I recently got so fascinated by Brené Brown TED talk on "The Power of Vulnerability", that I decided to share my story and thoughts on vulnerability.
Do you observe the people in the subway?
I do it all the time. I do because I'm curious or entertained. New York City offer a variety of interesting characters, people with weird behaviors, people with incredibly beautiful look or simply with a magnetic aura, for whatever other reason.
Like you, every person in the subway has its own story. There are people listening at music, watching their phone, reading, laughing or crying. We rarely interact with anyone in the train, and when someone cry sometimes we don't take any action because we don't want to be that weirdo or often we just don't care. Our daily routine makes us jaded, it kills our ability to feel. The reason behind this is surprisingly simple:
We don't want to be be vulnerable.
Vulnerability is synonymous of weakness. We put up masks and walls to protect ourselves from judgment, from looking weak, from that homeless begging us for money. We do that all the time. According to the research of Brené Brown, we cannot selectively hide only one emotion, when we do that, we're actually hiding them all, losing the ability to fully and truly feel all the emotions, including true happiness.
Subway story
A few months ago, I was riding the train from Bay Ridge into the city, while reading a book and enjoying my ride in total relax. A girl in front of me, started to tear in silence. She must had something on her mind. After a fight with my social inhibition, I finally found the courage and I calmly walked to her, gave her my book and told her "this book helped me to pass some bad time, hopefully will help you too". A genuine smile appeared on her face, and she said thanks. I still feel good about that smile.
Take risks and be outrageous.
Both happiness and success depends directly by being vulnerable and taking risks. In fact, you need to take risks and fail, over and over again, in order to achieve success. That's true for job interviews, is true for rising money for your startup, is true in general for anything you want to create.
So the next time you take the subway, remember that you can interact with the people in your train, don't be a weirdo, but learn how to be vulnerable and how to take risks, I promise, this will make you a different person and everyone around you will actually notice.
Please share your thoughts.
Federico Ulfo
https://twitter.com/feulf
https://linkedin.com/in/federicoulfo