Embrace VULNERABILITY And TRANSFORM Your Life | Jen Hatmaker

0:00You've never been one to settle, stand down, or stand still. You're a lifelong learner, energized by excellence. There's a fire inside you you can't ignore. You've got competition to outrun, momentum to build on, and your own high standards to meet. Stop now? Not a chance. At Capella University, we help you catch what you're chasing, because you've always had the drive. Now, go earn the degree. Capella University. What can't you do? Visit capella.edu to learn more. Hi, my name is Lewis Howes, and welcome to The Daily Motivation Show.

0:42I remember as a kid just feeling like, all I want is people to like me and have friends. So if I'm vulnerable, people don't like me. And they shame me. And they outcast me because they were not comfortable with it. I'm not blaming anyone here. I think it was just our level to feel and to receive that type of emotion as kids. We weren't trained that way. At least I wasn't trained that way. It's interesting because, you know, I have five kids. They're all like young adults and upper teenagers. So like we're up there. I lead women. So that's my community is almost entirely women. And so I spend a lot of emotional energy dissecting the narratives.

1:19we were handed as little girls, helping us unravel some of these tropes that we were expected to just fall in lockstep with. But being a mom to sons, who are now 17, 18, and 23, I am dead serious. The narratives handed to boys, just as destructive. Of course. Just as destructive. And I know it because I raised real human kids. Like, I watched them go to their bed and cry for three days after a breakup. I've watched them write love poems. Oh, man. I mean, they're tender. That was the biggest sap. Yeah. Tons of boys are. Of course. It's not a true thing that boys aren't. Right. But this, like...

2:00They're conditioned to be hardened. You are. And not show emotion. And you know, because you even pretended. Of course. It wasn't real for you, but you pretended. And so... I feel like I had to to survive. Totally. I believe you. It was like, you're either going to be authentic and have no friends. Yeah. Or you put on a mask. That's why I wrote a book called Mask of Masculinity, because a lot of boys did this to feel like you belong. Of course. Even though it's a false sense of belonging. And it takes courage to say, okay, I'm going to be alone, and maybe I find a friend or not for my high school life.

2:32And maybe a girl likes me or not or whatever, and I've got to be comfortable in my own skin alone. I feel a little hope that some of these gender stereotypes are reversing in a million ways. like just in a million ways like for good or bad yeah gender and sexual identity of course that's completely that looks completely different now than it did when you and i when you weren't going even when i was in school at 10 years older than you what's acceptable what's not acceptable you get to be who you are now yeah more or less you get to kind of be who you are in your body um and i'm i'm hopeful that some of this is folding in on itself the good news is there's a lot of role models to look toward now.

3:12I'm not sure that there were that many when we were growing up. This is what I talk about all the time. I was like, I never saw an example of a man who had been sexually abused publicly talking about it. There was never someone that went on TV and was like, I was sexually abused. That's right. And here's how to deal with it. So I didn't have a model. I'm not saying it's easier for women, but I feel like for men, it was like zero, zero model. And again, maybe, maybe it was there and I just wasn't able to see it, but I don't remember seeing it. And so when I opened up a 30 about it, I still was like, I feel like I'm the only one in the world because I just never seen it.

3:47And so it's like, unless you're seeing it consistently, it's hard for us to like connect to any type of shame or vulnerability that happened to us with sexual trauma or divorce or whatever. If you never saw anyone else get divorced, you'd be like, my life is over. That's right. And so it's - This goes back to that like positive contagion because I'm sure you've seen this in your life, having been so vulnerable as you are, shared your story with such light, tenderness, and open-handedness, and in such a public way, I can only imagine how many men have now come to you and said... Hundreds of men have emailed me essays about them opening up.

4:26Of course they have. And it was when I started opening up, like eight, seven years ago, I guess, I had this emotional hangover for months because I didn't know how to handle the essays that came in from men saying, I'm 55, I've got, you know, I've been married for 20 years, I've got three kids, my wife doesn't know. And I'm like, what am I supposed to do with this? And just receiving it and feeling it, it's like, man, for months, it took me a while to like emotionally get back to kind of baseline. Whether it's men needing to talk about their traumas, women talking about their traumas, we all need a place where we can feel safe to talk about it.

5:01Yes, it's not that complicated. Like as we look at all this pent up rage and trauma and absolute suffering that people are walking around with, turns out sharing it with people is a pretty low hanging fruit solution. It's not expensive. It's not. You don't have to go anywhere to do it. It's effective immediately. It helps release pain. It's really the solution I think we're all looking for. Yeah. It's just tricky because somebody has to go first. It's still hard to go first. The courage. Somebody has to go first. The courage. But then it's exciting because it's such a ripple effect, like what you have set off in the lives of all those men.

5:41You know that so many of them went back. They told their wives. They told their children. They started to heal. They went to counseling. They did the work. Their friends started to come to them and say, me too. Thank you for saying that. I've never told anybody. The effects of that, the domino effects are really so powerful. We can all do this. This isn't just the work of influencers. This is just the work of humanity.

6:13I have a brand new book called Make Money Easy. And if you're looking to create more financial freedom in your life, you want abundance in your life, and you want to stop making money hard in your life, but you want to make it easier, you want to make it flow, you want to feel abundant, then make sure to go to makemoneyeasybook.com right now and get yourself a copy. I really think this is going to help you transform your relationship with money this moment moving forward. We have some big guests and content coming up. Make sure you're following and stay tuned to this episode of The Daily Motivation Show.

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7:44Again, have an amazing day. And I'll see you tomorrow with another episode of the daily motivation show.

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