 Hey guys, welcome to today's show. It is a pleasure and a privilege as always to have you here with me in This space for a few minutes of your precious time and attention. I think I've said to you lots of times But it's worth saying again that Your time and attention are to me like fossil fuels once you've burned them. They're gone. They're not renewables like wind And Solar power and so on. So thank you for burning your fossil fuels of Time and attention with me here today for a few minutes I'm going to speak to you today a little bit from material that I've been doing recently with my mentorship group I'll speak to you about that in a couple of minutes if you want to know more about that and be part of that with me About vulnerability. I was speaking with these guys recently on my monthly zoom chat with them about the vulnerability It struck me thinking about this subject that it has never been easy for me and perhaps for you Not for you either and particularly perhaps as men to be vulnerable. I Did not grow up in a home as a baby boomer post-war baby With any concept at all of vulnerability let alone the word being in our vocabulary My parents of course were the post-war generation and I supposed to a large degree they were themselves dealing with as was the whole world with recovering from Years of a world war and of course a particularly in England and Europe And I think the whole generation that my parents represented when I look back were battling what we now call PTSD That term wasn't known then there was no help for people then with those things So my parents, you know got married and had kids. That's what you did back then And started having children at a very young age Unaware that they themselves were battling so much in their adult life that they'd never processed and helped with So I don't judge them or blame them for that being a massive missing element in my nurture and perhaps that was the same for you, too but Growing up then, you know into my teen years in the church world Not just was I not aware of vulnerability and didn't have it modeled in my home and added to that my Hypermasculinity culture my dad created in our home as a sort of hard-bitten stoic coal miner And we had I had three brothers and two sisters six of us Not only was that in the mix But when I got into the church world in my early teens I felt the church also was hopeless in this area of vulnerability Vulnerability in the church world. It seemed to me have become somewhat feminized if that's the right way to say this what I mean by that is Is that it seemed that you had to cry and Express the softer emotions I suppose of gentleness and care and nurture and vulnerability emotionally And be very in touch with those feelings I suppose That to me I saw more in my mother Occasionally and on my sisters but didn't feel that that was Appealing to me as a man again coming from my background. I suppose so I was screwed up with all that anyway But I don't think the church world therefore and certainly when I look back religion Steers well clear of vulnerability or it has its own fake version of vulnerability So I didn't feel helped too in my Christian experience in those early years and certainly the first 20 plus years I don't think in my Christian experience church experience did I feel helped in this area? I Read a great book by the way some years ago that helped me with this written by a guy called David Murrow M-u-r-r-w David Murrow who wrote a book why men hate going to church and he had great insight I felt As to why men do feel that church primarily is a feminine Environment a feminine culture primarily and men don't feel comfortable Welcome safe in any predominantly female environments and cultures And I thought there was a lot of insight he had about that so that book might be a good recommend for you guys if you want to dig deeper into His thinking about that particularly as I say in the church world if that's not your world then Then that book may not be helpful to you But it helped me to make sense of that blind spot that we had in that part of my life Now Brene Brown is my favorite modern-day Voice prophet in this area if you like I love all of her books any of her books you're going to enjoy But her book daring greatly with the majors on this area of Vulnerability and managing shame and guilt and so on and so on I Loved her book and she says in the book things like this vulnerability is like being naked on stage And hoping for applause rather than laughter Or she said it's like being naked when everyone else is fully clothed And she's trying to give language to how painful vulnerability is to us or we think it's going to be and of course why we avoid it And I think the crux of all this is is that I of course Don't mind watching you be vulnerable and Experiencing your vulnerability or you mine But I don't want to be vulnerable in return The vulnerability I think is courage when I see it in you But I feel it's a weakness and an inadequacy when I see it in me So I'm drawn to Your vulnerability someone else's vulnerability, but I am repelled and disgusted And ashamed of my own vulnerability That's the complexity. I think of this whole area of vulnerability for all of us as humans maybe especially For us as men coming through the pandemic year has made me aware of How vulnerable we've all become globally because we have lost so much from which we gained our Immunity from being vulnerable what I mean by that is we've lost jobs and we've lost loved ones and we've been so Disrupted and disoriented and so much of our worlds and our incomes and Our points of identity and certainty have gone and it's been replaced with danger and uncertainty and fear and risk and instability And so we've been thrown into I think a whole realm of vulnerability That's part of what we've had to deal with in the pandemic the less obvious pandemic of a Lack of vulnerability has been exposed to and I've certainly gone through variations of that as I've tried to pivot Like you guys into reinventing myself to have an online voice in my case or whatever it may be for you So I think we've gone through and are still coming out of a very vulnerable Season of life for us globally And I think there has been some work for us to do and will be work for us to do as we recover from the pandemic year in This area of vulnerability if we want to if at all we tracked what I just said if we're all aware That how the pandemic made us feel because of the loss that we experienced those feelings that we had What did we do with that? Did we concrete over them? Did we get into distraction and avoidance behavior? So we didn't have to deal with that Vulnerability because I think in there is good work for us to do I think in there is a lot of self-discovery is a lot of unearthing of things probably going back to our childhood No, it's been true for me but are to do with why we go through life Avoiding this realm of vulnerability that sometimes something in life like a pandemic or some other upheaval in your life throws you into a sense of vulnerability That we either run away from or we run into and explore and get curious about which is increasingly what I'm trying to do Certainly in this last sort of 15 years or so of my life If I said to you finish this sentence From Brunet Brown's book an exercise like this if I said to you finish this sentence vulnerability is And then you fill in the blanks. What would you write down vulnerability is for you? An examples would be is vulnerability speaking your mind. That's been a big thing for me as a public speaker Is vulnerability asking someone for help in something that you feel is quite private or you feel perhaps shame or guilt around That's been a big thing for me, too. I've always been hopeless at asking for help I've been good at giving help, but not asking for help again That's something I spoke about at length with my mentorship group a couple of Zoom chats ago who can help me and who can I help was the topic of our discussion? Perhaps vulnerability is learning to say no and finding your no voice That's especially tough if you've been raised as a people pleaser and Saying no was always something that you felt got you in trouble as a child and increasingly as an adult We feel socially awkward Sociologists tell us by saying no Because of what we think it makes people think about us when we say no That we're unkind we're unhelpful. We're not supportive and so on is that a vulnerable zone for you finding you no voice Is it standing up for someone like many that many of us have done recently on the whole racism issue in the world? I know I felt vulnerable when I've done posts about Racism and had so much negativity a lot of positivity to by the way, but had so much trolling and viciousness Express to me on those posts and yeah I felt very vulnerable standing up for and speaking up for and being an ally to black and brown people is There's something in your life where you feel Vulnerable when you speak up on behalf of someone else that can be very real for us And what happens is we stop speaking and we shut down Because it's too painful and then our voice and support is lost For the person that relies on it from us is getting out of your depth of vulnerable for you Would you say vulnerability is being out of my depth? We've all been there as I said in this past year. Is he asking for forgiveness? That's a vulnerable thing to do because you can't control the outcome is Having tough conversations. That's a vulnerable thing to do like the racism issue Starting your own business perhaps some expression of your creativity that you've put out this last year as many people pivoted to become More creative expression of themselves Was that a vulnerable things very vulnerable to share your creative ideas or your creative work? Whatever it may be with the world and then hope that people like it Respond to it. I kind to it or buy it if it's something you're selling. That's a vulnerable thing a What about going for a new job or starting a new romantic relationship or what about losing a job? What about having a faith? And being confident in your expression of that faith in a world that doesn't really Appreciate and see value in that often so that would be true in Europe What about waiting for the outcome of a biopsy that you are of course very nervous about the report coming back negative What about working out without a year? We've all you know been outdoors more and taken up Exercise more Do you find that vulnerable to to go out and jog if you're not in good shape? You don't look like you're in good shape or go to the gym the self-consciousness of going to the gym and working out That could be a really vulnerable thing for people so they don't do it and that's a shame What about reaching out to an estranged family member something? I did a couple of years ago In in a really scary way with my estranged father Yeah, what is that something for you? single women Dining out alone one of my team told me that she was out At a restaurant dining alone when she went to the restaurant that the guy at the door said Is there someone else with you in a way that he couldn't make sense of her dining on her own? And so she felt vulnerable with his response of course she was very confident and said I do this all the time as if to say what's the problem kind of thing in this modern world because this wasn't an old guy Asking the question that might explain his kind of old-fashioned mindset But yeah for single women and as I said earlier, you know for single women doing things that people think you should do as a couple That's a vulnerable zone. Perhaps if that's your situation in life And as I said earlier for black people, you know a black person right now, especially in America There's a vulnerability attached to the whole Systemic racism thing in America You know a black person being pulled over by the cops and so on and so on So I don't know what would you put vulnerability is it's not a bad thing to do Just privately on your own don't share it with anyone as to where you feel this is where you can begin to do work According to what you think the priorities would be on the list you come up with I think 50% of the things in that list I just mentioned by the way Of all the things I felt vulnerable about over my life and certainly recent years You know I think honestly this too very few people have earned the right and the privilege of seeing the ugly version of you And I think that's also I would have afraid have been vulnerable because we know that been vulnerable right now for me in one Of these areas would not be a good thing to see an experience often vulnerability doesn't come out. Well, it's not polished It's not set well and it comes out and our worst version of us is what we feel And I think that's why I've always said you have to be so careful who you confide in who you are vulnerable with Because very few people have earned the privilege. That's what it is the privilege of seeing the ugly vulnerable version of us And there's nothing worse than having done that and then someone betrays that confidence and someone tells someone else about that ugly moment You had and then what does is we close up and we decide I'll never be vulnerable again And I've certainly been there in my life And I guess you have too and I talk that at length with my mentorship group and I'm going to say a little bit more about in a minute So vulnerability is based on Mutual trust and it needs boundaries. None of this is about not having boundaries around all of this. That's absolutely essential I Don't mean this, you know TV reality TV show stuff where people are oversharing too much information tell all TV shows or Social media versions of that because that is not genuine vulnerability It is a fake version of apparent vulnerability For the sake of attention grabbing for the sake of shock and awe for the sake of viewer figures or follower figures if it's a post or something and vulnerability really is bankrupt and useless If it's just for its own sake to get the end result of something your ego is after all that Vulnerability is egoic driven. It's not it's not Authentic to who you are an authentic to your discovery of the airy in your life So I don't mean that I know we live in a world where ooh, they were so vulnerable on that show No, they weren't it was scripted and it was choreographed Vulnerability no one was really giving anything away that really mattered to them You know people said to me well, you know, they put out that book or they did that movie or they did that show and When I saw them been interviewed about the book, you know the biography or whatever they were so vulnerable We saw they're ugly. No, you didn't What you did was you saw the end result of Their controlled version of what that ugly would look like the ugly I mean is when you are first ever saying it going through it expressing it. That's why I've always said It's wisdom I think to Speak from your scars rather than from your open wounds. Sometimes vulnerability is an open wound That's the ugly. I mean very few people can cope with that stage of vulnerability When it healed over and becomes a scar from which you've gained wisdom and now it can become not a cry for help But an act of service to others That's when they write the book But I don't mean that when I talk about seeing your ugly. I think you know what I mean you guys Hey, um, I mentioned earlier. I have a mentorship group called the mentorship group. I started it in January 2020 and it's been a fantastic experience For me and I know for those that have joined in that group with me It's such a thing. It's such a I felt very vulnerable about doing this mentorship group I really did I thought why would anybody want that relationship kind of thing with me? What would I talk to people about but now over a year in we're just having a ball and once a month we have a Live zoom conversation together and people get the replays that can't be their life And we talk about things like this or this last year We've talked about of course the vulnerability We've gone through with COVID and the art of improvisation and pivoting which we've had to learn We've talked a lot about boundaries that I mentioned a moment ago We've talked about stress and managing burnout something we have had a lot of in the last year So I think you guys Would love it if at all you're interested in being part of a like-minded group of people That get together once a month and of course have community interaction Through the apps that enable that It's just a great tribe of people from literally all over the world And I would love you to think about getting involved with me in that and if you want to look at that go to the mentorship group Dot-com you'll find more information about that there. Thanks guys for letting me just mention that to you All right a few more minutes, then I'm gonna let you all go get on with your day I think the other thing I want to say about Vulnerability is that there's a few tips. I want to recommend to you in Experimenting with it that I've learned over the years. I think first of all start small Do a test run with someone drop something into someone's mind? That isn't really that important to you, but it You're gonna watch where it comes out next is what you're gonna do you're gonna see whether or not it Finish it up in someone else's lap Just a small thing that is a test of someone's Water tightness if you're like I've done over the years. I've told someone something knowing It's only the tip of vulnerability I'd like to have then I wondered where else it shows up and once it shows up someone else I thought yeah, I cannot therefore trust that person. I'm glad I started small and tested them with little dummy run of a little bit of vulnerability Look for people that you're thinking about being vulnerable with look for are they present and attentive? When people are being vulnerable around them or something vulnerable is being discussed and they're in the room watch for Are they present and attentive? When other people are expressing vulnerability so you're looking for empathy there That you want to make sure it is there if you're ever gonna think of being vulnerable with those people Look for are they connected to their own story without throwing anything away? What I mean by that is look for when they are vulnerable Do they try to minimize and rationalize and tidy up pain and suffering they went through because if they do that with their Own suffering they're gonna do that with your suffering and you want to be vulnerable and not have that done to you Well, we share vulnerability We don't want it to be edited by people trying to tidy up because they do that in their own life Do they value and understand a perspective other than their own is another good way to measure Can I be vulnerable with these people are they non judgmental? Are they non stereotyping of people and things they hear from people you go looking for that Do they value and understand other perspectives other than their own because that makes you a good listener and a good ear for Vulnerable people if you have that skill Do they talk about others with respect because if they don't they won't do it about you after they see your ugly or hear Your vulnerability are they open about their own struggles because that's a good sign That they are also vulnerable people and there's this sense of reciprocation You feel in the energy they have about their own struggles in life and and other people that That share someone else's ugly with others Have you heard them gossiping about someone else's vulnerability in which case make a note and say to yourself? I'll never tell them anything. I did a thing a while back on social media on Types of people to avoid six types of people to avoid when you're in pain They're coming to mind as I'm talking to you now. I won't jump into that with you here Let me talk to you about that some other time but these types of people are coming to mind as I give you this list of Ways to experiment before you go fall on with the vulnerability with anyone anyway, I'm gonna stop there and Ask you to think about before you go where you are what your experience is with vulnerability Don't be harsh on yourself. Perhaps you were raised in a home and a culture and an environment and concepts like Context like me where you were not given a good start in life in this area of vulnerability So don't be too hard on yourself. I hope this Little talk has been helpful to you. Hey, I'd love you guys to please leave a comment leave a review Tag me in do a screen grab tag me in With a comment to take away that you have a one liner that I gave a little bit of wisdom that kind of Brought a light on in your head. Just tag me with any of those comments and let's keep in touch that way Through this platform again massive. Thank you to you for being here with me Have a fantastic rest of your day and I'll speak to you next time. Take care