blocked blessings

I speak a lot about being real... about being your authentic self and letting nothing and no one prevent you from doing so. I also speak a lot about growth, and the one thing I‘ve learned is that you can’t be real with others without keeping it real with yourself.

I speak for myself when I say that I have been afraid. I’ve been afraid of what could be. The future and all that it holds scares the hell out of me. I’m constantly asking myself ’what if’ and I’ve realized that I’ve lacked the ability to be vulnerable, or at least I’ve been suppressing that basic human trait.

What does it mean to be vulnerable? By definition it means susceptible to physical or emotional attack/harm; in need of special care, support or protection due to risk. When people refer to the act of being vulnerable, most are referring to their interactions with others or with general experiences involving feelings.

Again, I speak for myself when I say being vulnerable is very hard for me in most situations. I’ve learned and I have been taught to protect myself at all costs. If I feel that a situation could backfire, I back off. If I feel that speaking my mind in a situation could result in loss, I keep it to myself. I look at vulnerability as a gateway to pain and why not avoid it? Who wants to put themselves in a situation where they may be negatively affected in the end??

This is where my problem lies. Within the last few weeks I‘ve learned that vulnerability is the key to progressing as a person. Vulnerability is merely making room for endless possibilities. As cliche as the phrase sounds, you truly will never know until you try!

In my last Word, ‘Distortion’ I touched on the blurred line between intention and perception. And in writing that I realized that our ability to subject ourselves to anything outside of our perfect picture is a direct reflection of our perception of the world around us, based on our experiences of course. Most of us base our actions on past reactions.

I’ve confronted a partner/parent/friend about this subject before and it hadn’t gone the way I wanted it to. NEGATIVE, bad vibes, stay away from it.... I applied to my dream job and they chose someone else over me... I’m not good enough, NEGATIVE, I’ll never do that again...

The reason the world turns the way that it does is not based on one thing. There are so many moving parts and due to this, every action has a different reaction despite what we’ve seen, heard or experienced. Truthfully, a lot of us don’t want to admit that life is nothing but one big surprise. We have got to stop blocking our own blessings.

Taking that risk won‘t always lead to disaster, but if it does...think of it as a stepping stone. Everything that happens within our lives is a part of the bigger journey.

Be vulnerable with your feelings! The person you’re opening up to may react exactly how you expected them to react OR they may surprise you and react in a completely different manner. At the end of the day, they’ll react how they want and you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing your feelings were expressed, you did your part. Going after that big career change or moving away from your hometown... you could fail, you could absolutely hate it in your new location but maybe that “failure” is leading you to something better. Maybe you‘ve learned exactly what needs to be done in order to get to the next best thing. You‘ll never know until you allow that possibility to be born. Can we really imagine what our lives would be if we didn’t take chances, if we didn’t make room for those possibilities?