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Could vulnerability be the key to a better life?

Posted by: Kathryn Terrill (Digestion)
29 June 2012

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Could vulnerability be the key to a better life?

Social work researcher, Dr Brene Brown thinks so. And so do more than four million viewers of her talk on TED.com, titled the ‘Power of Vulnerability.’ For more than 10 years she has been studying vulnerability, courage, shame and authenticity. According to Brown, the deepest longing for human beings is to feel connected; to feel love and belonging. After interviewing thousands of people, she identified clear patterns of living that brought a deep sense of satisfaction, meaning and connection to people’s lives. One of the clearest themes was that these ‘wholehearted’ people, as she calls them, were all willing to embrace and show their vulnerability, to show their true selves, to be imperfect in the eyes of themselves and others, and to know that they were worthy, anyway. These insights lead to the collation of her research into her latest book ‘The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You’re Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are.’ In this easy to read handbook, Brown has identified the key ingredients to move towards ‘wholehearted living,’ and elaborates on how to cultivate them. Here’s a list of the key themes:

Cultivate authenticity and let go of what people think
Cultivate self-compassion and let go of perfectionism
Cultivate a resilient spirit, and let go of numbing and powerlessness
Cultivate gratitude and joy and let go of scarcity
Cultivate intuition and let go of the need for certainty
Cultivate creativity and let go of comparison
Cultivate play and rest and let go of exhaustion as a status symbol and productivity as self worth
Cultivate calm and stillness and let go of anxiety as a lifestyle
Cultivate meaningful work and let go of self doubt and ‘supposed to’
Cultivate laughter, song and dance, and let go of being cool and ‘always in control’

Where are you at in living a ‘wholehearted’ life?

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