Vulnerability is hard. That being said – I think that not being vulnerable is harder.

During this last year, I’ve really been trying to get to know myself again. Sometimes, especially when life gets busy, it’s easy to put the process of getting to know yourself and your evolving desires on the back burner. Bringing them back to the forefront can feel selfish – but I’ll argue that it’s one of the best things you could ever do.

But how exactly do you begin being more open and honest with yourself?

 It’s not always about asking, “who am I?”

But it certainly is a big part of it.

As I look back over the last few years – I think I’ve asked myself that question more times than I care to count. Who am I? Where am I going? Who do I want to be? What is my purpose? What do I want to be doing? What am I fulfilled by?

And I’ll be honest – sometimes when I was asking myself these questions, I was too afraid of listening to my own answer. Because maybe it went against how I saw my life unfolding in my head, or maybe it was new territory and I wasn’t yet brave enough to venture into it. Some of the answers involved breaking my own heart to get to the place where I knew deep down I wanted to be, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it yet.

What I’m trying to say, is that vulnerability isn’t just being able to sit with yourself and ask the “big” questions. It’s being able to sit with them, and allow yourself to give “big” answers. And to be okay with them, and fully accepting of them, no matter what they are.

When it comes to breaking your own heart – make sure you know why you’re doing it.

It’s not often that one thinks about breaking their own heart. In fact, when read aloud, the concept itself sounds gut-wrenching. So why do it?

Throughout my life, I’ve pursued things that I thought would have made me happy – mostly because the idea behind the reason was clear. Or perhaps it was the idea of a person that made me happy rather than the person themselves. Or maybe it was the idea that living in a city I knew like the back of my hand felt outgrown and it was time for a change.

Breaking your own heart requires a massive amount of strength. Bravery. Conviction. It requires being okay with change, and the idea that everything may not work out the way you intentionally thought. You do it because you know that you were meant to do more, you weren’t meant to settle, you were ready to pursue your dreams with relentless passion.

You know what they say, “feel the fear and do it anyway.”

My point is, it’s hard to know exactly which way your life will turn out. But if you feel like something is off, you’re meant for more, you’re ready to see what sets your heart on fire – you owe it to yourself to try.

Even if it means breaking out of a mold and breaking your own heart in the process. Because here’s the thing – you might just discover something (or someone) that makes you forget that it was ever broken in the first place.