Vulnerability is often correlated with experiencing intense emotions. While it might include that, Kristina Mand-Lakhini, co-founder of Mindvalley, explains that being vulnerable is actually the ability to be fully present and take action in the face of uncertainty.

Kristina began learning about vulnerability and authenticity while researching happiness, and she realized that in order to remain in a state of happiness, you needed to be both authentic and willing to be vulnerable. Vulnerability, she explains, is the openness of being your authentic self even when you are uncertain about how others or the world will receive you.

Including, these juicy topics:

Happiness is a state more than it is an emotion. A state is kind of a set point like in a thermostat that adjusts higher or lower depending on the temperature surrounding it. You can permanently increase your happiness set point if you want to, and things like trauma can permanently decrease it.

The quality of your relationship with others and the world is directly dependent on your relationship with yourself. When you can be kind or honest or accepting of yourself, you are more able to be kind or honest or accepting of others and the world.

People naturally recoil from pain, and pain—even emotional pain—has a purpose, but when you avoid emotional pain in the short term, you miss the opportunity to develop resilient emotional states like happiness and vulnerability. When you are unwilling to experience emotional pain, you are unwilling to fully experience life.

People often identify with their emotions, but emotions change all the time. More effective is to experience and name your emotions and see how fleeting they truly are. In this way, you can more easily stay in a steadier state than identifying with changeable emotions.

Life is inherently uncertain, and if you can accept that and learn to be present with the vulnerability of uncertainty, you care better able to thrive and flow with what comes in this uncertain, ever-changing world.

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EXPAND Your EDGE Pendulum Play!

If you have taken the EXPAND Your EDGE course, remember to use what you learned to expand what in this conversation pushed your edge. Also, here are some other ways to use your pendulum to play with the energies in this conversation to expand your consciousness. Still need the course? Access it for HERE

Increase my awareness of how to stay authentic when I am unsure how others will react

Expand my ability to be honest with myself and others

Expand my ability and willingness to to be kind to and accepting of myself

Expand my understanding of vulnerability and how to stay open and vulnerable

Increase my ability/willingness to be authentic to myself even when I am around people who don’t always accept me

Neutralize any confusion between my vulnerability and simply having intense emotions

Decrease any habit of acting in ways that are inauthentic just to avoid disapproval

Increase my willingness to develop an honest, authentic relationship with myself

Increase my willingness to love and except myself fully in all situations