09 Feb Being Vulnerable is Your Second Greatest Superpower

In today’s article, discover why being vulnerable is your second greatest superpower. 

Hello!

Once again, thank you for reading this newsletter! I’m excited to be sharing thoughts, discoveries, and an occasional tool that you can use to bring even more clarity, focus, ease, and grace into your life. 

When you are demonstrating one or more of the above four principles, you inevitably make a difference in the lives of other people. Isn’t that really, in the last analysis, what you desire? To know that your life has counted for something. That the ones you love have lives that are made better because you were here. Think about that for a moment, please.  What I offer you next is a different perspective on what it means to be vulnerable.

To be vulnerable is to allow the winds of life to blow
freely over your soul. To let life in on life’s terms.

This may seem like a tall order. Something that’s impossible to do. However, this principle of what it is to To Be Vulnerable is intimately linked to your first superpower that we looked at in an earlier newsletter: 

 Nevertheless, I am Willing.

There’s a balance between these two principles. A Yin/Yang energy, where “I am willing” is a direct, deliberate declaration. When you say this to yourself, you’re ready to meet the challenges that inevitably confront everyone. You can be willing to do what you don’t want to do. What you think you can’t do. What’s too difficult to do.

“I am willing” takes you past your imagined limits toward your goals and dreams. No one has ever reached what they love unless they were willing to stretch and grow from where they currently are to where they wish to be. 

For example, it may seem easy to handle an immediate influx of a great fortune. However, you can read about people who have won millions of dollars in a lottery, only to have wasted and lost most of it within five years. When interviewed, many of them report that in retrospect they see that amount of money was too much to handle. They hadn’t been willing to listen to the advice of wealth managers who urged them to put that money aside for one year in order to learn how to work with it.

Being Vulnerable

This is you saying “yes” to whatever is there, waiting for you, as you take those steps toward the life you wish to live. It is “softer,” and yet just as courageous a stand as “Nevertheless, I am willing.” It is an open hearted, welcoming view. 

Jalalladin Rumi, a spiritual leader and poet, captures Being Vulnerable in the following poem. I am grateful to Coleman Barks who is willing to share his translation of it. Please read it more than once. You’ll see the unbridled courage and strength demonstrated in this view that clearly lets life in on life’s terms.

A teaching story translated by Coleman Barks

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.

Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,

some momentary awareness comes

As an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!

Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,

who violently sweep your house

empty of its furniture,

still treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you out

for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,

meet them at the door laughing,

and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,

because each has been sent

as a guide from beyond.

Thank you, once again, for coming to this newsletter. It’s my intention that each issue brings you something to lift you up and support you on your hero’s journey.

Until next time!

Hugs,