The Vulnerability Challenge: Five Red Roses with Lauren Taus
The Vulnerability Challenge: Five Red Roses with Lauren Taus
Source: The Vulnerability Challenge | Ep 1 (Listen: 56 min)
Contributor: Selena Garcia
“VULNERABILITY IS AN AUTHENTIC POWER, IT’S A REAL POWER.” – LAUREN TAUS
This is the first of six episodes in Tijana Tamburic’s Season 1 of The Vulnerability Challenge. Tijana is the Co-founder of Female Narratives, a model and storyteller. She’s also one of Forbes 30 Under 30 (2019), a TedX Speaker and Creative Director. She can add voice-over artist to her resumé—it’s smooth. Maybe it’s the British accent.
Tijana explains, “this very first, January challenge is about connecting with strangers and learning how to openly give and receive compliments. It’s also about speaking to yourself in a kinder way as we learn from clinical psychologist and yoga teacher Lauren Taus. We talk about owning your mistakes, grief, and of course, ketamine.”
You’ll feel like you’re in the room with Tijana and Lauren. They do cover some ground, including the importance of crying, death as a teacher, invoking emotion, and the magic of psychedelics. They are, as you would expect, vulnerable.
“THE REALITY IS THAT WE DON’T HAVE CONTROL. WE DON’T HAVE CONTROL OVER ANYTHING REALLY. WHAT WE CAN MANAGE ON SOME LEVEL IS OUR RESPONSE, AND MY MECHANISM TO TRY AND CONTROL HAD BEEN ONE THAT WAS SELF-DESTRUCTIVE AND HARSH.” - LAUREN TAUS
LAUREN: “Just the assignment had me in recognition in a new way around my own brutality, and what was also interesting about it was that it gave me a deeper level of compassion for people who do lash out in different types of violent ways. Because I was doing that to myself and speaking it out loud really had me realize I count, and it’s not ok to speak to myself in this way.”
(15:27) LAUREN: “The reality is that we don’t have control. That we don’t have control over anything, really. What we can manage on some level is our response, and my mechanism to try and control had been one that was self-destructive and harsh. Where my highest wish is to be in a place where I’m operating from a place of profound love and acceptance for everything, myself included. ‘Cause, that then allows me to be in the space of kindness always.”
LAUREN: “Vulnerability is an authentic power; it’s a real power.”
(44:48) TIJANA: “We generally seem to find it easier to give rather than to receive. Something nice about being the gift-giver and making other people happy, but we find receiving to be difficult. If you could first give me the right words to use to say ‘thank you’ in a truly authentic, meaningful way, and if you can let me know a bit more about your concept around giving and receiving?”
(46:00) LAUREN: ‘Thank you.’ You said it already. And then allow yourself to receive it. Pause and take it in. Let the wall come down and let yourself be loved with the words of another.
LAUREN: “What you’ve got to be reminded of is you can’t give to someone who can’t receive. To open your heart to the gifts of another allows them to be in a full place of giving. It’s also about that vulnerability and that connection. It’s an opening. And when we thwart something as simple as a compliment and pick up a spoon and deflect the words and the expression, we disrupt the exchange. We’re all exchanging all the time, but it’s discordant. It’s unmet. To give requires a receiver.”
LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW, HERE (56 min)
More FROM Emotions + Feelings
