#16. how i practice vulnerability

two excerpts on vulnerability while lounging on a sunday afternoon. what i experience when i choose to be vulnerable, how i cope, and why i do it

Transcript

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Hi, this is Krisha, and you are listening to Portals. This is my spoken journal where I share my RAW navigations on the different portals of life. Here I share my art process, my inner world, and my own experiences. This space is not a self-improvement or advice platform. It's simply an experience to move alongside my journey and introspection and what I witness. Any journal prompts I offer and that I interweave in my entries are optional and offered only as reflections. You are always the authority and shepherd of your mind. Thanks for listening. Um, that's just awesome. I was just recording this beautiful process of how I ground myself in vulnerability and it just all deleted. And honestly, I'm just gonna let that go because I think that thoughts can happen over many processes and over time. Just like an oil painting. You know, an oil painting happens in layers, and the oil painting I'm working on it's been like a month and a half, and I'm adding new ideas to it all the time. I love learning about patience, and I love experiencing things that attest to my patience. It's the most humbling thing ever. So the fact that the the last recording didn't save that's funny. I was talking about my relationship to vulnerability and how it's this um it's this thing that I um that is my purpose. I think my purpose is to be um vulnerable. My purpose is to be vulnerable so I can help others be vulnerable because I think from a space of vulnerability we can experience connection, we can experience love. And I've been doing a lot of things that I feel are I don't know, very vulnerable. I um yeah, like even to talk about it, like I feel like really uncomfortable to talk about vulnerability, but like I think it's because vulnerability is like this oh deeply uncomfortable state of being that I'm still learning about, but more so I'm learning how to ground myself in the face of vulnerability, ground myself whenever I have been vulnerable. Because I think vulnerability is is the space of it's where you can alchemize when you're vulnerable with yourself, when you're vulnerable with others, when you're vulnerable with the world. Because you're moving into a space that feels incredibly unfamiliar. You take emotional risk when you choose to be vulnerable. So, like I feel this deep sense of discomfort every single time I hang up my painting in a public space or post a story of a sketch or post a video. Anytime I decide to share with the world, it feels deeply uncomfortable. But the way I cope with that is by being with that discomfort, acknowledging that what I did was incredibly um icky, and it feels icky because what happens to me when I share my work is I go through all of these chaotic thoughts. Like, is anybody gonna like it? What does my work say about me? What kind of judgments will pass? What kind of judgments and criticisms, what will people see in me that I don't see? There's so many different thought patterns that I see that happen every single and I'm and I'm learning, I'm learning about myself every single time I I post. I'm seeing where all my insecurities are. But I just I I witness that. I witness that, and I hold space for her, and I just her as in the one that's having all of these thoughts, me, part of self. And I just witness and acknowledge that being vulnerable is is quite painful too. Because like the the human parts of us, you know, we want love and acceptance and belonging, and it is not guaranteed when you take that emotional risk. It's not, it's not guaranteed at all. There's no it's it's like to be vulnerable is like you're like stepping out into the darkness and then falling, but not knowing where you're going to land, and sometimes that falling can feel like eternity, and sometimes in that process, like you just regret it. And I personally find myself in deep regret. A lot of times I've been vulnerable, but I sit with that too. The way I ground myself when I am in vulnerability and I'm looking for a landing place and I'm you know in these middle of these thoughts that where I'm just like looking for external validation, knowing wondering if any of my work is good, I come back to myself. Like if I were to give my discomfort a shape, I think I would see like all of these, all of these different shapes that that vary and moving in so many different directions, it's it's chaotic. But then when I come back to myself, I remember the shape of my body and my breath. And how do I come back to myself? I ask myself how I feel about my work. I ask myself, how does it feel to share that? How does it feel to take up space? And every time it's really good. Every time the answer is, yeah, I think it's it's good. Like me. And I think that that's when I know I'm doing the work. That's when I know I'm doing what I need to be doing. But the the thing with vulnerability and experiencing that discomfort is that I have to like move through misalignment to become to to bring myself back into alignment. I kind of like forget who I am to remember again. Like I I go into all of those like paranoid thoughts about, you know, judgment, criticism. I don't know, people pointing out knowledge gaps, like all these worst case scenarios. To start asking myself the right questions, to start asking myself the questions that feel like they have the most substance. Questions that feel like they're directly from source. Okay, I'm gonna go eat. The way I practice vulnerability is by being with myself. I remind myself of the whole purpose of vulnerability and that I actually designed my whole life so that I could do the very thing that I'm doing. And then I realized that, you know, the whole thing is is a gift to simply share. Whether they're very personal words or a piece of art. I ask myself, you know, the the feeling of sharing and if it truly, truly resonates with me, and almost always it does. So I allow the sensation of simply giving to exist, and that feels so good, instead of focusing on the outcome of how it will be received, because that creates expectations, it can be received in any kind of way, and if it's positive, that's a plus. That is those are sprinkles on top. Like that, that's so nice to receive a resp positive response from whoever I'm sharing this with. Um, but to be honest, it's I don't think it's the whole point for me. I think it's the whole or that's not just the point. It's it's that beautiful creative exchange where I'm giving and then receiving that experience. I'm giving my vulnerability. And initially what I receive is the experience of simply sharing. That's a gift in itself, and then and then when I receive even more of a response from external sources, people and how they perceive or interpret my art, or uh someone welcoming my vulnerability, an individual, like then that is just great. That's really like that's a plus. So to receive that constant cycle, like that is I mean, that's love. Like I can't I think to be like vulnerable is to is to love. Like the act of simply expressing and then choosing to to share that is an an act of vulnerability within itself. So how I even do all of that is usually I get with my body. You know, that there's like no rush to share. I like level set with my body, and I'm just like, you know, we didn't all we have to do is is be with ourselves. So I take a d breath before sending a message, hitting the post button. And I just say thank you to myself. Like thank you for for doing that. Just for taking a chance. Taking a chance on yourself, taking a little leap of faith into complete uncertainty. And then I take another breath after that. And I r really take space from whatever I just did, because inevitably I will move into a process of overthinking and regretting and feeling shame. And it gets easier over time, I know, as someone ha who has uh felt so much stage fright as a yoga teacher. Or not stage right, but like I was just afraid to take up space to lead. I I had a thought, but I don't remember it. So we so I move into vulnerability all the time. It's it's choosing myself every time, every time I feel really awful just to acknowledge every part, every part that is asking for love and attention. Especially the parts that are scared of judgment, especially the parts that are just deep in regret in regret and shame. But the more I do it over time, the more that I learn to trust myself. Like the more I do it, the more I learn to trust myself. But once I've done that scary thing, that I can do the scary thing again, and it gets a tiny bit easier over time the more I do it. Like when I first flew to another country completely by myself, I I was I don't know, 19 or 20, I forget. And completely inexperienced, didn't try to learn a lick of French. I went to Paris and I made a lot of decisions that were rooted in complete ignorance, and it really challenged me, and I knew after that trip that I wanted to do it again. I wanted to master it, I wanted to figure it out. So we do things over and over again, especially the things that we're afraid of doing. And right now for me, that is simply um speaking my mind, sharing my emotions. It doesn't feel good initially. I think that I know, you know, there's so many things that we could choose to do in terms of like vulnerability, right? And yeah, there's so many things that I that we could do that I mean, I don't know. I feel like every single thing that I've done that has made me feel scared. I don't regret any of it at all. Like I'm glad I did it. And if anything, I wish I had done it sooner. Yeah. Okay. I think that's all I have. One prompt for you on the discussion of vulnerability question. You can ask yourself with this where have you been afraid? Where have you been afraid in your life? And what would it look like to move towards that fear? Yeah, vulnerability is really powerful. Thanks for listening. I love you.