More About Vulnerabilty

Dr. Brené Brown

As you recall two days ago I wrote about the importance of being vulnerable. To add to this I’d like to tell you about a social worker who has spent years studying vulnerability. Her name is Brene Brown and her findings are very interesting. You can see one of hertalks here.

Brown claims that our fear of being vulnerable has made many of us go into a state of numbness in order to protect ourselves from fear and other negative emotions, but the process of numbing emotions is not selective. When we numb ourselves from the negative emotions we also numb ourselves from the positive emotions and that is one of the things that is very wrong with our world today.

At the end of this talk Dr. Brown explains some ways to help us escape the numbing and to live vulnerably. The first of these is to be grateful. I’ve talked a lot about gratitude on Good News! and you all know about the importance of being grateful. But her second idea struck me as just as powerful. She says we should “Honor the ordinary.” Doing that is something I’ve done all my life without realizing it, but now to see it as a way to open myself to life added a dimension to doing it that I hadn’t realized. When we take time to notice and appreciate the yellow of the daffodils or the sound of a bird or the delightful squeal of a toddler, we open ourselves up to the world and let joy in.

Honoring the ordinary is a way to connect with the world and with God, and in connecting with the world and God we connect with our deepest self in a very rewarding way.