Vulnerability as the gateway to your life’s purpose

So let’s talk about vulnerability and what is this vulnerability thing, actually? Well, there are different ways of going about it. The way I see vulnerability is that whenever a person feels something or expresses something emotional, which is outside of what they like, which is outside of what they’re accustomed to, then it’ll be some sort of a vulnerable thing to do, because usually we will express and feel a very little and a very small number of feelings during the day or during the week.

Most people, if we ask, what did you feel this week, will put like maybe five or eight different feelings and there are an infinite amount of feelings or variations of feelings close to anyway. So what happens is that whenever we allow ourselves to feel something that we are not used to, whenever we allow ourselves to express something that we are not used to, that sort of fits into the vulnerability category for me.

And it’s really important that we pay attention to that and that we expand that realm of feelings and emotions that we are that we feel good about. And this thing is that whenever we limit ourselves from certain emotions, from feeling them, from expressing them, many things happen. But in this case, in this context, context especially, two things are really important.

One is that when we do not allow ourselves to feel, let’s say, sadness or anger or frustration or loneliness or whatever the case may be, we lose connection with ourselves because just because we don’t feel them, just because we don’t let them get their space, just because we don’t express them, that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. So in order for us to not acknowledge these feelings, we need to sort of shut down the connection with parts of us.

Right? So our ability to sense and to feel our own system, our own emotional system, our own body, our own √©nerg√©tique system, our heart maybe even will be limited when we don’t create access for these different feelings. So it’s very important for that sake. And what also happens is that when there are certain emotions we don’t want to feel and I’ll get back to why in a in a moment, but when there are certain emotions we don’t want to feel.

What happens is that will turn down the level of all the other more pleasurable emotions as well. And when I say pleasurable is because the feelings that most of us disengage from and don’t want to feel are the not so resourceful emotions. It may also be that we are afraid of love, that we don’t feel that, that we don’t allow that that deep connection is scary.

So we don’t feel that it goes in all directions. But most of us tend to put more limitation to the not so resourceful emotions of sadness, anger, shame, guilt, frustration, loneliness, overwhelm, all those sort of things. And yes, we can fill those a lot anyway. But I’ll get back to to that point as well of how they can take over and have too much of a space in our life.

But for right now, it’s really important to acknowledge the fact that if we don’t feel all the emotions, all the stuff we don’t like, all the stuff over here that we really desire and we like very well, we won’t feel those as well. So those are two of the very important reasons why this vulnerable city, why we really should make an effort to allow all sorts of emotions in our system and

some of the reasons why we don’t like these feelings.

I mean, they’re part of the human experience. They’re part of being a human being alive. We are born born with all those things. So why is it that we don’t want them? Well, it can be cultural in the western part of the world, like Europe, states and so on. There are cultural biases towards not showing anger, for instance.

And so that will be one of the emotions that many of us will turn down. It’s very obvious here in Denmark where I live that it’s not an expression that is appreciated widely. So there may be cultural norms that go against some of our emotions. And there can also be this thing that, well, if we grow up in an in an environment, we are programed as to what to feel, how to behave, how to act and not to act, and so on.

And imagine this that you are told to go to your room, go to your room, you can come back to your nice and whenever you are done, express a feeling, whatever. Maybe you are angry, maybe you are too loud, maybe you are overjoyed, maybe you are whatever. And we learn. We can learn that in adult life as well.

But our mind is more perceptible to those to that kind of programing. You might say, in childhood and early childhood. That doesn’t mean we can’t change it afterwards. Of course we can. But it needs some conscious effort to do that. But of course, if every time you get angry, say, or you get sad, let’s go with sadness. Every time you get sad, you lose love, you lose connection, You lose the ability to be part of the group that you love, your family.

So what are you going to do? Most people are going to stop feeling sadness, right? And it’s very basic. This is not like advanced psychology or anything, but that’s the way it works, right? The brain will go, okay, this emotion equals pain equals. I’m trying to get away from that emotion. It’s that simple. But it’s that simple. Yeah, it’s that simple.

And we can learn in adult life as well. I was talking about the greater cultural norms of our society. It may also be that you get into a career where certain feelings or emotions are not as popular, so to say. So in adult life, we can certainly learn that as well. But the deeper programing of our mind and what we come to associate with our identity and well, that’s just who I am, is very much created in childhood, early childhood.

So that’s some of the reasons why this thing that we don’t like specific emotions where it comes from and I get it, some emotions really don’t feel good. Shame, guilt, loneliness, all those in feels horrible. But the thing is that they carry a message. If you feel guilt, for instance, it’s probably because something within your system is trying to tell you a message.

It’s trying to tell you that, Hey, look, you did something to your self, to the environment, to some other people that isn’t aligned with who you are and with how you would like to behave. That’s where the guilt part comes from that you didn’t live up to your own standards or your own values, your own identity, your own self perception.

And then we feel guilt because we didn’t do enough. Right, for just creating one example here. So what we need to do is instead of saying, I don’t want to feel guilt, I don’t want to feel guilt, go away and distract ourselves with a glass of wine or a phone or what do I know? 29 episodes of some series and some screaming thing on the Internet, right?

We need to acknowledge that the emotions there and we got to ask it, Hey, I don’t like feel you, but what are you trying to tell me? Maybe not that literally of of a conversation, but really figure out why am I feeling this guilt? Because the answer might be because in my self-perception, I don’t move away from people who are having a bad time or who are in pain.

And I did that. And therefore I feel guilty because I violated my own values. Okay, great. Right. And whenever we get to that point, that ugly feeling, that feeling we don’t want to feel, it’ll evaporate. It leaves our system. We’ll take a deep breath and we’ll feel different. All right. So I’ll come back to the resistance towards our own emotions and what that can do for us.

A thing which is very important around this emotional talk in the vulnerability talk, is that, yes, there needs to be a balance. And if you know any of my work, you know that I’m very much for maybe not controlling, but at least influence influencing our emotions. I mean, if I was having a really bad day and I was going to and I was going to talk to you here, I wouldn’t stand here like, man, I got to do this work or whatever I might have been feeling.

I wouldn’t just put on a happy face like that. Scary face, more than happy face anyway. But I would really get myself in a state where I believe that I’m here to serve you. I’m here to convey this message around this topic that I love and that I’ve been working with for more than 25 years. So it’s a pleasure for me to be standing here right now.

But still, there needs to be a balance because if we suppress feelings, we’ll get in trouble and I’ll get back to how we get in trouble internally in a little while. But we also don’t want to overdo them. I’m sure you know, people who wallow in their pain and they go to victimhood and once they start talking about it’s also just because you date and shoot it and life and thought of that and it whole that whole thing goes on.

And no matter how heart felt, we are, many of us normal human beings will go, here we go again, at least internally. Right? And we’ll try to search for some way to try to influence that person or maybe just to get out of there. But listen, we all had this built in detector, the best detector. And we know whenever people they’re trying to get attention.

We know when people go into victim mode, we know when they’re just wanting to create some kind of connection based on their how bad they feel. So if you congruent express that you’re sad about something, you’re doubtful you’re angry, you’re frustrated, you are all these things. And I know I’m using all the words over and over again about frustrated, overwhelmed, sadness, anger.

Those are the most common. But there are hundreds of those feelings out there. So you just put the ones in that fit your situation or your the way your system works primarily. Right. But we know we know instinctively if it’s a congruent expression or if it’s a manipulating expression that comes out of people and the manipulation thing. Most of us don’t really appreciate very much, but a human being who expresses something which is felt and which is real and true to them, we respect and accept, and in most cases we want to open to them and we become one to them.

And we want to embrace not necessarily physically, but emotionally, and we want to help them and aid them and support them. Right. So rest assured that as long as you don’t go into using the non resourceful emotion as a way to connect or as a way to manipulate people in most instances and some people are not very emotionally intelligent and they won’t get it.

I know, and there seem to be many of them out there where they just move around a lot. But in most cases, whenever, as I’m saying all the time, if the expression is congruent, we will want to help those people. So I’ve got another point, and that is

very often we people, we fight this internal battle. We fight this battle against ourselves, against our emotions, against these things.

We don’t want to feel them. Have you ever tried to had the urge to cry? Maybe at a funeral and for some reason you felt it was not proper for you to show that expression or to express that sadness I have? And and what happens when we do that? What happens when we don’t allow the the tears or the grief or the sadness to get out of us?

Think about it. We had our start, right? It hurts our throat. We’ll go like we’ll get tense. We get headaches. Eyebrows will go like B tends to the clot. Our jaws will be clenched. We’ll collide and will. Maybe you won’t look like that. I hope not for you, but physiologically, that that’s what happens. We build up all these defenses within and those defenses are tension, right?

So we tense up in the body and I’ve been working in this field of we call it Nordic Nordic body therapy, and it’s you would call it a sort of massage. But we work with the body, but very much to work with the mind body connection and to release built up feelings and emotions. And we look very much at the fact that many of the pains and the tensions that we feel are actually based in suppressed emotion right.

And from the not wanting to cry example, I’m sure you can recognize that same thing if you get angry and you’re like, but you don’t want to express it, should your common controlled and scary, right? Maybe you do that. Maybe you know someone who does that. If I scared you, I’m sorry that wasn’t the intention. But I know that that expression sometimes reminds people of past experience, which were really unpleasant.

Right. But this internal battle, what we don’t realize is that all feelings, all emotion needs some sort of expression in order to let go. So when you feel safe, overwhelmed by events or by circumstance or whatever it is, as long as you try to be strong and, you know, get up there and do all the things and not acknowledge the fact that you’re feeling the overwhelm, the overwhelm doesn’t go away.

You may not feel it, but that doesn’t mean it has gone away. It just means that you disengage from it, that it’s living its own life within your body, within your system. Right. And whenever that happens, we spend a whole lot of energy keeping that thing encapsulated within us. Right. And we can experience that our parts of the body that we actually stop sensing.

You know, you’d be surprised at how many people come in and get this treatment and and they’re like, so tense and some area. And if we try to massage and let go, I don’t feel anything like what But because it’s been disconnected. Right. So it needs some expression because the feeling, the sensation, it doesn’t go away. As I’m saying, you may not feel it, but it doesn’t go away.

It’s not just going nowhere. It’s getting stuck inside of your physical system, your energetic body, the physical body, your energetic body. And so that expression, it doesn’t necessarily need to be emotional. It can be it can be one of the anger. It can be one of sadness where you’re crying. It can be where you’re asking for help. It can be all these things where it has like the emotion hasn’t equivalent expression, But how do you express overwhelmed?

I don’t know. You say, I just feel so overwhelmed by all this. And there in that moment you acknowledge yourself, you acknowledge your thoughts, you acknowledge the feeling, you acknowledge that part of you feels overwhelmed. That doesn’t mean that you have to stop taking responsibility for whatever you take responsibility for. It doesn’t mean that you have to stop working.

It doesn’t mean you have to stop anything. It just means that you acknowledge, Hey, there’s a lot on my plate when I look at it, when I look around, all the stuff I got to do and I feel I must do or should do, I feel overwhelmed. And already there in that moment when you give it an expression, it releases so often the battle for that, that struggle to not feel the emotion actually feels worse than the emotion itself.

So in that moment when you release the struggle and that inner battle and you just acknowledge, hey, I feel overwhelmed, and you can say to someone, you can write it in your journal, you can tell it to yourself, and it’ll sort of just evaporate like magic.

But that’s the thing we don’t understand. And when I say we, I mean most people aren’t brought up with that knowledge that we can actually just acknowledge, Hey, that’s, that’s how I feel.

And then sort of let it go like that. Because when that happens, you will stay congruent, an integrity with yourself. You will allow yourself to feel whatever is is going on in there. Your reactions. And this whole thing I’m working on about doing the intentional life and working on our purpose and finding a way that truly fulfills us and is in alignment with our spirit.

Maybe soul with our values. In order to discover that, we need to sense our own body, our own systems. We need to sense ourselves. Because if we don’t sense that, if we don’t sense, as I started out saying the things we don’t like, we won’t sense the thing, the things that we really like. And it may be that we are passionate about this, but it’ll always come with this kind of foggy feeling that, yeah, I like it, but something and it comes from the things over here that we don’t allow ourselves to go into and to feel and to express.

Maybe. So that’s the whole thing. And why the vulnerability part is so important that it brings connection to ourselves when we are vulnerable and expressing what’s going on inside of us. Not to manipulate, not to connect from, from pain or all that, it will create heartfelt connection with other people. It will connect with ourselves, it will connect with people, it will connect with our purpose.

So I highly encourage you to go out, start writing your journal. What did I feel today? How have you been feeling? What’s been going on? Write the things you like and also the things that you dislike. Not to wallow in them, but to make them conscious so that you don’t have these things inside of you which you are disengaged from, so that you can get out and move even closer to creating that life that you really love living in.