Name: Without THIS, You Can NEVER Be Strong
Uploaded: 2022-11-07T17:37:17.000Z
Duration: 6 min 57 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Strength comes through vulnerability, and if you look at the etymology of vulnerability,

Adverbs of manner

essentially, it means "the ability to be wounded".

I propose to you that without risk and challenge, without entering the arena, without putting

yourself in a position that may result in a wound, you can never be strong.

Without lifting heavy weights, how can you gain physical strength?

Without listening to feedback that hurts your ego, how can you get better at your craft,

Without going through difficult times in life, how can you gain wisdom, which we can call

Gaining strength begins with vulnerability.

In my estimation, our relationship to suffering is kind of like our relationship to disease:

in the same way right exposure to disease can increase your immunity, the appropriate

exposure to suffering can improve your ability to overcome suffering.

For example, by lifting the heavy weights, a bodybuilder increases her ability to lift

Or, an artist puts out a song and receives feedback.

The feedback hurts his ego, but he uses it to improve and put out better songs.

Or, an entrepreneur launches their first product and receives bad reviews.

But by listening to the reviews, they learn to improve their product and increase sales.

The right exposure to suffering can increase your ability to overcome suffering.

Perhaps, sometimes, the path we fear to walk is also the one we need to walk in order to

But of course, it needs to be said: just because you make yourself vulnerable, it doesn't mean

For example, maybe you make yourself vulnerable to a disease and—instead of getting stronger—you

And due to the difficult and long battle your body has with the sickness, you lose some

vital functionality within some of your organs.

Maybe your lung capacity will never be as good as it once was.

You made yourself vulnerable, which means "able to be wounded", but the wound is too

Your leg will never be the same as it once was.

Vulnerability opens us to challenge, and overcoming challenge is what makes us stronger.

But there's no guarantee that you'll overcome your challenge.

In fact, we are often overcome by our challenges, and as a result, we become weaker.

But does that mean you shouldn't make yourself vulnerable?

What would happen if you never made yourself vulnerable?

If you never took on any risk or challenge?

An agoraphobic is someone who often becomes fearful of leaving their house and being in

They fear leaving their comfort zone and making themselves vulnerable.

And as a result, their comfort zone often starts to shrink.

At the beginning they may fear going to a few places, but as their phobia grows, they

start to fear going to more and more places.

Slowly, their comfort zone starts to shrink and shrink, until at last, it's just a small

In essence, they're getting weaker, because their ability to overcome suffering is regressing.

And what would happen to the writer who never put their work out there?

The writer who fears finding out they aren't as good as they thought they were? They will

They may protect themselves from negative feedback and having their feelings hurt, but

Or what about the teen who wants love but fears rejection?

Their lack of vulnerability protects them from rejection, but it will only magnify the

Or what about the man who fears being too emotional?

He may protect himself from the pain of being judged, but he'll never learn to master

He'll never get over his fear of judgment, and as a result, because he doesn't express

himself authentically, he'll struggle to find people who accept his authentic-self.

So vulnerability opens you up to being challenged, and by overcoming challenges you can become

And of course, by accepting a challenge, you risk being overcome by that challenge too,

We have to take on the right amount of challenge, which is a topic for a different video.

But at the end of the day, this fact remains true: before you can be strong, you must be

vulnerable, and by refusing to be vulnerable at all, you will definitely become weaker.