Vulnerability will Set You Free

Hey, what's up, my friends! I just got back from San Diego. I was doing as a part of my friend Sam's event. I flew out to Temecula, California for the last two days.

I was at Sam's event in Temecula, speaking to his mastermind group. And so, Sam put together this incredible community of entrepreneurs, and the thing that he wanted me to come in and talk about is obviously childhood trauma, overcoming learning to heal, learning to love yourself, find community and all of those things. And the thing that I walked into the event with was recognizing that as a leader and I view myself as a leader, not only in this space, but in the businesses that I run in my own personal life and even my community of friends. And as a leader, you have to be willing to be vulnerable first and what happens is setting yourself up for success by being vulnerable first gives you the ability to set yourself free. And what I mean by this is, so I'll give you guys context, right? You probably listen to the podcast, maybe you've watched me live before, maybe you bought the book, or you've seen me on stages before.

Well, here's one thing that I'll tell you with absolute massive certainty about this journey. It took me a long time to get to the place of being able to be vulnerable. And I don't mean vulnerable in this way that we see on social media today where everybody is just like crying on Instagram, I don't think that's necessarily vulnerable. I'm not saying it's right or wrong, I'm just saying I don't really connect with it. Right.

What was vulnerable for me? I'm gonna tell you guys a quick story. So, I called my little brother one day, I was 25, maybe 26, and he had done a couple of tours in Afghanistan and he had just gotten home and I had not talked to him in months. And when I called him, I was like, Hey man, what's up? How are you doing? And you could hear like the vitriol and the hurt and the anger in his voice and he goes, what do you want? And I'm like, hey man, we haven't talked in a while just wanna see how you're doing, what's going on? He said to me, don't talk to me. You're not my brother. And that moment crushed me, like legit crushed me because I was at this place in this healing journey where I was talking to a therapist, where I was reading the books, where I was working with incredible coaches, and yet my own brother was like, dude, you're a f*cking asshole. You don't get a just come into my life after being gone for 20 something years.

And as I was at Sam's event and speaking to this mastermind of these incredible entrepreneurs. One of them came up to me and they asked me a question, like, how did you heal your relationship with your brother? And the way that I did it, not only with him, but both all of my siblings, was I put myself in a position of leading first by talking about this darkness. You know, it's really funny because in this journey many of us will grow up in the same home and not have the same experience. And so, for me, I had a different experience than my siblings and my experience led me to this place where I shut down emotionally, where I became a complete robot, where I was not a human being because the hardest thing for me to do in my healing journey was to connect emotionally with other people, those other people, most particularly my own siblings. And so, as I kept doing the work and doing the work, the thing that I kept doing was reaching out to my brothers and being like, Hey, I'm working on this. I'm sorry. I made mistakes. I've done hurtful things. I've lied, I've cheated, I've stolen, I've broken promises. But I'm telling you, I'm working on it like this is a thing that I'm doing. I'm trying to change who I am. I'm trying to transform; I'm trying to take all these traumatic experiences of the past and take the power back from them.

And so, I'd reach out to these guys and they'd be like, what do you want? Like, what game are you playing? One of my brothers literally goes, what game are you playing? And I was like, f*ck man. I'm not playing a game, but look it, they have evidence that supports this idea that I was full of sh*t, but I just kept showing up and I kept being vulnerable with them. I kept talking about the mistakes. I kept talking about the reasons why I did the things that I did and the reasons why I was trying to change and the reasons why I was trying to show them love and the reasons why I was trying to show myself love. And it was like as, yeah, Roxanne, I get that like as I'm the second oldest, my sister's older than me. But the thing that I kept trying to do was I was just like, I promise you guys I'm working on me. And I know I f*cked up. I know I made mistakes.

One of the things that I had to come to recognize is I told them, I said, I realize you guys may never believe me, you may never forgive me, you may never talk to me again, but I'm gonna keep showing up because I was being vulnerable in therapy and with my coach, and most importantly, with myself. The things that happened, I started to understand like why all of the pain of childhood, all of the hurt, all the trauma, all the abuse, all the loss, all the suffering had led to this place where I was stuck emotionally. I couldn't cry, I couldn't connect, hugging another human being might as well have been like getting electroshock therapy. Right. And I just kept showing up every single day and being like, all right, if I just do one thing today that moves me forward, maybe I will learn to love myself and in loving myself, maybe I can learn to love my brothers and in loving my brothers, maybe that they will love me in return, and my sister and my friends and my community, and maybe the person that I'm with, and all of these things.

So, I'm going through this process and I'm doing this again and again and again, and I just kept stepping deeper into the pain. This is one of the hardest things for people to go through in this journey because from an autonomic standpoint, like if you really just look at the human body, the physiological and biological experience that we're having, our body wants to do anything in its power to create survival and it takes and makes meaning of all of our experiences so it's looking at all the pain, all the hurt, all the sh*t you've been through, and it's like, I don't wanna feel that again. And so, like when you're stepping into like f*cking therapy and you're stepping into working with a coach, and like me as a coach, when I'm working with people, like if you're a part of my Monday night group or you do one-on-one coaching with me, I challenge you. I'm like, tell me about this thing. Let's talk about the thing that you're stuck in. Let's talk about the thing that's keeping you blocked from connecting with other human beings. And that's because as I did it more and more and more, I realized that that level of vulnerability, even though it's terrifying and the autonomic response in my body is to run from it, it was the very thing that started to help me heal.

I remember I saw this, this movie one time, it was a horror movie. It's a Freddy Krueger movie. It's like part seven or something, right? I don't even remember. But this woman goes to like this spirit guide and she's like, Freddy Krueger is trying to kill me in my dreams, like every single day and the spirit guide goes, when you bring darkness to light, it loses power over you. And I don't know why that sat with me even at like, I must have been 11 years old when I saw this movie also, you probably shouldn't let your 11-year-old watch horror movies, right? But tells you what happens when you grow up in a house like I grew up in. And so, I'm watching this movie and I'm thinking about this, and every single day since that moment, I've always thought about it like, how do you bring the darkness to light? How do you bring the darkness to light? A lot of it is by being in a safe space and people talk about safe spaces all the time, but one of the things they don't talk about in terms of safe spaces is this the place where you gotta talk about your sh*t. You've gotta really bring this shit to the f*cking table. You've gotta stop running from it. You've gotta stop hiding from it. You have to acknowledge it.

So yesterday and Sam's group, this amazing group of these 50, 60 entrepreneurs, these amazing people, they went through hell, they did something that they had never done before. With Sam in a military style training exercise where they pushed themselves physically, and when I came in, I pushed them mentally and emotionally, but I did it in a safe space where I led first. So, I talked about my ACE score of 10, I talked about my addictions, I talk about the lying, the cheating, the stealing, the hurting, the lies, the all of the bullsh*t I talked about, how it was me, it was me who f*cked up my life. Not the traumatic experiences, not that they didn't play a role, but I wasn't culpable for those things, right? I'm not culpable for my mother cutting my finger off or for being homeless as a kid and being a drug addict when I was 12, that's not on me, but it's on me today. And so, I stood in front of these people and I led with vulnerability because it's the thing that sets me free every time, I can speak my f*cking truth it gives other people the permission. And what happens is when you give yourself permission to speak your truth, you are healing your timeline both exponentially, reciprocally, energetically, and genetically. In the quantum realms, in which in ways you don't even understand today, cuz you possibly can't because you haven't done it enough yet.

And so, like on Monday nights when I'm coaching this group, and if you guys want information, there's a link in my bio. If you go to thinkunbroken.com I'll tell you all about the group. But here's the reality, I push people every week. Let's go deeper. Let's uncover it. Let's expose this sh*t so you don't have to keep carrying it anymore. It's like, how long are you gonna carry this?

(Gracie, how do you overcome the shame of all that, to talk about it openly?)

By talking about it. Like, I know that seems counterintuitive, but it is. Shame hides in our darkness. Shame hides in the secret, shame hides in the things that we're terrified to talk about. It's also really important, you have to think about this for a second, like as this guy that I am today, this man, this trauma coach, this author and speaker and podcast host, and all this other bullsh*t, the things that people don't understand is that the first four years of this journey was me in a therapist's office, was me in a coach's office, was me in my journal, me in a notebook, and me, and the solitude of self, of trying to expose even these truths to me first. And so, I don't think that the platform for the beginning of this journey of social media, let me be very clear about that. But what I do think is it's a requirement to have the willingness to step into it because you can only carry shame with things that haven't been exposed in a space in which you can connect with other people so that you know that you're not the only one carrying the weight.

And so, one of the things I challenged this group of people to yesterday, for this exact reason, the same reason you actually just asked was because I wanted to expose them to the reality. So, for me, with an ACE four of 10, I stood on the stage in front of them and I shared, these are the things that happened to me. And then I challenged them to expose that truth for themselves in this safe space and to take a step forward in acknowledging that they had traumatic experiences that are probably keeping them stuck and then we looked around the room and we saw that we weren't alone. And so people are trying to go through this journey by themselves, and it doesn't f*cking work, it does not work to do this on your own. I promise you. I already tried. It's f*cking stupid. It doesn't work. And so I'm saying all this to say one thing, if you really want to be set free, If you really want to learn to love yourself, if you want to be the hero of your own store, if you want to be unbroken, if you want to be able to look in the mirror and be okay with the reflection, you're going to have to be vulnerable most of the time that starts with you, but the majority of the way that you really expose and remove shame from your life as you do with other people who get it.

My friends, I just wanted to pop in and say this and share some thoughts from yesterday. It's always amazing and incredible to get to serve you guys. I'm gonna be going live a lot over the next three months. I'm working on a personal project in which I want to connect with you guys more individually. And so I'll tell you this, if you go to thinkunbroken.com, you can set up a free coaching call with me. I'll literally coach you for free anytime, so you have the ability to do that.

Thank you, guys, for listening to the podcast. Of course, thinkunbrokenpodcast on Apple, iTunes, YouTube, all those places. And you can get a free copy of the book as well if you go to Think Unbroken or click the link in my BIO wherever you're watching this.

All right, my friends, I appreciate you. Thank you so much.

Remember, vulnerability will set you free.

And Until Next Time.

My Friends, Be Unbroken.

I'll See You.