Are you avoiding a man because you don’t want to put yourself out there just in case you might get hurt? Are you keeping that lovely lady at an arm’s length because you don’t want to get dumped again? You think you’re protecting yourself, right?

Know that that’s not strength. Strength is not standing in a corner and building walls around you to stop yourself from getting hurt in the first place. You may feel strong for a little bit, but those protective walls are only a veneer. The moment those walls come down, they will reveal a really weak person that lacks courage.

So many women and men are terrified of their own vulnerability. Once you’ve been hurt before, it’s only natural to not want to feel that pain or experience that hurt ever again. Whether you have been divorced or left at the altar or was cheated on – feeling like you’ve never been good at relationships is normal. But remember, if you don’t allow yourself to experience and embrace hope, you end up being dead inside and will never really live to your full potential.

Just because you exist, it doesn’t mean you’re living. Living means putting yourself out there, throwing some punches, and acknowledging that you may be hit a few times in the process. Have the trust and belief in yourself that you will be able to heal from that. You can pick up, go for it again, and do just fine.

There are actually fundamental differences between being vulnerable and being weak. By definition, vulnerable means that you are susceptible to physical or emotional attack or harm – literally the ability to be wounded. To be weak is the state or condition of lacking strength. The irony is that it actually takes courage to be vulnerable since you need to have the ability to first acknowledge that you can be wounded. The weakest people in the world will never be vulnerable because they’ll never put themselves in the position to be wounded.

So go out there and take some risks. Don’t be weak, embrace feeling vulnerable.