Vulnerability

To me, vulnerability on a personal level is the ability of an individual to show signs of weakness and embrace them. It takes a person with integrity to know where their faults are and be willing to accept them. It plays out in my life in several ways. Most importantly, I like to consider myself vulnerable in many facets of my life. I can come off somewhat abrasive to some, but more times than not, I get comfortable very quickly with those whom I trust and that transitions into me feeling willing to share personal experiences. These sometimes include my vulnerabilities and weaknesses which I am not shy about talking about. I think an inability to be vulnerable stems from trust. I believe that if you are unable to trust someone, it's going to be increasingly difficult to open up to them unless you have faith that they will listen to you and not be judgmental. I think it is also hard for people to be vulnerable because of the risk it runs with their feelings and emotions. It's very easy for someone's emotions to be played with and it only takes one inconsiderate person to ruin it for someone's lifetime. I believe that the advantages severely outweigh the disadvantages. First off, being vulnerable makes you human and people are more willing to listen to you if they can relate to your imperfections. Also, being vulnerable opens you up to the feelings of people that you may have never given a chance. Finally, I believe keeping your feelings and thoughts pent up inside of someone is unhealthy. By being vulnerable, it allows you to feels as if a burden has been lifted. There are also a few disadvantages. Being vulnerable can allow people to take advantage of you, both mentally and socially. Also, Some people are only partially open to being vulnerable, which may make things worse. All in all, I thinks its paramount to leading a healthy lifestyle that an individual shows signs of vulnerability. 

Values

To me, values and morals are the single most important thing when determining your feelings towards someone else.  John Wooden, the legendary head coach of the UCLA bruins said it best. He said “the true test of a man's character is what he does when no one is watching." Its not necessarily about how you act when you are trying to impress or prove someone wrong. It about whether or not you do the right thing even when you know you could take a shortcut and no one would ever find out. Being the leader of an organization on campus, I find myself in this situation very frequently and a lot of times, its much easier to do the wrong thing than you may believe. I consider myself to be very honest and ethical, no matter the situation. Whether I am collecting dues and giving them to our treasurer or I am filing a report with our national office, I always tend to do the right thing, even if it isn't always the easiest. I look at facing moral dilemmas as a extremely slippery slope; it may seem like a good idea at first but disregarding your ethics is bound to catch up with you at some point. One example of a time where my actions didn't align with my values happened just a few days ago. Our national office has a series of accreditation submissions that must be made on a biannual basis. Our chairman in charge of the submissions set strict deadlines for when we needed to have things into him. Rather than planning ahead and getting my requirements done personally, I decided to enlist the help of a few of our newer members and basically told them I needed them to get my requirement taken care. Me being a senior member of my organization, they obliged and got it all done. I then proceeded to send my requirements to our chairman, taking full credit. Looking back on it, I felt terrible making them do my work and then taking full credit. Since then, I have even given them credit and taken each of them out to lunch as a thank you. It was definitely not how I tend to operate and have since remedied the situation. All in all, I tend to hold my values near and dear to my heart. No one is perfect and you are bound to have slip-ups in your values from time to time. The true test of morality is how to respond to those slip-ups.