118. Vulnerability & Connection

How to be more vulnerable and build community

Sammie and I deep dive into vulnerability and how it is part of making connections and building a community. Despite having a podcast and writing personal essays, I don’t consider myself a vulnerable person. I always have to take a breath and open myself up to share stories about myself. Sammie is better about being vulnerable in her relationships, but can struggle being vulnerable about her work and at her work.

The advantage of vulnerability is that it allows us to be our most authentic self. We’re saying, “Hey, this is me, and I think I’m worthy” instead of censoring ourselves for others. Sometimes we’re scared though and instead of dealing with our negative emotions choose to numb those feelings with alcohol, drugs, food or social media. Brene Brown points out that we can’t selectively numb a feeling. If we are numbing ourselves to our negative emotions, we are also numbing ourselves to the positive ones.

Something Sammie and I related to was also this idea that the hard part of vulnerability is the desire to control and predict the end result. A part of vulnerability is putting yourself out there without knowing what’s going to happen, good or bad.

So we examine the benefits of vulnerability and how to be more vulnerable. We share our own stories (so vulnerable!) and how we are working to evolve in this area of life.

What are your thoughts on vulnerability? Does it come easy to you or do you find it difficult to open up?

Our partner for this episode is Riverside. We have been using Riverside to record almost all the episodes of this podcast. Click here to sign up with our referral code!

Show Notes:

• Vulnerability: The Key to Better Relationships by Mark Manson

• The Power of Vulnerability by Brené Brown

• Learn more about Michelle’s Sundays by checking out Irena’s beautiful newsletter, The Boonly!