Vulnerability. We make her sound glamorous, don’t we? We put her name in shining lights, blast her all over social media with hashtags and motivational sayings such as #vulnerabilityisstrength. While that is true — vulnerability is strength — what we don’t give enough airtime to is the uncomfortableness of it.

Here’s the cold hard truth, my friend: putting down the mask that you’ve been taught to hide behind can be mucky; it can be murky and you second-guess yourself through every part of it.

I’ve heard Brene Brown talk about the vulnerability hangover and heck, I’ve even referenced it myself talking to friends as they’ve put down their own masks, but it wasn’t until this moment in the picture above that I truly got it.

Isn’t that the thing — words are just words until they become your lessons.

I got the news that my TEDx talk, “Detoxing Off The Drug of Achievement”, came out and as I sat in our living room and watched it with my husband and my family (my most trusted advisors), I wanted to run, I wanted to hide, I wanted to throw up and I was sick to my stomach for days.

I sat there and criticized my double chin, my words and my mannerisms — and while I was obsessing over myself (don’t you love how we do that?) I was missing this beautiful moment happening around me.

Three days after this talk posted, I received direct messages from friends and family that I have known for 20-plus years and realized that I never really knew them. These words allowed us to put down both of our masks, lay down the armor and truly see each other. What a gift that is.

Vulnerability allows your people to find you and it gives those around you a permission slip to peel off their own masks.

Before you can do it in front of anyone else, you have to be vulnerable with yourself first (and that’s the toughest person to be honest with, isn’t it?).

How do you do it? How do you create space in this world full of pings and dings and all the things to listen to the person that you’ve never been taught to talk to: yourself?

Our consumerism world loves an abstract buzz word. An enigma that it seems everyone else has but us (boundaries, burnout, selfcare). The idea seems big and scary and where the heck do we even start?

Here’s where you start, my friend.

Creating room for silence. It’s amazing what life says to you when you allow yourself to actually hear it.

Instead of getting up and picking up the phone (three minutes of doing this and you’ll have a 70% higher chance of having a bad day), use those three minutes to ask yourself these four questions:

  1. How am I feeling today and why?
  2. What is one act of service I can do for someone else?
  3. What is one thing I can do today that will make me happy and inch me towards my goals?
  4. What are three things I’m grateful for?

You can ask yourself these questions in the car, in the bathroom, in your bed.

And then regardless of what gets thrown your way, you keep the promise to yourself.

It doesn’t matter how you do it, it doesn’t matter when you do it, it just matters that you do it.

I invite you, my friend, to listen to my TEDx talk and join me as I put down my mask to allow you to put down your own, as I share with you the three keys that I used to detox off the drug of achievement and begin to get to know the person I never knew how to talk to: myself.