The Mindset Mentor - The Power of Vulnerability

Episode Date: October 18, 2017

Episode 338 - This might be one of the most important episodes I have ever done. Vulnerability is a touchy subject but I feel like, if mastered, vulnerability can change your life for the better! Want to learn more about Mindset Mentor+? For nearly nine years, the Mindset Mentor Podcast has guided you through life's ups and downs. Now, you can dive even deeper with Mindset Mentor Plus. Turn every podcast lesson into real-world results with detailed worksheets, journaling prompts, and a supportive community of like-minded people. Enjoy monthly live Q&A sessions with me, and all this for less than a dollar a day. If you’re committed to real, lasting change, this is for you.Join here 👉 www.mindsetmentor.com My first book that I’ve ever written is now available. It’s called LEVEL UP and It’s a step-by-step guide to go from where you are now, to where you want to be as fast as possible.📚If you want to order yours today, you can just head over to robdial.com/bookHere are some useful links for you… If you want access to a multitude of life advice, self development tips, and exclusive content daily that will help you improve your life, then you can follow me around the web at these links here:Instagram TikTokFacebookYoutube

Welcome to the MWF Motivation Podcast, one of the top-rated motivational podcasts in the world. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I come out with a short, to-the-point, no-BS podcast designed to transform you from who you are today into who you want to be. There's no fluff here, just life-changing content. My name is Rob Dial, and the podcast starts now. Welcome to today's episode. If you have not yet done so, please hit the subscribe button so that you never miss another

episode. Also, if you are somebody who has been listening for a while and you have not shared this podcast, please share this podcast with someone that you know and love because we're trying to grow. Obviously, we're a large podcast, but a lot of people have still never heard of us. So please, please, please share this with one person that you think will get value from it. And for those of you guys that are interested in where my travels have been, I'm trying to keep you a little bit more updated. I am now back in Rome right now. We are leaving this morning to go head to Florence, where we're going to be for a little while. So that's where our travels are going. And I will finally be back in the United States

in December after six months of traveling all over the place. All right. But anyways, today we're going to be talking about vulnerability. I know it's a hard subject. I can hear all of the gasps out there in podcast land going, oh crap, we're going to talk about vulnerability. I don't want to talk about it. I'm not one of those people that quote unquote does vulnerability. You know, I'm a, I'm a guy. I played football and basketball and I did sports and guys aren't supposed to be vulnerable. You know, that's what I can hear and that's what I've thought up until, you know, as I've been getting older and starting to mature and starting to read books and seeing all of these things. And we're going to split this up into two parts.

The first episode, this episode, the first part is going to be talking about vulnerability. What is vulnerability? Why are we afraid of it? You know, where does our are we afraid of it? You know, where does our fear come from of it? And the second part is going to be how to embrace being vulnerable, how to become vulnerable, and all of the positives that come with being vulnerable as well. So, you know, let's go ahead and dive in. What is vulnerability? Why are we afraid of it? You know, most people in their heads, they think vulnerability. You know, if I'm vulnerable, I'm weak. I'm showing that I'm weak. And that probably goes back to our caveman days. You know, we didn't want to be seen as weak

because we didn't want to be pushed out of the pack because we needed to live and stay in a pack of people. You know, it probably goes back to that. We think of vulnerability as a very dark emotion. You know, it's, you know, vulnerability is the core of, you know, fear and anger and disappointment and shame and all of the most difficult emotions. But vulnerability, besides those things, is also the core of love, of joy, of happiness, of all of the emotions that really set us free and make us feel like real people. And in our culture, you know, it's hard with the ads that we see, with social media, with, you know, little girls seeing magazines with Photoshop of these quote-unquote perfect women, you know, that are Photoshopped to look skinnier and their skin looks perfect and they have more makeup on. So they see this, they see these magazines and they grow up with these magazines and all of this

and these ads. And then they look in the mirror and they go, that's not me. I'm not enough. I don't look good enough. I don't, I'm not pretty enough. I'll never look like that. You know, so we numb vulnerability as we get older. You know, we don't want to open up because we don't want to be disappointed. You know, we want to, you know up because we don't want to be disappointed. You know, we want to, you know, have our armor and keep our armor up to everybody that comes by. You know, we don't want to let anybody into our world because, you know, opening up makes you feel like you're naked. You know, it makes you feel like you're coming out of your skin. And, you know, with social media, it's gotten even harder nowadays on top of the advertising because on social media, you know, people growing up and people who are out there now thinking,

you know, I'm only as good as how many likes I get, you know, on Facebook, on Instagram, on Twitter, how many retweets I get, all of these things. You know, people are starting to think they're only as good as how many likes they get, how many retweets they get, all of these things. And with advertising and with social media, it makes us hard to feel like we're ever enough. And that's the problem. You know, we never feel like we're good enough, like we're pretty enough, like we're fit enough, like we're successful enough, like we're smart enough, like we're thin enough. enough, like we're smart enough, like we're thin enough. You know, what makes it so bad is that we're comparing ourselves to almost impossible to achieve standards. You know, women in ads, they're not real people once they're photoshopped. You know, they're skinny through photoshop.

They have this perfect skin and no blemishes through photoshop and through makeup. So we're comparing ourselves to ads that are near impossible standards. So if we do that, we'll never be enough. You know, if we watch TV, we see perfect marriages. You know, we see these perfect love stories and all the chick flicks and, you know, in movies. And we compare ourselves to the stuff that's written, these stories that are written.

So what do we do when we don't feel like we're enough? We try to hide. We try to make ourselves not be seen. We try to hide behind our armor and, you know, never let someone see the real us. You know, we get into relationships and friendships and, you know, we hide behind the makeup. We hide behind our bald spots. We put our bald spots in hats. You know, we get into these relationships and these friendships and they're all surface level. Because we're too afraid to show people who we really are. Because we're too afraid to be judged and to feel like a disappointment or to be disappointed. We don't want to be let down.

So we don't allow ourselves to be let down. Because it's easier to hide than to ever be let down. You know, it's like we don't want to enter a race because we don't want to have the opportunity to possibly lose the race. You know, that's the way that we think. So we close off. But the problem is, in order to experience the best emotions in the world, the love, the joy, the happiness, the hope, the authenticity, to feel like a real person, the connection with other people, we have to allow

ourselves to be vulnerable. But the problem is we get in our own heads and we think that vulnerability is weakness. We don't want to show that we're quote-unquote weak. You know, it shows that we're not perfect in this quote-unquote perfect world of perfect people on TV and social media. You know, we don't want to seem weak. We don't want to seem imperfect. But when you're open and you're honest and you're vulnerable, you might think that you're seen as weak or imperfect. But when people see someone that's open, that's honest, that's vulnerable, what do they think about that person? What do they think? Think about it. They think, wow,

that person is so freaking courageous. How do they do that? That's such a hard thing for me to do. That's such a hard thing for everyone that I know to do. How does this person have so much courage that they can show their true selves and, you know, be completely vulnerable. So we see a person who's vulnerable, openly honest and vulnerable as courageous. We never see that person as weak, but in our heads, we feel like if we're vulnerable, we're going to be seen as weak. And that's just not the case. I think one of the main problems of being vulnerable is that it leaves us open to uncertainty. And people don't like uncertain situations. They like to be in comfortable situations where they know what's going to happen.

So if we allow ourselves to be open and vulnerable, we don't know what's going to happen. That's an uncertain thing. And we don't like uncertain emotions. You know, if we truly love someone and we open up to them and we tell them that we love them first and we don't hide behind our armor, we get scared. You know, what if they don't do the same? What if they don't love us back? Will they judge us if they see the true me, if they see all of the stuff that I've been through in my past? We feel that it's all too risky and we don't want to open ourselves up to being hurt. And it's not just relationships. Vulnerability is a lot of

stuff besides friendships, besides love, besides relationships. You know, vulnerability is starting a business, you know, following your passion, you know, sharing an unpopular opinion. You know, it's calling a friend who has cancer. You know, it's saying that I love you first. It's sharing your music or your art with other people. That's vulnerability. Trying something new, that's vulnerability. Exercising in public because you're overweight, that's vulnerability. Being accountable, having faith, admitting that you're wrong, asking for forgiveness. All of those things are vulnerability. And the word vulnerable comes from the Latin word vulnerare. I hope I said that correctly. Vulnerare. What it means, it means capable of being wounded or open for attack.

Capable of being wounded or open for attack. We want to be strong. We want to be courageous. We don't want to allow ourselves to be vulnerable because we think that it opens us up for attack with the possibility of being emotionally wounded, which is the hardest wound to take, obviously. It's emotional exposure more than anything else. So we try to close off so we don't have that emotional exposure. But in reality, when you are vulnerable, when you become emotionally vulnerable, you become stronger. You become emotionally stronger. No one looks down on someone that's vulnerable. They always look up to them. To be vulnerable is to truly be alive and experience real emotions. You know, and it all starts as children if you think about it.

As children, you know, if you see a one-year-old, a two-year-old, a three-year-old, about it. As children, you know, if you see a one-year-old, a two-year-old, a three-year-old, they are completely vulnerable. We're born vulnerable. They don't give a crap about anybody thinks about them. They'll walk around naked, covered in peanut butter, laughing, and they'll pee on the lawn because they don't care what anybody thinks. They're not held. There's no standards that they know that they need to be held to. They don't care. They're vulnerable. We're born vulnerable. Society and growing up makes us close off to being vulnerable. So what happens?

Children that are like that, they get older. You know, they get reprimanded. They see what the world is, you know, how society works. They learn things that they can and cannot do, and they start to slowly close off. And then we get to elementary school, you know, and we share secrets with our friends and say, hey, you know, this is my best friend, Johnny. And I'm going to tell my best friend, Johnny, that I have a crush on this girl over here because I feel like Johnny will keep my secret. And then Johnny, three or four days later, tells that girl, she tells everybody in the class, and then you get made fun of. You think that they'll never tell a soul and then

they tell everybody. And you're like, man, that sucks. You know, I was just vulnerable with this person at elementary school. You're probably not saying vulnerable, but you understand. And you say, you know, screw that. I'm not going to tell someone my secrets anymore. I'm going to keep my secrets to myself. I don't want to be, you know, emotionally hurt by telling my secrets and possibly be stabbed in the back. That's what we start to get to. And then we get to, you know, we get older, we get to like our first boyfriend or girlfriend. This is why breakups are so hard is because, you know, you find your first love, you know, you're 15, 16, 17, 18 years old, whatever it is. And you're, you find your

first love and you show them your true self. You know, it's the, you are just like a child. You don't know any better. So you show them your true self, you know, and it makes you so freaking happy. You're over the moon for this person. You're filled with love. You're filled with happiness. And then a couple months later, you see them, you know, I don't know, kissing another person in high school, you know, by the lockers and you're completely broken because of it. You know, you allow yourself to be so vulnerable and then that trust is then broken. You know, it's complete emotional treason. So we feel like, you know what, I'm not going to allow myself to be that hurt again. I'm going to close off. You know, those are our raw and emotional years. That's where we learn to not be vulnerable because we're going to be hurt.

You know, and we know that if it's for certain, if we don't allow ourselves to be vulnerable, then there's no possible way for us to be hurt. So we have these relationships and we have these friendships that are all surface level, but we want that true connection. Everybody wants that true connection. And the only way to get there is through vulnerability. You know, we're all human. We all struggle with vulnerability. There's not one person in the world that's completely open and okay with being vulnerable. You know, we never feel like we're

not enough because of all of these different things. We don't feel like we're good enough. We don't feel like we're pretty enough, like we're fit enough, successful enough, smart enough, thin enough, whatever it is. Because of all of this, we close ourselves off because we don't want to be open for attack, you know, possibly wounded, you know, emotional treason. We don't want all of this, but we do want real connection. But the problem is in order to get true connection, we have to learn to be vulnerable. We have to learn to be open. We have to learn to be okay with being vulnerable and with love and with happiness. So in the next episode, we're going to talk about how to truly embrace vulnerability,

how to become truly happy, how to become truly fulfilled by embracing this vulnerability. And, you know, what I want you to do is between this episode and the next one, think about, you know, today there's two things I want you to do. The first thing I want you to think about how you have closed yourself off to vulnerability. What in your past has happened to you that has made you close off in certain ways? Maybe it was being cheated on. Maybe it was your first love that you told everything to and, you know, you completely opened yourself to and then they broke up with you or something happened and, you know,

they told all of your friends, all of your secrets and, you know, whatever it could have been. What happened to you in the past that has allowed you to not be vulnerable? And how can you go into your future and allow yourself to start being vulnerable starting today? So that's the first thing that I want to leave you with today. Think about it. How are you closing yourself off to vulnerability and how is it going to help you to start being vulnerable again? Number one. And number two, before you go on to the next part of the episode, I want you to ask yourself this question. What can I do today to make somebody else's day better? So what can you do today to make somebody else's day better? If you like the episode, please share it with somebody. I have a feeling this is going to help a lot of people,

especially if you're in a relationship. And if you like this, subscribe to us on iTunes, Stitcher, SoundCloud. I hope you have a great, vulnerable, emotionally strong day. Well, that's it for today's podcast. If you want the show notes for this episode, they can be found at mwfmotivation.com. Also, if you liked this episode, please spread the love and share it with a friend because it's our mission to help as many people as we can. And to keep in touch, you can follow us on Instagram and Facebook.

Both handles are at mwfmotivation with no spaces. Now you know what time it is. So go out and make your dreams a reality.