How to Turn Your Weaknesses Into Strengths

by Nathan Chai from success.com

In the success and personal development sphere, there is an overwhelming sense that being positive is crucial to reaching your goals or making your dreams come true. Unfortunately, this has created a swarm of positivity zombies that will never relinquish that smile, no matter what. They maintain that everything is “great” or “fantastic” to others, in an attempt to believe it themselves.

But it’s inhuman to never feel scared, insecure or anxious. These are essential parts of our being and need to be expressed or we risk our sanity. For me, a huge part of improving myself has been discovering that I am able to share emotions with my loved ones, and they still accept me.

Sharing these emotions and thoughts is also known as emotional vulnerability, and I’m going tell you all the ways being emotionally vulnerable has skyrocketed my abilities and overall performance.

Related:5 Traits of Emotionally Wealthy People

What Is Emotional Vulnerability?

I was at a party recently, talking about this blog, and found a large number of people (mostly men) who had no idea what emotional vulnerability actually meant. They, like me, had heard of the term, but were slightly hazy on the definition.

At its core, emotional vulnerability is sharing parts of yourself that could potentially destroy your sense of self. For example, I have a terrible, dread-inducing, seriously-I-can’t-handle-this level of anxiety whenever I begin thinking about not being able to talk to anyone for a day. The very thought sends shivers down my spine, so it’s uncomfortable to even bring up the subject of loneliness. Similarly, it’s important to my ego that I’m perceived as a confident, strong person, so showing others anything that’s contrary to that feels like I’m destroying that image and my sense of self.

To be emotionally vulnerable is to bare the parts of yourself that are most susceptible to attack.