For me, embracing vulnerability created deeper connections, self-acceptance, and transformation. The price has been high. The rewards are great.
Hello, you wonderful human.
Writing these articles is the modern-day equivalent of writing a note, putting it in a bottle, sealing it up and throwing it into the sea. I hope that these words find you when you need it, and you don’t feel so alone on your island.
This article is going to be a personal one. It’s the story of how I learned to embrace vulnerability when I realised that I needed to become more open to my self and the world around me.
It’s a story of how I wrestled with some powerful stories and beliefs that if I was to live with more vulnerability, the life I’d carefully constructed to that point would tumble around me.
In the end, that’s exactly what happened. Here’s why we’ve got to be vulnerable anyway.
What is it?
Before I tell you the story, it’s important to know what we’re talking about.
1. openness or susceptibility to attack or harm:
We need to develop bold policies that will reduce the vulnerability of farmers to drought and floods.
2. willingness to show emotion or to allow one’s weaknesses to be seen or known; willingness to risk being emotionally hurt:
The foundation for open communication consists of honesty, trust, and vulnerability.
That’s heavy, isn’t it? It’s a concept when we sit with it and start looking up at it as it looms over us. The threat of harm, of attack, of being hurt feels very real.
The internet is awash with the advice that we need to be vulnerable to feel connected. It’s interesting how vulnerability, being vulnerable, embracing vulnerability, leading with vulnerability have become such buzzwords.
I despise corporate buzzwords and will actively go out of my way to avoid using them.
This cheapening of the concept can hide the reality: vulnerability is terrifying.
My aversion to vulnerability
I spent time researching loneliness and how to cure it when I first realised that I was experiencing loneliness. You may be doing the same right now.
There was not as much advice on loneliness as experienced by people like me – professionals in midlife – when I realised that I was experiencing loneliness back in 2016. But the advice that was there made the link between connection being on the other side of vulnerability.
It was unhelpful advice for me. At the time, my wife, children and I were living and working in Seoul. I was an Australian diplomat, and Seoul was our fourth posting in 16 years. We had lived in Caracas (my wife’s posting) for two years, back in Canberra for three, Darwin (for both our jobs) for two years, then in Ho Chi Minh City for three, back to Canberra for three years and then to Seoul for another three-year posting. (We’d also move to Wellington for three years, but that hadn’t happened by 2016…)
Diplomacy is a funny career
On one hand, it’s full of amazing opportunities to serve and support your country that can only be found in that job; but it’s a life tailor-made for loneliness and disconnection on the other. You can’t half-ass being a diplomat. It’s a career that requires you – and your family – to be all in.
Throughout my career, I was told that I needed to always be on. I was always representing my country, even when I was not at work. How I lived my life reflected on my country. How I dressed, how I spoke and how I acted all mattered. The fear was that if I made a mistake, it wouldn’t simply be a mistake that I made, but it was me as an Australian diplomat that made the mistake.
This advice also applied to my family. It’s a lot of pressure.
Diplomacy is an odd life
Diplomacy has a reputation as being full of suave, smart and sophisticated people. Those people can be ruthlessly competitive. The competition is everywhere and is part of the workplace culture.
It’s competitive to get a job in the employing agency. Thousands apply, but few are successful. I was one of thirty people recruited into my employing agency in the year after I graduated from university.
The competition intensifies within the employing agency. Opportunities to showcase one’s awesomeness must be seized to get the attention required to get a posting or a promotion. Sharp elbows are needed.
Proof is always demanded that you’re made of the right stuff. I stayed late, worked weekends, took on extra responsibilities to prove that I was worthy. I hustled to prove that me having that job wasn’t some giant mistake.
I lived in constant fear that a poorly chosen word – one mistake – meant that I wouldn’t get that promotion or posting. And if I didn’t get it, someone else would. Their career would take off and I would be left languishing.
Beyond the cut-throat nature of my workplace, security loomed over me as a constant, ominous spectre.
Governments can go to great lengths to know what a diplomat is really doing at work. There is real value in what we’re thinking. Any clue is potentially valuable and can be a strategic advantage. We live our lives with the understanding that our conversations are being heard, our browsing history monitored and our movements watched.
Let's explore the reality of that for a moment.
Every conversation you have in your home can be overheard. Your sex life. Your fights and your farts. Conversations you have with your children. The conversations where you vent about work. All heard.
Everything you look at on your computer can be watched. Your banking. Your online purchases. Your visits to adult sites or gambling sites or any other sites that you don’t want others to see. Your Google search for those weird symptoms you’re experiencing. All watched.
This is known and normalised. It was drilled into me that any vulnerabilities can be exploited, and your vulnerabilities can be used against your country. I took in all of this – the relentless competition, the security and the fact that I was always on – and turned it into a belief that I needed to be nothing short of perfect.
My words, thoughts and actions had to be perfect otherwise my career, my family AND my country would suffer.
I became a perfect shame incubator.
It was an immense amount of pressure that felt normal when I lived it. I was surrounded by others who were living their lives in the same circumstances. These were just the rules, and they were the price of entry to have this career and life.
Everything – family, relationship, career, finances – would crash down around me if I was vulnerable.
Embracing vulnerability seemed to me like embracing fire. My mind said: No, thank you.
But my heart pleaded: YES, PLEASE!
And in the battle between heart and mind – between reason and intuition – the heart always wins.
Trying to find Vulnerability Lite
I understood the concept that vulnerability was important to me feeling connected, but it couldn’t apply to me. I needed to find a way to still wear my mask of carefully curated perfection and feel connected.
Knowing that vulnerability was key to connection, I tried to find a type of Vulnerability Lite that I could get the same outcome.
I stopped wearing a tie. I wore my fun weekend glasses to work and left the serious work glasses at home.
I read every self-help, development and leadership book that I could get my hands on. Sheryl Sandberg told me to lean in. Stephen Covey gave me seven habits to make me more effective. Jim Rohr wanted me to be successful and happy. The Harvard Business Review helped me manage myself better. Gretchen Rubin helped me focus on happiness. Marie Kondo taught me how to fold my clothes in ways that sparked joy. These books were helpful, to a point.
Then I read Brené Brown’s ‘Gifts of Imperfection’.
Connection requires vulnerability and courage
I’ve already written an article on this blog about how this book changed my life (see article). But Dr Brown’s words were the first to break through my stories and tell me just how much courage it takes to be vulnerable. There was no Vulnerability Lite.
I had started a coaching course with Mike Campbell (with whom I now work and recorded an episode of the HUMANS:CONNECTING podcast) about the same time.
I needed to trust that being vulnerable was not going to result in my life crashing down around me, nor would it result in my country being invaded.
Eek.
Courage, indeed.
Embracing vulnerability: the first few steps
Moments after I boldly decided to be all-in on the vulnerability thing, I thought came roaring into my head: Shit. Now what?
I started looking for opportunities to be more me, to speak what was on my heart (not my mind) and to show up as I was in that moment.
Before you read these next words, I want to disavow you of any notion that this was an easy process. It wasn’t. It was shit-my-pants scary.
My voice would suddenly get all squeaky like I was a 13-year-old boy again. The words I wanted to use would put themselves just beyond my reach, leaving me grunting like a Neanderthal compared to my usual erudite self. I would stress sweat like I needed medical attention.
I decided to start small.
Never coffee alone
Acting on advice I’d picked up from someone ‘never coffee alone’, I decided to start asking people out for coffee. They were people I worked with but hadn’t really had the chance to step out of the office with them for an hour.
When I was asked ‘how are you?’, I decided to be honest and say that I’ve been feeling lonely. The world didn’t stop turning, nor did they recoil in judgement or run out of the coffee shop screaming. I’d share how I knew that I was lonely and almost without exception, I heard the response ‘I’ve been feeling that way, too’ and we’d talk about it.
Speak intentionally
I realised how much I spoke without saying anything. Back in the office, I started to speak up in meetings if I had something to say – and not say anything if I had nothing to add. I spoke the truth within and – by default – started to call out the long-accepted, that’s-just-how-things-are-done-around-here truths.
This was very scary (remember my point about the competitive nature of my workplace), but I noticed that me doing that pivoted conversations away from the formulaic to more open and real. Others stepped into the space to share their perspectives. Those around me began to thank me for creating that space for them.
Start being seen
I started to be seen on social media. I’d long been concerned about my body and how it looked. I was terrified of negative judgement. I was terrified of doing something wrong that would impact my job. I started to record and post more videos – including of me shirtless or working out – and just leave them there. I received some comments from people who judged me, but I mostly received positive comments from friends who were also working to improve their health and wellbeing.
These all felt very edgy for me. I desperately wanted to be seen and heard, but I feared the consequences of being seen and heard.
But the world didn’t end. Indeed, my world began to crack open.
I kept going.
I leaned all the way in
I got more okay with being vulnerable the more I practiced. I started to create and maintain boundaries (something that terrified me as a people-pleaser). As my skills and confidence grew, so did the edge that being vulnerable put me. I kept on taking the brave and courageous steps to learn who I was and then allow my authentic self to be seen and heard.
I started talking about loneliness more and more, including sharing my story in a book I wrote. The Lonely Diplomat: Reconecting with yourself and the world around you.
I started The Lonely Diplomat and wrote a blog and started a podcast about loneliness in diplomacy.
I came out to my wife.
I came out to our children and navigated the end of our marriage.
I started navigating life as an out gay man.
I started The Loneliness Guy – another blog and podcast – to support gay and queer men in their loneliness.
I met Jeff, my partner, and showed up on dates as who I was in that moment (not what I thought he wanted me to be).
I had to ask for help when homeless during COVID.
I left my career in the Australian Public Service – and the security it provided – to focus on what I knew fulfilled me.
I started HUMANS:CONNECTING.
I wrote this article.
Hits and misses
Not for a moment do I want you to believe that being vulnerable always brings surprisingly awesome results.
The price has been high at times. Relationships with family members and friendships have ended. This makes me incalculably sad sometimes. I feel guilt and shame for the price others – especially our children – have paid for me being me.
I want to pause here. If you’re looking for a reason why embracing vulnerability sounds nice but isn’t for you, I’ve just given it to you in the previous paragraph. You can stop reading. Vulnerability sucks. People will think differently about you. They’ll say you’ve changed (and say it with a sneer, not a smile). Yet I invite you to read the next paragraph and let what I write in it sink in.
But the reward has been great. Vulnerability for me is about speaking what’s on my heart and making decisions that align with my values. Time and again, I’ve been rewarded with such profound, authentic and soul-nourishing connection that it renders me speechless and awestruck.
To paraphrase a quote from Dr Maya Angelou, the price is high and the reward is great.
What I’ve learned about embracing vulnerability
I’ve learned three big lessons that could support you as you begin to embrace vulnerability in your life.
Vulnerability can’t be faked: it must be genuine. And genuine vulnerability comes from within our hearts – how we feel – not our minds and how we think.
The Vulnerability Hangover – where we feel terrible mentally, emotionally and physically in the days after being vulnerable – is real. The hangover is pretty much the only way I know I’m doing it right and that I’m speaking from my heart, and not my head.
Being vulnerable is always hard and scary. I still resist being vulnerable – especially in asking for help – until there is no other choice. Indeed, I’ve invented many new forms of procrastination in the days it’s taken me to write this article. Lots of self-care and self-compassion has been needed.
Let’s understand your loneliness
As a professional in midlife, it feels like there’s a lot depending on you and the decisions you’ve made in your past.
You have responsibilities: a job, perhaps a relationship and a family. You have caring responsibilities. You have housing costs, education costs, car payments. The list of responsibilities is long. Embracing vulnerability to improve the quality of the connections you feel in your life feels like an enormous gamble. Your life will change, and so will the lives of others around you.
It can also feel incredibly selfish.
You’ll want to – like I did – be vulnerable in a way that guarantees an outcome and that things around you won’t change and that people won’t be disappointed.
That won’t happen. Things will change. People will be disappointed.
Never underestimate the power of people who love you to step up and embrace you when you’ve let your authentic self be seen and heard.
No outcome is certain, but the only certainty is that your loneliness will persist – and deepen – until you embrace vulnerability.
In you being vulnerable and more you, you’ll create the space for others to step into and be more themselves around you. That’s connection.
Who knows where life will take you, but in embracing vulnerability and speaking and acting from what’s within, you’ll start getting the connection that you need and deserve.
The price is high. The reward is great.
That’s it for this article
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Until next time, be awesomely you.
~ Phil
Important:
All views expressed above are the author’s and are intended to inform, support, challenge and inspire you to consider the issue of loneliness and increase awareness of the need for authentic connection with your self, with those most important to you and your communities as an antidote to loneliness. Unless otherwise declared, the author is not a licensed mental health professional and these words are not intended to be crisis support. If you’re in crisis, this page has some links for immediate support for where you may be in the world.
If you’re in crisis, please don’t wait. Get support now.
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