Strength Is Weakness

Becoming stronger

Strength is looked upon as “having it all together” and not asking for help.

But the definition of being a human is the exact opposite. At our core, we are emotional creatures and to deny that side of us it to deny the most important part of us (Coming from someone who loves logic).

How can you learn to be strong, to deal with your emotions and manage them correctly if you never even venture into them enough to first realise you need help and to second, ask for that help? The strength comes from asking.

Then the next time, maybe you won’t need to ask as much. And eventually, one day, you might not hate asking every now and then, when you feel it would help.

Not when you are forced to ask because things have become so bleak.

The risk is worth the reward

To deny it out of masculinity, is insecurity of admitting to yourself and others that you have emotions.

To deny it out of safety, is insecurity that you’ll be hurt.

You have to risk being open to create a deeper connection and experience life. You have to show your cards, and have confidence not in that whoever you opened up to won’t cause you pain but that if they do, you’ll be okay, you’ll survive and have the strength to move on. That’s real strength.

The courage to face emotions is real strength.

Not hiding how you feel, but being okay if the “bad” thing happens anyway.

The strongest thing someone can do is be vulnerable. There is a time to be “strong” and stoic, and a time to ask for help, repair and rebuild from the hand of cards you’re left with.

Weakness is the “becoming”

Facing the truth can often make you feel weak but things only grow through feeling and being weak, and feeling and being in pain. That’s how strong people are built.

No one is born mentally tough, they are made so. And to wish to be born mentally tough is to forgo the journey of becoming mentally tough (This applies to financial situations and anything that has a desired goal, and a process to get there).

You don’t start “strong”. You become strong. You don’t start as a “man”, you become one. You have to be the joker before you can be the king, humble before you can be an expert.

Life is about becoming, the process. That includes painful moments and joyous moments.

To deny one part of your life, the painful moments and to only care for the joyous moments is to not care about half of your life at all, and to me, that’s a life not lived.

A belief I hold is that all experience is a gift (Caveat for traumatic experiences, painful upbringings, family and friends dying… There’s an interesting debate to have there and it gets tricky). Your interpretation is what makes it so. Both things are true, pick the one that helps you the most regardless of validity (Caveat… etc).