The Power Of Being Vulnerable

From my teenage years, I have been an ardent fan of journaling. I have been documenting my daily life experiences since I was 13. I have accumulated numerous journals over the years. Sometimes I go through some of them to relive past experiences. One of such experiences was my first car accident in the US. It was one of the scariest situations of my life, I thought I was going to be the end of my life. Thank God I made it and am alive to tell the story. I will share details of that experience in another write up.

I have always nursed the idea of sharing my life experiences from my journals with other readers, and eventually turn them into a podcast or YouTube video. I have been procrastinating and postponing this idea for a long time. Why? Fear! So many fears such as the fear of my material not being inspiring to the reader, the fear of being criticized or even being unsuccessful in the art of writing. “How will I write such that it is captivating and have an emotional connection to the reader”? I thought about originality, “how can I be original and authentic in my work”?

I checked the box of originality when I decided to write about my personal experiences. Since they were my personal experiences, they will be unique to me. So, I decided to embark on this journey and soon realized that writing wasn’t as easy as I imagined. I immediately developed a huge respect for all writers no matter how small their work is.

Whilst still struggling with how to write the inspiring, captivating, emotionally engaging and original piece, I stumbled on a Larry King video. This video was recorded in 2011 when he was giving a commencement speech at the University of San Diego. In this video, he shared his story on how he started his radio broadcasting career.

In that video, he explained how scared he was on his first day on the job. Every time he wanted to speak; he was so scared! Eventually his boss came in and encouraged him to get on with it. He eventually got the courage and told his audience that he had being afraid to speak; that day was his first day on radio. He said he learnt a great lesson that day “If you are honest with your audience, you can’t go wrong”.

That was my light bulb moment. The word honesty came alive to me and I said to myself, as I embark on this journey, I will be vulnerable to my audience and I will write with all sincerity and honesty. That day, I decided that I will share my life experiences with the purpose of being educative, informative and helpful to the reader.

I will write to comfort someone going through situations and trials I have been through. I will write to add value to the world at large as the world has become a global village and via internet anyone and everyone around the world can benefit from my experiences. I have a soft spot for helping people, I love to encourage and comfort others. I love to motivate, exhort and generally bring out the best in other people. So why not use my life experiences to do that?

I want to highlight two great take away of my personal experience with the power of vulnerability.

Freedom

I have a deep sense of freedom to share my experiences with a "no holds barred" attitude. As I write, I feel like I am flowing on cloud nine, feel like a never-ending wine barrel. Whao! Suddenly, all my creative juices are flowing.

No more fear

All the fears I had starting out were all gone! The fear of “not being able” …gone! The fear of “stepping out” …gone! The fear of “failing” … gone! Even if I don’t succeed or get as many reads as I desire on my first article, there is a strong force of resilience on the inside of me pushing me to be relentless in my endeavor. The fear of “criticism” is gone, instead I have adjusted my mindset to see every critic as a positive one. I suddenly feel invincible, nothing can stop me now.

This is my first write up on Vocal. It’s a great feeling to finally step out of my comfort zone and face my fears, all because of the decision to be vulnerable.

Vulnerable

pronounced vul.ner.a.ble

(as an adjective) being susceptible to physical or emotional attack or harm

I hope it ignites some fire in the soul of anyone who desires to step out of their comfort zone and do something they have never done before. At the beginning, it was so difficult to put this together, but I finally did. This has been one of the most “freeing” and “set free” experiences of my life. Step out, be vulnerable, live to your greatest potential. Explore the power of vulnerability, with it, nothing can stop you.

I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it