Why Being Vulnerable is a Crock of Sh*t

Just because you admit that you poop your pants in public doesn't make you courageous or brave

Here we go into another potentially divisive topic, but I have hit a point in my journey and learnings that this one needs to be addressed. Let me first express my own sincere apologies. I myself have been guilty of following the herd and choosing to use this word that gets a plethora of golf claps, finger snaps, approving nods and pats on the back. No more. Simply because it is the wrong word, it is a weak word and it is demeaning for what is actually occurring in my life and the lives of those around me who are driving real meaningful change in their world.

So let’s talk about vulnerability. Vulnerability gained a significant amount of hype following a certain TED Talk a few years back that exploded on the scene. I’ve seen it a few times, back in my days of battling alcoholism, and I never truly understood the hype and quite frankly still don’t get it. But it resonated with a large crowd, and it gave us permission to talk about our vulnerabilities with each other.

It’s shocking to see a chart for the use of vulnerability in our language over time. Language evolves and shifts, but this is one of the more extreme changes I have seen on one of these analysis. And yes, I do tend to spend some time looking at these types of charts. It’s a weird combination of my engineering mind combined with a recent obsession with proper choice and use of language.

Vulnerabilities measured use over time

Don’t misconstrue what I’m saying as we should not have the ability or courage to to look deeply into ourselves to discover and understand our shortcomings. But vulnerability is not the right word, and it creates the entirely wrong mindset for true connection, growth and enjoyment of life.

This all may seem pedantic to the reader, and I’ve likely lost a good number of you by now, but this inappropriate and common use of a extremely weak minded word carries a lot of danger with it. The good news? There’s a perfectly good substitution that actually captures what I believe those praising vulnerability are actually striving for when they think of vulnerability. It’s a word when acted out does require courage, effort and ultimately will drive meaningful change in an individuals life.

Vulnerability is expressing and exposing weakness. It’s base line definition is: “the quality or state of being exposed to the possibility of being attacked or harmed, either physically or emotionally.” Do you want to be blind of your personal vulnerabilities? No. Do you want to put in effort to shore up some key areas of vulnerability in life? Yes. Do you want to broadcast to the world your weaknesses if you are at risk of being attacked or harmed and have no plans of working on those vulnerabilities? Likely… not.

The manner in which I have decided to open up and talk about my past might create the false impression in folks that I am expressing vulnerability. You’re wrong if that’s the case. I write about topics that I have put a lot of discovery, thought and real effort behind to shore up areas of weaknesses in my life.

What I tend to talk or write about is the action that I went through once I came to realize that a vulnerability existed in my life. What I share is the state that I was in when I was vulnerable, but more importantly what I did about it. That is not practicing vulnerability, it is practicing humility. I know, I know, it’s just about the most anti-humble thing to claim humility, but I hate to break it to you being vulnerable has not given me 15 months of time in recovery without even a single craving for alcohol. Humility did that.

I have consciously thought about the concept of humility for well over a decade. It was one of the core values of the company that I first worked for when I started my career at one of the largest refineries in the nation. You see, working at a place that moves chemicals and flammable fluid/vapors around requires an extreme amount of humility. If you lack humility, you risk your own life and the lives of those around you.

During my time at the refinery, I came to understand and define humility as knowing and understanding the bounds of your knowledge and having the courage to ask for help when a problem you faced exceeded your personal knowledge. I still feel this is a sufficient start to grasping humility, but after reflecting back on my time spent in recovery and how I have decided to open up via this channel and the podcast, I have a new and much sharper definition of what it means to practice humility.

Simply put, humility is expressed through the practice of Honesty, Open-Mindedness and Willingness. As I have been reflecting on why I am developing such an aversion to the vulnerability crowd it is because vulnerability, at best, only focuses on the first of these three critical steps, and vulnerability lacks any real action to drive change. Humility, on the other hand, is all encompassing of these steps.

Let’s play this out. Extreme physical examples are always easier for people to connect with, but this pattern applies just as well to emotional and spiritual aspects of your life. Fair warning, I’m about to get crass with this example.

Say I have a personal shortcoming in that if you walk up to me and poke me in the belly button that I poop, right then and there. No control, just excrete whatever is in my system. Naturally, I get intensely embarrassed by this action. But the problem is, I have an incredibly poke-able belly button. For whatever reason, it just calls to people, strangers and family alike, to poke it. Some understand the ramifications, others are surprised by the outcome of their seemingly harmless action after they execute a poke.

Now, if I’m being vulnerable, I’d start a blog and podcast about how if you poke my belly button I poop my pants. I’d talk to strangers about it. I would walk around wearing a short cut t-shirt to indicate my bravery and courage in this situation. Yes, my belly button is tantalizingly poke-able, and the ramifications of such actions bring embarrassment to myself and are socially unacceptable, but here I am world - flaunting my poke-able belly button.

Maybe this behavior would stop some people from poking me, but more than anything it would just be me talking about a shortcoming of myself that I have no real plans of changing. It’s just who I am. In all reality, it’s weak yet people would praise me for being so vulnerable. Yet each time a poke occurs I continue to express socially unacceptable behavior, but hey, it’s who I am so back off! I’m being honest, but nothing more. My dirty laundry pile will grow at an unacceptable rate.

Real change starts happening when you step beyond vulnerability and decide to pursue meaningful change. This is where the important shift happens and why it is so much more powerful to talk about humility instead of vulnerability. Being humble allows you to acknowledge and accept your shortcoming (pooping with a poke), but additionally allows you to take relentless action to better your situation in areas of life that you do have control.

With humility, you can look at your situation and say, hey even though I don’t seem to have much control over the outcome of when I get poked, maybe there’s a way I can fortify my situation more so that poking my belly button becomes more difficult. The outcome of being poked is leading to chaos in my life that I do not want anymore, and the way I have been doing things has obviously not been working. You can allow yourself to be open-minded to exploring for any method to solve your problem that maybe hasn’t been tried yet.

The final nail in the coffin where I hope that the concept of humility can ultimately put vulnerability in the grave is with willingness that ultimately leads to action. That classic recovery question of, ‘would you go to any length to create the change that you desire in life?’ rings true in this phase. Practicing humility over vulnerability allows us to get to a place with our shortcomings where we can relentlessly pursue change through action in our lives.

So maybe with this belly button poking situation we ask ourselves if anyone else in the world suffers like me. I’d research it and try to discover different methods and tactics that people used to stop having others poke them in the belly button. Maybe it’s wearing a protective vest, maybe it’s just getting really good at blocking poke attempts via martial arts training. You decide how far to carry this story out in your own mind about all the ways that you could possibly figure out how to stop pooping yourself in public.

Vulnerability is weak and frankly stupid in the sense that you are literally just displaying your shortcomings to the world without any plan of action to shore up these exposures in your life before someone tries to take advantage of them. You’re willing to poop your pants in public, tell the world about it and do nothing to stop it.

Let’s stop the weak minded madness. Humility over vulnerability.

That’s all I’ve got.

Kyle