Rena and I are getting close to finishing our book. The book, of course, is about living our calling. It helps people discover their purpose and live a legacy. This week I’m going to write about some lessons we’ve learned from writing this book. This first one is about being vulnerable.
We’ve created several revisions of the text based on feedback we received. One of the comments we received from our first revision is that people don’t like being told what to do. So, we wrote another revision, and we got more great feedback that said, “Parts of text sound too preachy.” Arg!
The problem areas were primarily the ones that I wrote. The real trouble is that I don’t like to talk about myself much – especially my failings. What will people think of me if I share when I lacked integrity, or when I treated people like objects? How can you like me and accept me if I’m not awesome?
However, hiding my flaws doesn’t help readers to connect and trust – especially in a “how to” book. I’ve had to learn and grow in my vulnerability. Being vulnerable is a much better way to help people connect and relate to the message.
A message like, “When I pursued my calling, fear came up. I think it’s likely to come up for you too, and here’s what I learned,” is much better than, “You need to overcome fear to be successful,” which I’ve found many people translate as, “You are a mere mortal, so get ready to overcome your fear, or you’ll be living in the streets,” (This communication stuff is really tricky.)
Even though I’ve been working on it, being vulnerable is still difficult for me – especially in print. Yeah, let’s just take everything I’ve ever done wrong and immortalize it in print for everyone to see. Uh, no! Being vulnerable is still a journey on which I’m travelling.
Being able to effectively communicate and connect with people is really helpful. My hope is that being vulnerable will help you in your relationships, in your workplace, and in your calling.
What about you? Have you had an experience when you were vulnerable and it helped?
