Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 10:35 — 9.7MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS

Being vulnerable can build confidence and clarity, even when the outcome can be seen as disappointing. Touch base with your passion here, see how you can redirect it, if that’s what you need to take a more vulnerable approach!

MM554 – Seek out Spaces Where You can be Vulnerable

Hello, everybody, and welcome to this week’s episode of Motivate Me!

It’s Me! Time here on Motivate Me! and we are working on coming back from flat.

Before we start, let’s get into the right headspace. Let’s engage in the idea that this is time where YOU are the priority. Let’s take two slow, deep breaths to get us centered. Just follow me.

Today’s focus is: Seek out Spaces Where You can be Vulnerable

If you’re joining us for the first time this season, welcome, new Motivate Me! Friend!

Our goal at Motivate Me! is to inspire you to live a life that’s more exciting and/or more meaningful. We do this in Seasons 1-3 by interviewing people who are living passionate lives, so you can steal some of their tricks to apply to your world.

But here, in Season 4, we are sharing tips, tricks, and techniques that will help you reconnect with your passion or redirect your passion so you can get your head and heart back in the game.

There are many ways we can connect with our passion. Sometimes it’s through our careers but often times it’s not. Sometimes it’s something we make money at, but that’s not always the case either.

Passions are so unique to us. You may be into creating art through paintings, sculptor, music, writing, interior design, food, or photography. Or you may be driven to help people or spread joy or be an advocate for the under-privileged or the under-represented. Your passion might be about the environment, horticulture, animals, or even architecture or teaching or textiles. The list is truly endless.

Can you see how exciting it would be to be part of the world of politics or in the Olympic arena or behind the scenes in the fashion? I find all of it exciting! That’s why my passion is exploring all of this with all of you.

Over the past few years and through the pandemic, I fell away from my passion for a time. It was the prodding of some loved ones that motivated me to aggressively seek myself again, and the steps I took to reconnect with myself is what I’m sharing with you here in Season 4 of Motivate Me!.

This is the 23rd episode of this season, and it’s during this part of my journey that I decided I wanted to be more open, more honest, more vulnerable. I think because I’m a positive person people think I don’t have struggles, I assure you I do. We all do. It was scary to be open in this way but it was also exciting.

One of the ways I decided to put get out of my comfort zone was to share my intentions and my greatest struggle with a group of people in a small private Facebook group. I was very honest about what I was trying to accomplish with my podcast and I was ver honest about what I feel is my greatest struggle, which is finding my value.

How do we know if what we find important will be valuable to others? And don’t we need to feel like what we’re doing is important to people in order to push through, in order to put our hearts into something, in order to put our hearts on paper or out onto the airwaves?

I kept the post simple, but it was heartfelt and direct. And I subscribed to the idea that this post would help me become a more transparent person, that it would help me articulate my goals, and it would help me put my intentions out to the universe.

Now, I want to make sure I’m clear about this: just because we decide to be more open as people and put ourselves out to the world, people are not obligated to respond to us in the manner we seek. So if you choose to do this, know that with this comes risk.

Here’s what happened for me: I shared the post and while I waited for responses, I refocused on the idea that the sharing of my doubts were the important part here. And then I waited and didn’t check the post until the next day: 8 people in the group of 16 had seen it, only 2 “liked” it, and only one person left a comment – a comment that felt more obligatory than anything else.

There was opportunity for disappointment here. Not just because, yeah, it would have felt great to get some feedback about how what I was doing was important, but because I had hoped for any kind of engagement in what I’d said. I mean, couldn’t they see my vulnerability?

But guess what? I learned something pretty great here!

I learned that while I was disappointed, more than that, I remained undeterred in my direction. Because through the conception of the post, the writing of it, the posting of it; through being vulnerable, I had gained confidence in my message and in myself. I learned a little more about me that day, mainly that I don’t need validation as much as I thought I did.

Learning more about yourself – THAT is what I want for you. And you can gain this by being a more vulnerable person.

Here is someone elses story that is pretty neat, and it will show you two really interesting things: 1) how we can approach our passion from different angles and reap maximum reward, and 2) how we need to practice vulnerability in order to do that.

When I taught high school English, one of the history teachers I worked with also played guitar in a low-key band. He was really into teaching and history, he really loved what he did, but playing the guitar brought something very different out in him.

I can see now where these two things collided for him: teachers are part entertainer, and this man was just as in the know about the history of music as he was about the subjects he taught. He took his passion for history and paired it with his musical talent.

This makes so much sense to me now and I always found it amazing that he would perform at school events with current and past students – do you find this brave? To be an equal on stage with your students? It’s a really humble and vulnerable place to be, don’t you think?

We would love to hear your thoughts. Join us in our Private Facebook group: Motivate Me! Support System and checkout MotivateMePodcast.com for anything else.

I am going to leave you with some truth talk from me to you: Being vulnerable is hard and most of the time we don’t know what we want to get out of being vulnerable – and when we get it, there’s a really good chance we’ll be disappointed in it. But that must not stop us because in the end, we get the opportunity to learn more about ourselves and gain the clarity we need to move forward, which is all we’re looking for anyway.

Remember, you Motivate Me!