Book Series 13: How Is Vulnerability Your Greatest Emotional Strength

Choosing vulnerability means you can tolerate the other seven feelings. That is what it takes.

I believe that we are at our greatest emotional strength when we make the choice to be vulnerable.

When you know that the most likely unwanted outcome of being vulnerable (assuming that the outcome is not success) is that you will experience one or more of the other seven difficult feelings (sadness, shame, helplessness, anger, embarrassment, disappointment or frustration), and you know you can handle these feelings, you are more likely to choose more activities or pursuits that elicit vulnerable feelings. It is easier to keep taking risks to pursue what you want.

Choosing to be vulnerable means you can tolerate these other seven feelings. That is what it takes.

Why? Because the feelings named above are the ones that most commonly result when things don’t turn out the way you want. And if you can handle these seven feelings, then you can handle being vulnerable. It doesn’t really matter where you start; it just matters that you start.

You are at your greatest emotional strength when you consciously choose to “put yourself out there” – to take risks to pursue what is meaningful to you.

Yet, if you think about or refer to yourself as emotionally weak, it is typically because you are associating vulnerability with your awareness that you could be hurt; in this case you are not willing to risk facing an unwanted emotional outcome.

In Chapter 1 of my book ’90 Seconds To A Life You Love’, I suggest that the attitude or behavior that leaves you disconnecting from, distracting from, or suppressing your emotional experiences renders you vulnerable (emotionally weaker). When you behave in this manner, you don’t have access to the thoughts, feelings, needs, perceptions, or other streams of information that can help protect you. As a result, you’re more likely to be hurt because you have fewer emotional resources to respond to difficult situations and events in an authentic and beneficial way.

This weeks questions:

What do you do? What are you pursuing that is meaningful to you? Do you “put yourself out there”?

I’d love for you to respond on my facebook group!

Join my group on Facebook LOVE MY LIFE and let me know. I’ll post the question and jump on myself to chat and answer questions you may have, on Wednesday at 3:00 pm Pacific.

To A Life You Love,

Dr. Joan Rosenberg