Your strength is measured in your willingness to be hurt

It's easy to be strong when strength is projection.

It's easy to wear a mask and fit in with the crowd.

It's easy to fulfil stereotypes, to cover weakness, to hide.

What's hard is being vulnerable.

Exposing your innermost parts for others to poke at.

Risking deep hurt by taking down the defences.

Minimising the gap between who you are and what people see.

Stepping into the arena.

Sure, being 100% transparent isn't always ideal.

You shouldn't tell everyone what you think all of the time, that's not vulnerability, that's just being rude.

But a goal of mine is reducing the gap between my inner reality and outer reality.

What's going on inside of me and what others see.

It's a journey of discovery, taken step by step, feeling out the boundaries of when and how to be vulnerable.

Sometimes I overshoot and overshare, most of the time the opposite.

There are times when it's tough, when taking the next step seems insurmountable, when opening up to a trustworthy other about a hidden weakness can feel nauseating.

But most of the time the journey is taken in quiet moments.

In choosing to share what's important within you to those who are important to you.

In saying "this is me" with quiet confidence.

Not in an arrogant way, not in a sense of "I've arrived".

But in the sense of "this is who I am" and "this is the journey I'm on".

How we interact with others normally follows a pattern set from an early age.

Sometimes that pattern gets dramatically shifted by traumatic life events that cause us to prioritise self-protection.

These things are all normal, and none of us should feel guilty for it.

Choosing to protect areas that have been hurt before is a wise choice.

But lately I've noticed that my openness to being vulnerable is a good gauge for where I'm at in life.

The more I'm willing to expose myself to risk, the stronger I am.

The more hurt will come as a result, naturally the one in the arena will take more beatings than the one in the crowd.

But the one in the arena will be taking steps forwards, will be learning and growing, and being true to themselves.

They'll be the one who looks back in 5 years time and thinks "wow, see how I've grown".

It might be risky, but life is best lived when we seek to minimise the gap between our inner and outer selves.

True strength isn't posturing, it's letting the guard down and being open to what comes next.

We all want to be strong, but to be it, we have to let go of wanting to be seen to be strong.

Only then will we find our true strength.