Today I feel vulnerable. I feel open to life on a deep level and feel that I’m truly showing up. The world is seeing The Real Me and I am sharing myself with people in a honest way. The thing with doing this is that I sometimes (naturally) get rejected. If I express a certain wish or need to someone and that person does not want to meet me in that, it hurts. It is then very easy for me to dig myself into a rather dark hole where a lot of feelings reside; not-loved, ashamed, sad, hurt, unworthy, not good enough, etc.

I can choose to sit in this hole for a long time. It’s quite comfortable there in a way. It is also familiar because I have for sure spent some serious time there before. I feel there is a certain winning to sit in this hole because it can make me a victim and that automatically means that I don’t have to show up. That I can remain safely on the sidelines of life. I can sit in this hole and lose myself in the poor me-space. Right? I believe there are people who live their entire lives in this hole.

I truly believe this is a choice. And that what it takes to come out of this hole is a large dose of awareness and willingness to look inside oneself and face what is there in a honest way, with or without professional help. This hole where I believe growing is hard and nothing can fully bloom.

Choosing to sometimes feel truly vulnerable is such a necessary and important part of life to me! To willingly and consciously take the risk of getting hurt and feeling vulnerable but to not let that stop you from living your life and showing the world your true self. It’s quite a difficult thing to do and I feel it takes a huge amount of courage to dare to (as Theodore Roosevelt called it) step into the arena.

So now I have written the words vulnerable, ashamed, daring and courage. Anyone come in mind when hearing these words? I’m of course talking about Brené Brown. The woman who was so ashamed that she was crying when she found out that her talk The Power of Vulnerability in 2014 was published on YouTube and TED.com. The woman whose husband then said to her in order to calm her down: So what are people going to google: Brené Brown, vulnerability?? So she said: You’re right, of course no one is going to watch it. As you probably know, today her TED talk has been watched over 50 million times. Life sure placed her right in the middle of the arena!

In her recent Netflix special Brené Brown, the Call to Courage she says:

If you’re brave in your life, if you choose to live your life in the arena: you’re going to get your ass kicked. You’re going to fall, you’re going to fail, you’re going to know heartbreak. It’s a choice. (…) Every day, I choose courage over comfort.

So today I choose courage over comfort and allow myself to lean into my vulnerability. It makes me feel shaky in my body. But the cool thing is that in allowing myself to feel truly vulnerable, I automatically also connect to my power. My power to choose to show up and become all messy in the arena. To get my ass kicked, to fall, to fail and to know heartbreak. Because only then will I also know and recognize love, belonging, joy and a sense of being truly alive. This is the way I want to live my life!

Thank you for reading ♥

Photo: Dlanor S – unsplash.com