Kay:

Hey-yo Questers, welcome back. We’re so excited to bring you today’s quote. We just loved the mentor, love the quote, excited for today. It’s Thursday, July 22nd. This is episode 404 and we have a quote for you from the American researcher, storyteller, professor, lecturer, author, podcast host, and general B.A. female leader, Brené Brown.

Shi:

Oh gosh. She is so amazing and her quote for you today is, “Vulnerability is not winning or losing; it’s having the courage to show up and be seen when we have no control over the outcome. Vulnerability is not weakness; it’s our greatest measure of courage.”

Kay:

Okay. Brené bringing in the truth bomb on a subject that might be difficult for some to swallow.

Shi:

This whole vulnerability, be open, engage with and talk about feelings is new-age-y and a little bit hard for those who have maybe been in the cutthroat business industry or the traditional business sense or organization sense for a long time to embrace the fact that this is the new way of human interaction, moving from transactional to relational. In all different kinds of styles vulnerability is a key component of that and that’s hard to sit with for some people.

Kay:

Well, if we look a little bit at history and we rewind just maybe even five to 600 years, vulnerability is a bad thing from a physical sense. From a physical sense, your enemies could come and attack your castle. If your castle is vulnerable that is not a position that you want to be in. If you are out at night in the middle of a forest and you don’t have any protection, your tribe, your people are vulnerable. So, this idea of being physically vulnerable, I think bled over time into the emotional vulnerability also being shunned out. It’s not good to be vulnerable even on the emotional and feeling side. So, throughout history, we see this change and then men end up not being able to be vulnerable and then we start praising people for being “strong” when maybe being emotionally vulnerable would be the proper thing for them from a self-care perspective. I’m so glad that someone like Brené is out here advocating for vulnerability.

Shi:

What an excellent perspective to bring forward Kay and I’m so glad that you did. Realizing that we’re just humans human-ing, as Kay and I like to say. That means as a species, (going to bring in the sociological perspective here for a minute), we’re evolving in new ways and through new ages for the first time all together. So, it’s not necessarily about pointing fingers or fault or blame. It’s just our next stage of evolution as we become more and more of this relational society, as the social aspect of our lives becomes the more critical part, as we’ve been able to protect ourselves physically in some pretty incredible ways. From medical advances to architecture advances to the way that we structure our societies and coming out of feudalism and those types of economic structures, we are much more physically safe, but vulnerability has gotten a bad rap. As we move into this relational phase of humanity, we see that this emotional vulnerability, this willingness to bear it, to be authentic, to say when you’re hurting or you’re suffering is really something that can be of value to us because that is the way that we connect the fastest and the easiest. Everybody loves a good time. We all love success. We all love winning. We wish there was only that. But if you look back and say, “what are the biggest lessons in your life? What are the things that you have learned that you embrace that you’re so grateful for?” I would guarantee that 99% of those came out of challenging situations and when we can be vulnerable and we can be open to messages like that, we realize that those parts of our life that feel like they’re vulnerable can often be the greatest gifts for us if we have the courage to face it with authenticity and openness.

Kay:

If you’ve been following Shila and I recently at all, you likely saw earlier in the month, our plea that happened on the 3rd of July where we had to close down all of our restaurants on the fourth in order to give the company a break and to figure out and plan for our incredible staffing issues due to the nationwide labor shortage happening at the time. What we did was we got really vulnerable with the position that we were in. We courageously stepped forward with that vulnerability into the community and shared it on our social media. Like Brené says in this quote, vulnerability is not winning or losing. There isn’t really a win or lose in that situation. We just had to get out there. We had to have the courage to show up and be seen. We had no control over the outcome, but what we knew we needed to do was have that courage to be seen. So, we poured out our feelings onto a social media post and we called for help. We asked for applications for our restaurant company. Even though we had no control over the outcome, what ended up happening is that it went completely viral for our community which was amazing. The post got shared over 750 times. We were on three separate news stations interviewed by two different newspapers. It was an incredible experience to see, and we were flooded with applications after that happened. So, we literally got to see what happens when you show up, and like Brené says the vulnerability was not our weakness. It was our greatest measure of courage and ended up getting a response that solved our problem.

Shi:

All right, guys, that brings you to your quest today. It is a Thoughtful Thursday Quest. Today we want you to challenge yourself to be vulnerable in a moment where you might normally guard yourself and watch how your courage can connect you with others and even yourself on a deeper, freer, and more meaningful level. Are you ready? You can say it with me now.

Kay & Shi:

Let’s quest!