How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead

The night before my trip to the Grand Canyon two months ago, I realized that I had not prepared my e-reader with books to read during the trip. So I did some quick research and came across a list of the “top 100 books that everyone should read before they die” from an Amazon editor. One of the books was called “Daring Greatly”, by Brene Brown which discusses vulnerability. Before I get into the summary of the book and my thoughts, she mentioned at the beginning of the book her TED talks and this jogged a memory of where I had seen the “vulnerability” title last year when I was browsing the TED talks. Back then it did not appeal to me but now that I was reading her book, I decided to watch her TED talks which were great and worthwhile watching!

Her book is very deep and delves into a very hard topic – vulnerability. She started off explaining the scarcity nature of human thinking, how nothing is ever enough to humans – not enough sleep, not smart enough, not skinny enough, etc (I could relate to this experience! Do you?!) The list of “never enough” goes on and on. She then used this scarcity theory to explain the difference between shame (I am bad) and guilt (I did something bad). Society tends to shame people and this prohibits improvements as it is not easy to change who you are. On the other hand when guilt is used, because it is related to behaviour, improvements can definitely be made. One good quote that she used on this difference came from the Harry Potter book when Sirius told Harry

You’re not a bad person. You’re a very good person who bad things have happened to. Besides, the world isn’t split into good people and Death Eaters. We’ve all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is the part we choose to act on. That’s who we really are.

As I was reading the book, the issues of parenthood came to my mind. Recently I have been baffled with stories from people around me on how their kids tend to not appreciate their mothers and the sacrifices the mothers made. These stories made me think badly about having kids (after being pregnant for 9 months, losing sleep, losing other opportunities in your life, etc., if your kids don’t appreciate you, you will start to wonder why you had them in the first place!) However, the book made me realise that being a mother (or a parent) means embracing vulnerability. There are so many uncertainties that come with parenthood which you can’t always control such as whether your kids will grow up to love you, their safety, their thoughts and behaviours, etc. Yes you can guide them but the uncertainties of how your kids turn out will always be there and to be able to enjoy the parenthood journey means to accept the vulnerability challenge, be open, supportive and creative about it.

In her book, Brene went through the most common vulnerability shields and provided great advice on how to recognise these and tackle them to be able to dare greatly. Here is a list of the vulnerability armories she highlighted:

• Foreboding joy (thinking of the worst case scenarios during a joyful time)

• Perfectionism

• Numbing (including being a crazy busy person to avoid the truth of life)

• Viking or Victim (the winners or the losers)

• Floodlighting (oversharing ≠ vulnerability)

• The Smash and Grab (smashing through people's social boundaries with intimate information and then grabbing whatever attention and energy available)

• Serpentining (avoiding or backing out of a vulnerable situation)

• Cynicism, Criticism, Cool and Cruelty (I am sure this one explain itself!)

I know that I have used some of these shields in the past such as foreboding joy; perfectionism; and Viking or victim. What are your vulnerability shields? Can you recognise and confront them?

There really is no effort without error and shortcoming and there really is no triumph without vulnerability. (Brene Brown)