But I don’t think it’s as dangerous, scary, or terrifying as getting to the end of our lives and wondering, what if I would have shown up?
Vulnerability sounds like truth and feels like courage. Truth and courage aren’t always comfortable, but they’re never weakness.
What makes you vulnerable makes you beautiful.
The willingness to show up changes us. It makes us a little braver each time.
Staying vulnerable is a risk we have to take if we want to experience connection.
Daring to set boundaries is about having the courage to love ourselves, even when we risk disappointing others.
Because true belonging only happens when we present our authentic, imperfect selves to the world, our sense of belonging can never be greater than our level of self-acceptance.
You either walk inside your story and own it or you stand outside your story and hustle for your worthiness.
Vulnerability is not about winning, and it’s not about losing. It’s about having the courage to show up and be seen.
Courage starts with showing up and letting ourselves be seen.
Joy, collected over time, fuels resilience – ensuring we’ll have reservoirs of emotional strength when hard things do happen.
When you get to a place where you understand that love and belonging, your worthiness, is a birthright and not something you have to earn, anything is possible.
We cultivate love when we allow our most vulnerable and powerful selves to be deeply seen and known, and when we honor the spiritual connection that grows from that offering with trust, respect, kindness and affection.
That’s what life is about: about daring greatly, about being in the arena.
Courage, the original definition of courage, when it first came into the English language – it’s from the Latin word cor, meaning heart – and the original definition was to tell the story of who you are with your whole heart.
When we’re suffering, may of us are better at causing pain than feeling it. We spread hurt rather than let it inside.
In the absence of data, we will always make up stories. In fact, the need to make up a story, especially when we are hurt, is part of our most primitive survival wiring. Mean making is in our biology, and our default is often to come up with a story that makes sense, feels familiar, and offers us insight into how best to self-protect.
I’m slowing learning how to straddles the tension that comes with understanding I am tough and tender, brave and afraid, strong and struggling-all of these things, all of he time. I’m working on letting go of having to be one or the other and embracing the wholeness of wholeheartedness.
Social success is growing into a person that other people can depend on.
We are the authors of our lives. We write our own daring endings.
The truth is: Belonging starts with self-acceptance. Your level of belonging, in fact, can never be greater than your level of self-acceptance, because believing that you’re enough is what gives you the courage to be authentic, vulnerable and imperfect.