more vulnerability

One of my biggest pet peeves has always been when someone takes credit away from someone else. I’ve seen this most often in the form of a person answering a question in class correctly, and then another person in the room says something along the lines of,”I knew that answer too, but I just didn’t raise my hand.” For some reason, this really gets to me. I think it’s the thought that if they feel compelled to share this sentence after someone else has already answered, why didn’t they just raise their hand? I would be willing to guess that most people that use this line didn’t actually know the answer like they are claiming, but if we put that aside, what stopped them from speaking up in the first place? Furthermore, what stops anyone from speaking up when we can/should?

Until last summer, I generally associated the word vulnerability with weakness. I had this image in my mind that being vulnerable would make people think less of me, and I wanted to be seen as confident and strong. I then read Daring Greatly, a book by Brené Brown, which changed this perception on vulnerability drastically. If you haven’t read this book, I encourage you to go find a copy of it to read today, and you can find a link to her TED talk on “The Power of Vulnerability” at the bottom of this blog.

She begins the book by quoting Theodore Roosevelt, who said:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

Brené Brown’s book and research is all about vulnerability, which is likely at the root of why we don’t speak up in class when we know the answer. Making ourselves vulnerable to being wrong stops us from raising our hand in class, but this fear of vulnerability stretches much farther. In fact, a lack of vulnerability is likely in every “safe” choice and decision we make. However, Roosevelt’s quote is the perfect wording to remind us that it’s much better to fail while trying than to have never tried at all.

If I were to never make another mistake, I’d be very concerned about what I actually did, or rather didn’t do, with the rest of my life. Mistakes and vulnerability often go hand in hand, but in the best way possible. If we never take a risk in speaking up to say what we believe or know, we’ll never learn from those who can help us learn more. Maybe I’m alone in this, but I’d rather try something new, fail epically at it, and meet a new friend or find a new passion in the process of it. Similarly, I’d much rather speak up, be wrong, and learn from it, than to keep thinking and believing something that isn’t entirely true. While sometimes it hurts to hear that we are wrong, I’d rather have more vulnerability to learn than to be oblivious to the flaws in my own beliefs.

We don’t learn and grow by being sheltered and unwilling. If we look back at our greatest successes and moments, there was likely a lot of uncomfortable vulnerability that went along with it all. We probably had to put our hearts and hopes in the line, but we do it because it’s almost always worth the end result.

It’s my hope that we all choose to have a vulnerable heart over a hard and timid one.

There’s more to vulnerability.

There’s more to it all.

Here’s a link to Brené Brown’s TED talk, “The Power of Vulnerability”: