 this is where you're gonna be the most vulnerable. And it is your fears and insecurities about yourself and the world around you. As you know, if you knew what I fear in life, you can use that information to manipulate me. If you know what I'm insecure about, you can use that information against me. In fact, we have a whole field of people who look to understand people's insecurities so they can sell them products. It's called advertising. And that's what advertising is about, to exploit people's fears and insecurities and offer them solutions to those fears and insecurities. Because it carries the most risk, this is something that you wanna save for people that you feel very good about who has been matching you with light disclosure, who are now sharing your values and concerns and worldview. So now you can feel good that we can go to this next step. Your fears and insecurities should be shared with people who have earned it. If those people haven't earned it and you go directly to your fears and insecurities, it can be overwhelming for somebody to hear these things. And your fears and insecurities are not only verbalized, through long periods of interacting with each other, you begin to see it in people's body language. The words that they use, how they describe their experiences. This is why throughout that process of getting to know somebody, we start to get an idea of what those things are. This also gives us some cues of whether or not we're willing or able to share these fears and insecurities. Now, a couple of things I wanna point out. You might be sitting there thinking, oh, okay, so now I can only get vulnerable with people who share my beliefs or share my political views or have the same interests. Not at all. But if you're on another side of the political aisle, if you have completely different views or beliefs around the world and you share them in that medium disclosure, is that person using them against you? Is that person calling it out, making you feel bad for expressing it, making fun of poking or even being sarcastic? And I have to point this out, growing up in the Midwest, I love sarcasm. I use sarcasm all the time to joke around, to get people warmed up and feeling comfortable. But when we're talking about rapport, when we're talking about throwing jelly beans into that vulnerability jar, that is not a place for dark humor, sarcasm, cutting people down. So that's not to say that, hey, I don't have friends who are completely on the other side of the political spectrum, or I don't have friends who have completely different beliefs about morality, religion, or anything else in the world or even different values. But if I'm going to express my values, I expect my friends to acknowledge, understand and appreciate my values even if there's differences, not use my values against me. And when someone does, I start to disconnect from them. So for example, I quit drinking about nine months ago and I pay attention to how people react to that. Some people react just fine even though they love drinking, but some people will crack jokes at my expense. Oh, you must have been a heavy drinker. Oh, wow. I now recognize that I don't feel comfortable getting more vulnerable with that person. I don't feel comfortable getting to my fears and insecurities with that person. Why? They're using my medium disclosure against me. They're introducing me to people, oh, this is sober AJ. That's not someone I'm going to feel comfortable progressing with in a relationship that'll end up in the acquaintance or someone I see time to time. So part of reading this, part of understanding these levels of vulnerability is how are people reacting as you throw that jelly bean into the jar? Some people might react really supportively and acknowledge and affirm your beliefs and values even if they're vastly different than yours. Others might use them as a weapon, might call you out, throw you under the bus, poke fun at it. And I just take account of that and realize, well, we're not ready for that next level of vulnerability. And maybe that other person's fears or insecurities are getting in the way. So that's how I'm calibrating in my conversation. And as we said, we're not just jumping into religion and politics on a first meeting, a first hangout at our social sales event or even third or fourth meeting. But as you start to warm up to people and you start to see the dimensions to their lives, you can start to feel a bit more comfortable adding some of those jelly beans into the vulnerability jar.