Consider inviting vulnerability into your life. When we feel safe—mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually—we create space to let the light in. Look around and see where you have opportunities to let light in and shine brighter. You also hold the power to help others open up and let their light in. 🌟
Recent research out of Harvard shows that embracing vulnerability not only strengthens personal growth but also enhances the quality of our relationships. Let’s create more moments of light together.
(upbeat music) - Hey, it's Dr. James Rouse. Welcome to the Change Agents Podcast. This is the place where personal growth meets human performance. Join me and the Change Agents community where inspired individuals unite to ignite their full potential and create extraordinary mastery. - Good morning, it's James. So good to see you today. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your energy. I'm deeply grateful to have the honor and the blessing of laying eyes on you. And I do hope and pray that this message finds you and all the people that you love, peaceful, thriving and very, very well. So today I wanna talk to you openly about something that I think about every single day. It's something that I've given myself permission to really work on. And frankly, I wanna excel in the space of vulnerability. I know how for me, vulnerability has been one of the most powerful ways that I have led in light. I know back when I was a much younger person, teenage years, even younger years, my family of origin story, what was happening in my environments, they were not giving me what I knew at that time was safety. I had to keep a lot of things to myself. I had to protect and defend a lot of what I was going through. And in that protection and defensiveness, I had a lot of psychological issues, lots of anxiety, depression, addiction, all of those things happened because I didn't have the ability or the opportunity to create an environment where I felt safe. Well, vulnerability continues to let in light in my life today. And I wanna encourage you to consider a interesting study that just came out from Harvard, where they were looking at corporate teams, but they also took it beyond the corporate team to different structures, family structures, relationships, all different ways in which people are together. And what happens when psychological, emotional, physical, and I'd love to say spiritual safety is intact, where we feel a great sense of trust, we feel a great sense of openness, where we feel we can let in light all the time throughout the day, everything that we're going through, which I know for a lot of us isn't possible in all environments, but I want this environment to be a place that we can work on ourselves, that we can actively feel, this is a trustworthy place, this is a place where we can talk openly about what we're working on, what we're struggling with. And I want you to know that here at 60 years into my experiment of life, all the different iterations, challenges, dark things, light things, beautiful things, hard things that I've experienced, one thing I know over and over again is creating community where vulnerability is a channel for light to come in and light creates compassion, light creates acceptance, light creates emotional, resilience, spiritual safety, all the ways in which we would love our life to be out picturing, begins within, when, within ourselves, we create spaces where we can be vulnerable, we can work through self-acceptance and self-compassion, we can create practices through mindfulness and the work that happens inside so it can start to move on the outside. I would love for you today to look around your life and see where you have opportunities for creating vulnerability and in that experience, you have the opportunity and the willingness to let in light, you have the desire and the work at hand to be a channel for someone else to let in light. Shame dies when vulnerability is given permission through stories to be told without judgment, through the experience of love, through the experience of compassion and acceptance and through the way in which we create spaces for others and including ourselves. Let us continue to do the great work of letting in light, let us continue to do the awesome work of performing best under the influence of vulnerability because according to this Harvard study, when we surround ourselves with people in environments where we can be fully authentically ourselves where we can show up in what is happening in this time over ourselves, we will perform better, not only in our work out in the world, but most importantly, the work we have in our inner world, which to me equalizes in the space of safety, peace, openness, growth, joy, grace, gratitude, all the things that vulnerability also brings us, starting within and then moving without. Thank you for letting me share openly about what it is that is moving for me these days. And I have a feeling this might be moving for you too. And if there's somebody in your life who you know could use to be reminded of this, see if you can be that quality, that presence, that person, that presence of love for someone who you know needs to know there's light for them too. Thank you, peace and blessings, bye for now. Thanks for listening. Together, I believe we can make a difference in our own lives and the lives of those around us. Don't forget to subscribe, share and leave a review to help us spread positive energy across the planet. Until next time, keep shining your life and being the change you wanna see and be in the world. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) [BLANK_AUDIO]
