Ep #203: Vulnerability Hangover

 

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Full Episode Transcript:

#203: Vulnerability Hangover

Welcome to More Than Mindset, the only podcast that bridges the gap between spirituality and success. Go beyond the mind with clarity and confidence coach, Kim Guillory, and learn how to integrate your passion to serve with your skills and experience to create a business you love. Let’s get started.

Welcome back to the More Than Mindset show. We are in the last week of 2022. So, many of you are planning for 2023 by assessing how this year went. But we’re also focused on what do we want next year to look like and that requires vulnerability. So, today’s show is called Vulnerability Hangover because we are going to discuss, we, meaning you and I, are going to discuss: why are we so afraid to be vulnerable?

So, first I’m going to pull up the definition because I love to do that. The quality or state of being exposed to the possibility of being attacked or harmed, either physically or emotionally. So, how does this relate to us as a growing human, or business owner, and the things that we do or don’t?

You can clearly see that the risk, the potential risk of being vulnerable, exposing yourself, feels very dangerous to your brain. Most of us have this understanding because of what has happened in the past, when we claimed something that we wanted and we didn’t get it, and we were picked on. Or when we’ve had things thrown in our face. “Oh, you said you were going to do that, but look at you now.” Right? And this could be about making money, about losing weight. Pretty much anything. Vulnerability is the willingness to be fully exposed. Willingness. I talk about vulnerability is like riding on the back, an RV. You’re hanging on the ladder, butt-ass naked, riding through town at your homecoming parade, and all of your high school classmates and family and friends are watching the parade.

And there you are. Fully exposed out in the open. Everyone can see you’re inside and out, and it’s scary. It’s very scary. So, for business owners, putting yourself out there (I’ll say online, on your social media channels, telling your neighbors and friends what you do, making offers when you know they can be turned down) requires vulnerability.

Now what is vulnerability hangover? That is the way that you feel after. So, let’s say you were in a community, or a room, and you are feeling safe. And so you risk, you risk (this is what it feels like, right?) what people are going to think about you, or what they’re going to do, or how they’re going to respond. And you are willing to tell like your truth. Your very open and honest truth. And then after, you feel shame.

And you feel concerned and instant regret about what someone can do with that information. How they could harm you, right? In some way, whether it’s emotionally, mentally, maybe even physically. What will they do with the information that you just exposed about yourself? And that comes from our past concerns, when you have been ridiculed, when you have been rejected or put down or made fun of.

But here’s the problem. You’re now an adult. Responsible (hopefully), responsible grown adult, and you are not that six-year-old or nine-year-old or teenager anymore. So, what’s happening is that there is a memory in the body, in the nervous system or in the neurology. Your neurology is like your mentality, your emotions, the physical sensations in the body.

It’s like even on an energetic and cellular level, your neurology is all that makes up you. And when you have these experiences, especially if they’re earlier on, before you have the tools to know how to handle them, you just hide and repress or suppress. You try to make them go away by pretending it didn’t happen or pretending it’s not true so that no one else will see how you feel.

And so, that repressing or suppressing actually has them go into the body. And now our body carries all of our memories. And then an incident happens that’s even similar in reflection and all of this bubbles back up. So, making the offer, putting yourself online, having an uncomfortable conversation with someone, brings up these emotions, or this sensation. And then the mind is like, “Oh, I remember when I felt this way.”

And then it tells this story. So, I think of the mind as a projector. It’s like, you know, in fifth grade when you had the paper that would go on top of the light and then it would project it on the wall for you to see it. Well, that’s kind of what the mind does. It takes the sensation; it takes the story, or whatever’s going on in the body, and it brings up this last time it happened, or the other time it happened. And it kind of gives you is, this—you’re able to see it. It’s like taking a 360, right? So, you feel it in the body and the mind’s like, “I remember,” and then the memories come up.

It pulls the memories up. And then you believe it’s still true or you believe it’s still happening. And so, the dormant emotions in the body are what creates this vulnerability hangover. So, you think about when you drink too much alcohol and how you feel the next day, right? You have this grit. Just dread. It feels terrible. I shouldn’t have done it. I wonder what I said. I wonder what people are thinking about me. Oh my God, I’m experiencing all this shame, right? That’s what happens when you drink too much alcohol, and you have a hangover. But this is when expose yourself, when you express yourself in a way that is, let’s say, intimate.

So, you’re in a trusting environment and you let everyone know that you believe in yourself. You let everyone know that you have this amazing offer or product. You’re letting them know how smart you are, how supportive you are, right? And so, putting yourself out there and making these claims or these statements put you at risk.

That’s what the vulnerability hangover is. So, this creates a safety mechanism. And we want to protect ourselves. And so, we don’t tell anyone anything. We don’t expose ourselves. We don’t put the post up; we don’t have the conversation, the deep, intimate conversations. And then, we don’t have the results that we want because we’re not willing to be vulnerable.

So, let’s, let’s take this into relationships, because that’s kind of what it’s like in business, right? You’re exposing yourself. You’re making the offer, you’re making the claim of authority, you’re letting people know that you have the answers. You have the solutions and the resources, and you are the one to help them.

But then, in the back of your mind, you have all this story. This story from the past, or stories that other people you think might say, and all of that stuff is kind of like stored back here, but you finally get the courage to go out and say it. Then you’re like, “Oh my God, what did I do? Can I just go delete it? Oh, I am so embarrassed.”

Right? That moment is in business. Now let’s take it to relationships. It would look like, “I really want this relationship to work out and I’m willing to bare my soul.” So, you get intimate with the person and have the conversation about what you really want, or how you really feel, or wanting to expose some sort of truth in order to better relate with them.

And then, “Oh my God, they’re going to judge me. What did I say? I can’t believe I did that.” Right? That’s what starts happening in the mind, even before they answer, even before you actually have the conversation. You are afraid to be vulnerable because it is risky. And you have to be willing to take the loss. You’ve got to be willing to let people think and say what they do.

So, if you want new results, you’re going to have to risk doing something different. You’re going to have to be willing to do something different. You’re going to have to expose yourself in a new kind of way so that you can get something different than what you’ve been getting. So, all of that often leads to the vulnerability hangover.

We’re talking about this on a live call. So, you guys hear me talk about More Than Mindset Facebook community. It is a free community that is a companion to this podcast. And I do live hangouts, usually once a week on Sundays. I will make an offer, I’ll select a time, and I’m like, “Just come and hang out. We’re going to geek out on human design and on whatever the podcast was about. If you want any coaching or if you just want community….”

We actually hung out on Christmas Day, and we talked for over two hours. And this came up, about exposing yourself and being vulnerable. And oftentimes when you, when you do raise your hand, get coaching, let people know that you’re struggling with something, or even just what you’re thinking about, and then you have instant regrets. And sometimes it’s not instant. Sometimes it’s the next day, right? Or maybe you put out the offer, you had the conversation, and then someone else said something and you remembered that you did that. And then it comes, right? And it’s—you’ll know if it’s shame because it’s this warm sensation.

Shame is like hot. It’s hot in the body, in the physical body. And the regrets and the shame mixed together have this like, very scary feeling. And that’s all you are afraid to be exposed to. So, if you’re willing to feel the shame, if you’re willing to feel the regret, if you are willing to feel whatever they will bring up in you, then there’s actually nothing else to lose. Have you ever really thought about that?

Like vulnerability will give me a different result. Maybe it’ll be uncomfortable. Maybe someone will say something, maybe someone won’t agree with me. Maybe someone will reject me. What about the other side of that? Maybe I will get what I want. Maybe the relationship will be richer. Maybe someone will say yes to my offer. Maybe I will create new relationships. Maybe I will develop a new way to communicate. Like those are always on the other side of that. So, you’ve got to weight out the difference. But notice that when the mind has conflicting beliefs, that’s dissonance. Dissonance is, “This is what I want. This is what I can’t have,” or “I’ve got to go and tell them, but then I’m going to have shame and regret about telling them.” Those are conflicting beliefs and thoughts, and you can’t have them both at the same time. So, the mind’s always going to lead toward the one that keeps you safe, which keeps you stuck.

Safe often keeps you stuck. It keeps you exactly where you are. Now, in order to put yourself in the position of being vulnerable, you kind of have to be suffering. In other words, if you are really comfortable and you don’t have to do the daring, scary thing, chances are you won’t. So, you have to practice being okay with being uncomfortable, which is the vulnerability. Vulnerability is the willingness to take the risk. Regardless. Regardless of what someone will say. Whether they’ll take you up on it or not, whether they’ll talk about you or not. Whether—I think our biggest fear is that they’ll judge and abandon or reject us, because we’ve got such big stories about that. And you see so much of it online. Like you put yourself out there and then there are just some rude, unhappy people that just have ugly comments. But guys, you have to be able to see that’s a reflection of them and their world, and they’re just, like, putting that on you so that they don’t have to carry it in their body, or they’re not the only ones who are suffering by it. So, recognize that people likely will say something. And it has everything to do with them and their own discomfort.

That’s what I got for you this week. Pretty short and sweet, but very rich. And so, I’m just going to ask you the question: are you willing to be vulnerable whether you have the hangover or not? Is it worth putting yourself out there, doing something different, and feeling uncomfortable in order to get a new result?

That’s the question I want you to think about this week. We are moving into 2023, so it’s going to be a new year. Many of you are setting goals. Choosing new words. Intention words. We’re actually doing a challenge if you happen to be—actually, I think it’ll happen by the time you hear this being aired—where we get together and we support each other, and we help you come up with that word, and then embody it in a way that it makes sense, and then you move through the year and you keep working toward that word.

I have done this for years. So many years. And it always fascinates me what you have to experience in order to get to it. And so, now I kind of go in with the intention, like, “Okay, this is going to be scary. This is going to be risky, but it’s going to be totally worth it.” So, many times, people even forget what it is, and they forget what their goals were.

And let me tell you why. In order to claim a goal, you have to be vulnerable. In order to tell the public that you have to be vulnerable, you have to be willing to say, “I believe I can. I believe I’m worthy. I believe I’m good enough.” And that takes a lot of courage and vulnerability. So, take this with you into the new year.

The vulnerability, or the lack of vulnerability, is going to keep you where you are. Do you want to stay there? And then make that decision with intention. Be okay with it if you are okay where you are. But for those of you who want to grow… you—let’s see how I can say this. I don’t like to tell people what to do.

So, let me tell you what I would do. If I want to grow and I want to make a claim that I can have something that I haven’t attained yet, it’s going to require courage and vulnerability for me to verbalize that even to myself. Like, how dare you even believe you can do that? So, what happens is if you’re not willing to be vulnerable, to have the vulnerability hangover, you’re not going to be willing to publicly claim your stakes, like what you want. So, if you’re a business owner, how much money do you want to make? How many clients do you want to serve? What do you want to build in your organization? If it is a relationship, then what do you want in your relationship? Is it intimacy? Is it kindness? Is it more love? Is it more community driven?

Like, what do you want in your relationships? And if it’s in your health, what do you want to experience in your body? Because if you’re not willing to feel that vulnerability, to have to have that fear and do it anyway, then you’re not going to be able to say like, “I’m going to lose fifty pounds this year. I’m going to get fit. I’m going to exercise at least five days a week. I am going to get strong. My body’s going to be lean.”

Do you see? Just saying that, just creating that claim sets you up for naysayers and doubt. Like, “Yeah, right. You’ve been saying that for twenty years,” or “You said that last year.” And that we tend to take very personally. And so that’s kind of where all of this is coming from, is when we feel daring and confident enough to claim something and then we haven’t done it, and then someone reminds us that we haven’t done it, then it feels like crap. That is basically where all of this is coming from. So, I just want to leave you with the willingness to claim it, to own it, to go and get it, and to be willing to be uncomfortable with what anyone else says. Claim the impossible.

Go all in on yourself and when you’re feeling vulnerable, when you have the hangover, move through the process. I’m just going to take you through it just for a minute here. It would look something like, “This is really uncomfortable. It feels terrible. I’m so afraid I’m going to be rejected. I feel shame. I feel it in my body coming up to my chest, in my neck, all the way up to my face. It feels really hot and uncomfortable. I’m nervous and I feel anxious. I’m so afraid that someone is going to say things to me, they’re going to reject me, and I’m going to feel alone. I’m going to feel left out. I’m going to feel embarrassed, and I won’t know how to show my face in public again. I really want this, but I’m afraid to claim it because I don’t want to be made fun of. I don’t want to fail. I love and accept myself, anyway. I love and accept myself, anyway.”

And then shake it out, and so, just let it move through you. 30, 60, 90 seconds just, “I’m willing to feel uncomfortable. I’m willing to claim this new goal. I’m willing to lose the weight, make the money, grow the business publicly. I’m willing to say it, and I’m willing to be seen as I’m learning how to experience it, whether I do it this year or not.”

Tap it out. You can do the whole tapping points and then you’re just saying out loud what you’re feeling and you’re just letting it move through your body.

So, come in to the More Than Mindset Facebook group, if you want to. We can do this on a call, but if you really want to do this work and practice being the higher version of yourself, you need to check out Self-Healing Masters. Self-Healing Masters is a coaching community for personal transformation. We talk about human design, and gene keys, and emotional processing, mindset, how to heal your body with your mind… So, it’s all about self-healing, healing your limiting beliefs. We coach twice a week in there, so you can raise your hand, you can get coaching. And the best part about it is everyone else there is practicing being their higher self or their newer version, and they are reinventing themselves too. It’s a very safe container where we’re all vulnerable.

And we support that growth because very often we don’t get the support in the environment around us. People don’t get what we’re talking about because they don’t want the same things that we want, and then we often feel isolated, lonely, and not supported. So, Self-Healing Masters was created as a community to help you grow, help you expand your life, your mindset, the opportunities, and, in a practice, being vulnerable. And so, get over the hangover.

Does that make sense? You’ll have it. We all do. And you won’t die. So, this feels terrible. I’m doing it anyway, and I lived through it. All right, my friends. Have a great week.

Thanks for listening to this episode of More Than Mindset.