something. Sharing your experience (unlike not sharing) comes with the possibility you may reach your goal of being understood. If we were to make a formula for sharing, we would add a plus since something is certainly not nothing.
Sharing = 0 +
0 is nothing. 0 plus may not seem like much at first. But now something is possible.
The thing about vulnerability is that you don't get to know the lessons that come from stepping into the discomfort of sharing yourself until after you take the action. The tunnel vision I mentioned before limits what you think the benefits might be to a very narrow viewpoint. The benefits of stepping into the darkness and discomfort of vulnerability is that when you come out the other side and look back, you’re rewarded with the growth and learning that come from the experience - all of which couldn’t have been anticipated. Even when you don't get what you want, or it doesn't look like what you thought it would, you are changed by the action and incrementally grow in confidence and resilience.
That change is the +
That + possibility
And that possibility is the viability of vulnerability
Practicing vulnerability is intimidating. Where to start can be confusing. Coaching can help support you in your goals working toward more vulnerability.