"The best way out is always through." -Robert Frost

When Brené Brown gave her moving TED Talk on vulnerability in December of 2010, she had no idea the impact it would have on millions of people. Nor did she realize how it would change her life and teach her a thing or two about her own feelings of vulnerability. She only knew that she'd made a breakthrough in her research—or a "breakdown" to hear her tell it—and that she wanted to share it with the world. Her message was that the only way to find our emotional strength—to believe that we are worthy of love, belonging, and connection—is to allow ourselves to be vulnerable.

We are surrounded by vulnerability; most of us are faced with it every single day. And most of us have become accustomed to avoiding it. As Brené explains in her Talk, we numb ourselves to emotions that make us feel vulnerable: fear, shame, sadness. Instead, as Brené so eloquently put it, we opt for "a couple of beers and a banana-nut muffin." In other words, we numb our vulnerability with alcohol, medication, food. The problem is that we end up numbing the "good" emotions too. It becomes harder to feel joy, love, gratitude. It becomes hard to feel anything.

Most people grow up believing that vulnerability is synonymous with weakness, and we are terrified to show our weakness. We believe that emotional strength is the ability to not be affected, to keep it together, to not show a lot of emotion. People who live by this definition of emotional strength are usually described as cold, aloof, judgmental, or unfeeling. I've probably been described in this way a time or two over the years, since I am one of those people who has always protected my vulnerability, believing it to be a sign of weakness. I, too, have hidden behind an iron wall of protection, and I have known what it feels like to feel nothing. Like so many people, by protecting myself from the bad emotions, I forgot how to feel the good.

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When Brené started researching vulnerability, she wanted to figure out the difference between those of us who were afraid to be vulnerable and those of us who seemed to live life "whole-heartedly", without fear or reservation. She determined that the main difference was a sense of worthiness. They believed themselves to be worthy of love, belonging, and connection. And so they weren't afraid to be seen, to be vulnerable. They were free to feel, to fail, to be exposed, because they were being their authentic selves.

Brené's most simple truth is the one that is the most difficult to remember: that even as vulnerability is at the core of our feelings of shame and fear, it is also the birth place of creativity, joy, belonging, and love. It is through being vulnerable that we allow ourselves to change.

After her 2010 Ted Talk went viral, drawing the attention of 4 million people and propelling her forward on a journey of her own vulnerability, Brené learned something about herself: that at the same time she'd been urging others to be vulnerable, she'd been doing everything she could to stay small, safe, under the radar. She spoke about this realization in the second TED Talk she gave in 2012, nearly two years after the first. She had learned that vulnerability is the ultimate measure of courage, and that the reason why her Talk had touched the hearts of so many was because it had been her "me too" moment. It had been her moment of exposure, when she'd put away her tendency to control and predict and had simply allowed herself to be seen as her authentic self. She'd been an example of vulnerability, and that is all any of us are asking for when we look to be inspired by another person.

You can watch Brené's 2010 Ted Talk here and her 2012 Ted Talk here.

 

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