Strength comes through vulnerability, and if you look at the etymology of vulnerability,
essentially, it means "the ability to be wounded".
I propose to you that without risk and challenge, without entering the arena, without putting
yourself in a position that may result in a wound, you can never be strong.
Without lifting heavy weights, how can you gain physical strength?
Without listening to feedback that hurts your ego, how can you get better at your craft,
which we can call artistic strength?
Without going through difficult times in life, how can you gain wisdom, which we can call
psychological strength?
Gaining strength begins with vulnerability.
In my estimation, our relationship to suffering is kind of like our relationship to disease:
in the same way right exposure to disease can increase your immunity, the appropriate
exposure to suffering can improve your ability to overcome suffering.
For example, by lifting the heavy weights, a bodybuilder increases her ability to lift
heavier weights.
Or, an artist puts out a song and receives feedback.
The feedback hurts his ego, but he uses it to improve and put out better songs.
Or, an entrepreneur launches their first product and receives bad reviews.
But by listening to the reviews, they learn to improve their product and increase sales.
The right exposure to suffering can increase your ability to overcome suffering.
Perhaps, sometimes, the path we fear to walk is also the one we need to walk in order to
grow.
But of course, it needs to be said: just because you make yourself vulnerable, it doesn't mean
you’ll necessarily get stronger.
Sometimes we get weaker.
For example, maybe you make yourself vulnerable to a disease and—instead of getting stronger—you
get incredibly sick.
And due to the difficult and long battle your body has with the sickness, you lose some
vital functionality within some of your organs.
Maybe your lung capacity will never be as good as it once was.
Or what about if you break your leg?
You made yourself vulnerable, which means "able to be wounded", but the wound is too
much.
The wound weakens your organism.
Your leg will never be the same as it once was.
Vulnerability opens us to challenge, and overcoming challenge is what makes us stronger.
But there's no guarantee that you'll overcome your challenge.
In fact, we are often overcome by our challenges, and as a result, we become weaker.
But does that mean you shouldn't make yourself vulnerable?
What would happen if you never made yourself vulnerable?
If you never took on any risk or challenge?
Maybe you'd become like the agoraphobic.
An agoraphobic is someone who often becomes fearful of leaving their house and being in
public places.
They fear leaving their comfort zone and making themselves vulnerable.
And as a result, their comfort zone often starts to shrink.
At the beginning they may fear going to a few places, but as their phobia grows, they
start to fear going to more and more places.
Slowly, their comfort zone starts to shrink and shrink, until at last, it's just a small
point.
In essence, they’re getting weaker, because their ability to overcome suffering is regressing.
And what would happen to the writer who never put their work out there?
The writer who fears finding out they aren't as good as they thought they were? They will
never get better.
They may protect themselves from negative feedback and having their feelings hurt, but
they'll never improve their skills.
Or what about the teen who wants love but fears rejection?
Their lack of vulnerability protects them from rejection, but it will only magnify the
pain of loneliness.
Or what about the man who fears being too emotional?
He may protect himself from the pain of being judged, but he’ll never learn to master
and express his emotions in healthy way.
He’ll never get over his fear of judgment, and as a result, because he doesn’t express
himself authentically, he’ll struggle to find people who accept his authentic-self.
So vulnerability opens you up to being challenged, and by overcoming challenges you can become
strong.
And of course, by accepting a challenge, you risk being overcome by that challenge too,
in which case, you might become weaker.
We have to take on the right amount of challenge, which is a topic for a different video.
But at the end of the day, this fact remains true: before you can be strong, you must be
vulnerable, and by refusing to be vulnerable at all, you will definitely become weaker.