Embracing Vulnerability

I spend a great deal of my time working to negotiate conflict in environments where it is often present, yet seldom addressed.

In my experience, fear of being wrong; fear of being vulnerable, continues to prove itself a formidable barrier to working through conflict in ways that can create meaningful and equitable change.

Change can be hard. And sometimes we resist it.

“When we hear messages that truly shift our entire world view we rarely meet them with gratitude and appreciation. Usually, we meet with them with resistance. We dismiss, argue, ignore, or worse. It often takes hearing the message again and again, years of maturity, reflection, personal discovery, other learning – or in my case all of the above.

By the time the message really connects and is internalized the person who first got us started on that journey is nowhere to be found.”

—Keith Edwards

In the process of getting to know ourselves in relationship to others, we may occasionally discover things about ourselves that we don’t like, or that we might not be proud of.

Sure it can be scary. However, those discoveries can present us with opportunities to learn, grow and change for the better…if we choose to accept them.

Ubuntu,

From Aspiring Humanitarian, Relando Thompkins, MSW

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