I recently shared a journey with around 300 individuals who have decided that they are to disrupt how the world works today, using their talents. The event was AwesomenessFest (www.awesomenessfest.com) in Croatia. Truly, it was a privilege for me to share this journey with them, yet rather intimidating too at first. Everyone in the room was so talented, driven and so committed to their callings. Otherwise, why would they be at AwesomenessFest, right?

After the first hour, the intimidating feeling dissipated and I learned that we had many things in common. One being that we were all great in helping others but truly were less than comfortable in asking help, let alone receiving it.

We all agreed then that we will never be able to stand in our individual power if we do not strengthen our receiving muscles. Giving and receiving are equally important. So, we then embarked on our individual yet communal facilitated journey there to face this.

I was no exception. After shifting through layers of things inside myself, I got to a point where I realised that as a soul who is sensitive and emotional, my biggest fear is being hurt by others. This is one of the roots why I have only been selectively asking for help from others whom I trust will never intentionally hurt me. I am surrounded by a close-knitted group of friends whom I trust with my life. I rarely felt comfortable being in a vulnerable position, where I genuinely opened myself up to people and strangers entirely. I did this, but not often. Growing up, I indeed became very independent, in all aspects of my life.

I love my independence. It is one of main forces in my process to be who I am today. And I love who I am. Independence is the fuel for me to go against the streams, regularly. I cherish this part of myself.

Yet now, I want also to be more wholesome. So the question I had for myself was how to become interdependent. And the immediate answer that came to me was to embrace the equilibrium of giving and receiving.

Receiving is as important as giving. To be able to keep the flow of receiving and giving fluid, vulnerability needs to become my new best friend :-). The thought of this is extremely uncomfortable for me.

I know that this is the truth. I have experienced for limited times that when I let go of my guards, opened up myself and my heart to someone so I could be fully present in the conversations, inner healing took place and my soul got its superpower vitamin that I felt fuller. I feel fuller because to be fully connected to someone else, I automatically needs to be fully connected to who myself. So, in a summary, vulnerability allows me to connect with myself. I realise that the beauty of this kind of connection is that self-judgement became an almost muted voice inside.  I want this wholesomeness feeling a lot more and I want to do something about it.

So this is my take: vulnerability is my new best friend. This is a new mindset and this is what I am doing to embed this new belief deeper inside myself:

– upon my meditation, I imagine that I am emanating love to the world, all the time. In my mind, there is this tiny shiny dot in the globe and that is me 🙂

– when a stranger smiles or says hello, I am smiling and saying hello back. In the past, when I did this some weirdos approached me. So I stopped. I stopped for many years. I will power it through this time and just move away from them when some weirdos show up.

– when I speak to people, I share something about myself that is beyond the usual topics (name, job, nationality, etc) and see what unfolds after.  Something important yet still feel safe to bring up. I still think of it like an experiment so the pressure is less 🙂 Like telling this sales guy in the weekend that I liked the sitting pad that he sold because I occasionally had problems with my back. Calculated but also somewhat makes me vulnerable saying it to a stranger. We had indeed a good chat about health after this. It felt nice to do so. To decide on what to open up to when meeting other people, I am resorting to the help of my other best friend, intuition.  She will tell me what to bring up 🙂

This is my new “venture”: making vulnerability my new additional best friend so my heart is always open, that I can strengthen my receiving muscles.

What do you think? Any other ideas you can share with me?