Today I’m going to tell you something that you probably do not want to hear. In fact when I was first introduced to this “rocketship to joy” I figured I’d rather ram my face through a wall.

The bottom line though: it WORKS. Today it made a waitress cry and feel hope for the first time in a life riddled with violence and poverty. In a group of single mothers whose boyfriends are in and out of prison – even for one who’d been to prison herself – while struggling against a life without education or support from anyone who understands… these women are finding hope and joy in the place they least expected it.

They’re finding it in vulnerability.

Why Vulnerability is THE Mothership

Okay, so Angela (my business partner) and I have an inside joke about ‘the mothership.’ If you like, we can call it the motherlode. What we’re saying is that the more vulnerable you’re willing to be (in a safe space of course), the happier you’ll become.

Now the first time I heard this, I wanted to scream. Because vulnerability felt like a nasty word. If you’re like I was, it may raise feelings of shame, fear, and disconnection. Not to mention we often stack emotions on top of vulnerability, so it could also feel like anger, betrayal, anxiety or judgment.

In my case, vulnerability meant being weak, being taken advantage of, and not being strong enough.

Yet researcher Brené Brown, PhD. has made studying courage and vulnerability her life’s work – first to disprove the value of vulnerability… and then to embrace and encourage it. Why? Because she found that vulnerability was the singular thing that differentiated happy people from unhappy people, and that embracing it can lead to authentic happiness – because embracing it allows us to feel truly worthy.

In one of her TEDTalks, she says:

“The only difference between people who felt worthy, and those who didn’t, was that those who felt worthy were able to be vulnerable.

They believed that what made them vulnerable also made them beautiful. They knew it was necessary and were willing to risk loving, being authentic, and giving of themselves… when there were no guarantees.”

In theory it all sounds nice, but if vulnerability is so great, why is it so hard? Why should we bother?

Sometimes the hardest story to tell is our own. You’ve heard me say many times that I would tell my own secret when I was ready.

Well today I am ready. And I tell it all tonight.

http://bit.ly/f9Lulg

I’ve decided to share it on my friend Vegas Vince’s marketing show because he has this magical way about him where he is one of the most irreverent people I know, and yet he has a fierce respect and love for his fellow men and women – I love this guy to pieces!

Just understand that sometimes we choose to do the thing we fear we cannot do. And this is something I considered NEVER doing. So I’m scared. I’m nervous. This has been such a hard story for this little lady to tell…

But I want to be strong for me. Strong for you. Strong for all the women who have been caged and broken and harmed and crushed.

I want to stand for all the ways we can heal and step forward – all the ways we can help each other and help ourselves. All the ways we can walk through our fears and be okay with the fact that we have them.

There’s nothing in this show to market – we aren’t going to sell anything or pitch anything. This is really just something I have to do and I would be honored if you would join me and just be present.

Vince will have his thousands of listeners, mostly men, and frankly it scares me to speak out into a void of strangers and so I would love to have some familiar souls and hearts there with me.

I’m not usually any stranger to a stage or microphone. I LOVE IT! But today is a very different story.

The show is tonight at 9pm EST / 6pm PST. You can listen online or via your phone. Check it out here:

http://bit.ly/f9Lulg

It will also be recorded and available for download.

Thanks and Much Love,
Jaime

Alright I gotta fess up…

I had some grand plans for delivering a really different kind of post today because 11/11 is one of my favorite days of the year!

And THEN…

My good friend Mark Anthony Bates invited me last minute to a $20,000 mastermind – free of charge. How does a gal say no to that? Answer? You don’t.

So I’m sitting here in a room with 17 men and 3 women who are literally annihilating everything I thought I knew about how I want to approach my new women’s media brand I’m building (plus buckets of other snazzy ideas and tools!). So here’s what I’m thinking… I’ve planned a really cool video training series I’m going to release soon – FREE of course – and in the meantime here’s some brilliant highlights of what I’ve learned {at least the parts that are outside my sworn secrecy covenant }

Snazzy Websites, Apps and Tools

• Rockmelt: New browser that integrates social media. Just launched yesterday and is going to grab a ton of market space very quickly
• About.me: Your social calling card
• Focus Booster: Free desktop or online app
• Liquid Planner: I’m more a fan of Basecamp for project planning and organization, however here’s another good one people dig.
• Compete.com: Keep your enemies closer. Reverse engineer your competition. Know what keyterms get the best traffic… that draw visitors who stay longest on a website… see competitors’ top affiliates and get them sending you traffic… or reverse engineer someone’s traffic marketing campaign
• Quantcast Audience: identify the demographics around your best customers, identify where your buyers hang out (and find more just like them!)

I HEART Simple Social Outreach!

• Hootsuite: Does everything to automate, strategize and begin to optimize/monetize your social outreach
• ViralHeat: best social conversation and analytics (reputation management) system I’ve seen so far
• Social Oomph: Hootsuite plus some… seems to automate your viral growth even more – where hootsuite is focused on managing your outreach, this grows it

Fun stuff will be coming soon… PROMISE!

Photo by Thomas Lieser

And the time came when the risk to remain tightly closed in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. ~ANAIS NIN

This started out as a very different post.

In my typical how-to fashion I was going to explain the steps I’ve been taking to live my message by journeying from broken to breakthrough. But half-way through I trashed it. I just can’t do it. Because it’s not what I want to write. I don’t want to sit here and tow the party line, saying that healing our traumas and our fractured pieces is easy. Because it just isn’t.

At least it hasn’t been for me.

The breaking point is different for everyone but we’ve all been there. So many of us are told that to be broken we must be devastated, unable to function and in need of serious assistance. And so we limp through life unaware and unable to begin the magnificent healing journey because we’re numb to the fact that anything’s broken in the first place. So instead we go through life already dead. And for what? And at what cost?

I’ll tell you right now: No one gets out of life without breaking. We’re not supposed to.

Breaking is another way of breaking open.

It is the path by which we break through.

And yes I know that facing your own abyss is not a tantalizing idea. I fought looking at mine for three years and I paid dearly for it physically and emotionally. I even almost robbed myself of the ability to have children.

We would rather believe we can have it all without ever again feeling the pains we’ve suffered, or acknowledging the bits and pieces we let die along the way. And hey I totally get it. As a marketer and writer I have had to live every day by the rule that  “they won’t hear it, use it, benefit from it if you make it sound painful, hard or difficult.”

But you know what? I’m FED UP with that line of thinking. And beginning today, I’m calling bull shit. (Read on to learn why)