April Shprintz was one of those people who thought that vulnerability was a sign of weakness. But she eventually realized that this can actually be turned into your most unexpected superpower. She explains how being vulnerable is the key to knowing the people around you much better and living a genuinely authentic life.
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An Unexpected Superpower
Why Vulnerability Is An Unexpected Superpower
I am one of those people who, for years and years of my life, thought that being vulnerable was a sign of weakness. People who were vulnerable, people who said that they were scared or told people what they were worried about, were just asking for it. They were asking to get hurt. A lot of that was based on the way that I was raised, and also, I think the culture at the time, which was never let them see you sweat.
What I realized, though, the more I paid attention to people who were truly vulnerable, who would share their fears, what they were worried about, what they were scared of, those were the people that I personally really wanted to go out of my way to protect, really wanted to go out of my way to help. Here’s what’s interesting. I saw that people who didn’t care about others, when they were shown vulnerabilities, use them against people.
I thought, “This is so interesting.” If you just get vulnerable pretty early with people in a relationship, be yourself, say what you believe, who you are, people will use vulnerability to show you who they are. It’s literally an unexpected superpower. What I’ve found is when you share a vulnerability with someone who’s a genuinely good person, now, certainly if they care about you, but even if they don’t know you that well, they’re just a genuinely good person, they are going to go out of their way and do whatever they can to help you. That is just what good people do. Yet, if they’re an asshole, they’re going to make light of it.
Why You Should Share Your Vulnerabilities Early
They’re going to tell you you’re being too much, you’re too sensitive, your standards are too high, you want too much, or in some way, shape, or form, they’re going to use it against you. Here’s what makes it a superpower. It identifies which category people fall into right away. Either way, you’re going to know whether you want to keep them in your circle or just chuck them. A lot of times, we don’t want to be vulnerable because we don’t want to get hurt.
Vulnerability is not a weakness. It can be used as an early litmus test to identify the people you want to have in your life. Share on XThe thing is this. If you don’t share your vulnerabilities early, the people who weren’t good people are going to hurt you ultimately anyway. You’ll be more vested. You will care a lot more about what’s happening. This really changed the way that I looked at vulnerability. Instead of a weakness, I really saw it as an early litmus test of, is this the kind of person that I want to have in my life?
Now, I’m not saying go around, test your friends, test everyone you meet, but if you look at it that way, that if you share a vulnerability and someone’s really kind, you win or if you share a vulnerability and someone acts like a complete jerk, yeah, you win too. That’s addition by subtraction. You get rid of that joker and you keep moving. Ultimately, what it allows you to do is be your real, authentic self with people without fear.
I know I say this all the time. Either way, it’s going to be happening for us, not to us. There may be a little bit of pain, but ultimately, that will be the best thing that could happen. Now we can see something that we thought of as a weakness, that we thought of as scary, that we thought of as something we don’t ever want to do, as something that gives us great information right up front and allows us to be our real selves. Yes, mindset and winning mindset are about getting more of what you want in life.
Trust me here, one of the best ways to get more of what you want in life is having the confidence and the safety to be yourself 100% authentically all the time. The easiest way to do that is to surround yourself with the best kind of people. This is just one of the ways that you can figure out who they are. Here’s to your success.
