The Gift of Vulnerability: How Opening Up Brought Good People Into My Life

I wrote most of the thoughts here back then in original piece published on August 2009. I titled it as "I Attracted My Besties into My Life" because I was reflecting on how grateful I was to have certain people coming into my life even though I had a bad experience with friends during my high school years.

For a short time after I left high school, I was very guarded against strangers. I didn't want to share personal details about me and I didn't trust people easily. It took me years before I managed to overcome this lack of trust towards my friends. It was something a friend and mentor said that struck me, "You can't get hurt if you allow yourself to be hurt." In other words, if you're willing to be open and vulnerable to people, they can't hurt you because the power and choice are yours alone.

From there onwards, I started to look at things differently and treated my friends differently. I'm more accepting and trusting. If they betray me, well, that's because I allow them to, so it's my choice. I wouldn't be hurt because I decided to be vulnerable to them in the first place. In fact, it's an effective way to ward off negative people with bad intentions. Being an INFJ, I'm perfectly capable of executing a "door slam" to people who betrayed my trust. In another word, it's telling them "You're dead to me."

Today, when I think back, I understand exactly why I used to get people who pretended to be my friends just to get something out of me. I attracted them with my fear of losing friends. But now that I see the transition of being a negative thinker to a positive one, I realized that many wonderful friends I have today who are authentic, caring and reliable are the results of my positive attitude and how I accept them for who they are without judging them. They may have flaws but I love them all the same.

I'm not saying I won't ever bump into some back-stabbers and hypocrites. If I do come across people like this, they will not be with me for long as our energy vibrates at a different level. Negative people will always get bounced off by positive people. Like the typical phrase salespeople like to use: "Some will, some won't, so what? NEXT!"