Beyond luck
I feel incredibly lucky to have met Marla.
In my 2nd year of grad school, I was assigned to work with Marla as my supervisor. I'd present my therapy sessions to her, and with her decades of experience, she'd share what she thought was going on in a session or in a treatment more broadly.
But what I got was so much more than that.
Marla created a nonjudgmental, inquisitive place where I could talk about my biggest challenges, my mistakes, and my outright failures, and where we could be curious about them together. Other supervisors just gave answers; Marla built a relationship that helped me open up, show my strengths AND weaknesses, and I learned A TON as a result of it. As I said, I was very lucky to have met Marla.
But the magic of what happened when beyond luck: if I hadn't risked being vulnerable, I would never have gotten out of it what I did.
Vulnerability is how you move your relationships past the point of luck, by actively building them into into the deeper, more intimate connections you want to have.
If you're reading this and think, "That sounds good, but I don't really know how to do that," then that's an okay place to start: you'll just need help understanding the wide range of what vulnerability can look like.
One place you can see this is in my free guide called, "Practicing Courage: 21 Micro-Vulnerabilities You Can Try This Week."
**If you want more connection with people, take this simple challenge:
Read through the three levels: Lower Stakes, More Personal, and Most Intimacy & Courage
Pick one item from each level that feels like it will be uncomfortable, but to a degree that you can tolerate.
Look at the time and date: in the next 7 days, go out practice those three micro-vulnerabilities.