[bctt tweet=”This is painful, and continues as a painful lesson to learn.”]
Being vulnerable is hard work.
My dance with vulnerability is a constant fight. It is a UFC fight designed like the WWE Royal Rumble, no holds barred action as I try to survive a barrage of fists and submission moves from blame,fear,anger and anything else that wants to jump in.
I found myself about to engage on this level a few days ago when I started thinking about how other people had wronged me. You know this feeling, when every slight rings in your head. For me, it comes with a scoreboard, and I start ranking each person on a “jerk” level. My boss, my room-mate, my co-worker my ex girlfriend, everyone gets a turn!
This is a taletell sign of depression for me. After I get everyone ranked, I sit alone and start the metamorphosis into a hermit that can find anything wrong with everyone. Everything becomes phony, almost immediately. If I say hello, either I am adding a tinge of fake happiness or fake anger. I get passive aggressive. It turns into a game, one where I only make myself mad by hiding how I feel and no one else is playing.
I found a remedy – and it is extremely counterintuitive.
Put some skin in the game and make yourself accountable immediately.
This doesn’t mean blame – blame doesn’t help or change anything around you. All the energy that I have spent blaming people who have wronged me, or even worse – myself, has done nothing for me. The only thing blame and its cousin shame has done for me is make things worse.
[bctt tweet=”Being vulnerable is hard work. “]
One of my favorite things to do while I am in this mode is give up power to spite. I can’t count how many times I gave up my power in a show ( a show that only I can watch) to show the people around me that I was the man, and that they were going to miss my opinions. It is a notoriously silly thing to do in retrospect, and one of the big reasons I do it was simple. It was just fear.
When you hold yourself accountable,time starts getting faster. There is less boredom. When you are honest with fear, it has nowhere to hide.
I always thought this was the wrong way to go. I thought that standing out in front is the easiest way to get killed. WIth that said, I always neglected that by standing in front, I always felt alive.
It is hard work. I often fail and retreat back to the default of fear. In fact, I’ve failed lately.This morning I woke up and decided to swallow it and start on the idea that I need accountability, and I am not trying as hard as I can to make my life work.
This is painful, and continues as a painful lesson to learn.
[bctt tweet=”Put some skin in the game and make yourself accountable immediately. “]
From the desk of Adam Thomas 