Saturday Insights — a 5-10 min article that simply aims to improve at least one aspect of your life. It's a combination between constant flow of motivation and distilled wisdom that compounds over time.

Every Saturday, you’ll get a new bite of insight that’ll allow you to get consistently better and open a completely new perspective.

Contents

• Mindfulness

• Vulnerably Strong

• Let Your Walls Down

• Takeaway

Welcome home subscribers, so great to see you joining in every week. It’s a personal gift that you’re giving yourself these 5-10 mins every Saturday.

Mindfulness

We’re going to start off today’s article with a few affirmations.

Listen to each word carefully and take them in. Take slow deep breaths at your own pace as you say them.

Okay, you ready?

“I’m enough and I’m worthy.”

“I’m happy being my true authentic self.”

“I’m deserving of all of my current and future achievements.”

Think about each affirmation and what it means to you.

For the next few moments, continue with these mantras.

• Say them

• Believe them

• Embrace them

Vulnerably Strong

Subscribers, the world changes quickly, and   you know , we can either accept the changes and adjust our behavior or we can resist them and go through our lives confused about why things seem so hard.

The scientific and technological advances of the last two centuries have allowed us to change faster in 100 years than we did in 50,000 years, and it’s only picking up speed day after day.

We have the power, tools, and resources to change our surroundings and ourselves.

But, we must learn first must learn to live wisely.

Our article today isn’t about changing our surroundings — it’s about changing ourselves. It’s about understanding how vulnerability has changed over the years, and why it’s now seen as a strength rather than a weakness.

In every dictionary definition, the word vulnerability is about the state of being exposed to physical or emotional harm.

When you’re vulnerable, you can be easily hurt, influenced, or assaulted. It may seem like we’re living dangerously right now because the news media throws every issue from every part of the world at us.

But according to a cognitive psychologist, Steven Pinker —

We’re actually living in the safest period in human history.

The percentage of people who died violent war-related deaths has decreased through the centuries, and as populations become larger and more organized, they also become more peaceful.

We’ve glamorized the hunter-gatherer times as a simple, peaceful, family-oriented, and community-driven life. We’ve turned it into a social and environmental garden of Eden.

But, we must have forgotten how they uprooted and destroyed undesirable flora, or, that researchers discovered that the Kalahari Bushmen had four more times the homicide rate than in the United States — which is by far the highest in the developed world.

Or that the Inuit of mid-Arctic Canada also have high rates of domestic and sexual violence.

Death was a part of life in hunter-gatherer societies, however, peaceful as we initially believed them to be.

And so, for the longest time, vulnerability was a weakness.

If you were exposed, you could legitimately die — because when death was so prevalent, any exposure could mean harm. Even a cut in your hand could mean the end.

There wasn’t any time or space for emotional healing because our ancestors’ survival was so strongly tied to the physical aspects of life.

But, it’s different now though, we have the resources to explore our emotional well-being.

During this process, psychologists have begun to understand the strength in emotional vulnerability.

Bring Your Walls Down

Look at it like this:

If we want to be able to survive in a world where we’re exposed to the chaos happening in every part of the globe — we need to be resilient, we need to be able to withstand and recover from difficult circumstances.

As you open up more to love, to new groups of people, to experiences —  you become more adept at allowing some things to flow rather than letting them get you down. 

In a period where we’re more connectedly disconnected than ever, vulnerability allows us to foster deep and meaningful connections.

Opening up to people and allowing them to see your good and bad sides is a quick way to determine the people you want in your life and those you would rather let go of.

Letting your walls down  —  look — it’s scary sometimes. People often try to be that cool cucumber. 

• The person who doesn’t really care if a friend cancels the date at the last minute 

• The person who pretends they don’t want a relationship because it seems kind of desperate and needy.

• The person who knows that their gender or sexual orientation doesn’t fit societal norms, but they try to conform just to be accepted. 

The best way to move toward a more understanding and empathetic society is for you to be...