When Leslie John was a graduate student, she was asked about her most embarrassing story alongside a group of senior academics after a conference.
“Most people just gave these kinds of faux vulnerable things. But I went for it. I don’t know why, but I did,” John, a behavioral scientist and professor at Harvard Business School, tells Flow Space during our Longevity Lab series. “I shared my actually most embarrassing story.”
She initially felt she had taken the prompt just a bit too seriously. But looking back, those senior professors across the table became some of her closest mentors. Maybe they found her “interesting” and “odd,” John admits.
“That gesture of making a fool out of myself actually reaped rewards down the road,” she says.
Sharing more about ourselves can go a long way. That is the premise of John’s new book, Revealing: The Underrated Power of Oversharing.
“I’ve found that what feels like over-communicating is often just communicating. What feels like oversharing is usually just sharing,” John says. “I’ve just been fascinated by what revealing does to us.”
We’ve been conditioned to fear revealing or sharing information about ourselves that is more sensitive or intimate. “We live in fear of ‘TMI,’ too much information,” she tells Flow Space. “We cringe at even the thought of oversharing.”
Revealing: The Underrated Power of Oversharing
But through John’s research, she’s learned there’s an underestimated benefit of revealing. Revealing and practicing vulnerability will help our relationships thrive and even benefit our health. John’s thesis echoes a growing body of research on the power of vulnerability and opening up. It’s a framework championed by renowned researcher Brené Brown, who speaks to how vulnerability is the antidote to shame, a pervasive feeling born of a fear of judgment.
“Most of us would benefit from revealing a little bit more a lot of the time,” John says.
The benefits of revealing
The longest happiness study to date, The Harvard Study of Adult Development, found that the strength of our relationships was the strongest determinant of our happiness at the end of life.
“What it does is it makes you feel known for who you really are,” John says. The connection, in turn, can lower the stress response and improve our well-being. Strong social connections are associated with lower stress and improved cardiovascular health. Social isolation is also associated with a 50% increased risk of dementia.
And building strong relationships depends on our ability to reveal and trust, John says. Emotional intimacy is vital to longevity.
“When I reveal something vulnerable, something sensitive to you, I am showing that I trust you. I’m implicitly saying I trust you to not make a fool out of me,” John says. “Once you have that spark of trust, that is the spark of all flourishing human relationships.”
For women, there’s an innate fear of being seen as too much or overly sensitive, John says, which can turn them away from revealing. However, revealing more can be a superpower, helping build trust and a deeper connection.
“There’s a social expectation that women be more open, that we be warmer, but … if we cross that line, if we get too emotional, then ‘we don’t have good judgment,’ or ‘we can’t be of sound mind,’” John says of the disjointed societal expectation on women. While not everything is shareable, John argues that the fear of perception can muddle the power of vulnerability.
“Oftentimes, the line is a little bit further than you think,” John says.
John argues in her new book that we should fear what not sharing does to our health and happiness more than the judgment we might face for sharing. “Think about the risks of holding back. The benefits of revealing aren’t going to make you reveal more all the time. It shouldn’t,” she says. “We don’t want to be revealing everything that’s on our minds, but I do think it will make us reveal more.”
How to practice vulnerability
Vulnerability is not an innate quality, John says.
“Revealing really is a skill, and so you’re never going to get better at it if you don’t push the line,” she says. “If you never get to that line, if you never see a cringy face, you’ve never gone far enough.”
But that doesn’t mean you have to tell a new coworker your life story or put yourself in an uncomfortable position just to say you’ve done it. Revealing is a way to get closer to people that you’re excited about, and you can start small.
Say you’re at a child’s soccer game. Instead of telling a nearby parent that it’s fun to watch the kids laughing, John suggests saying something like, “I don’t even remember the last time I had a good belly laugh.”
“That’s one level deeper,” John says. “That’s all of a sudden revealing and more interesting. And then the person beside you is probably going to say something like, ‘Oh my gosh, yeah.’”
At work, revealing more can look like asking for and giving constructive feedback. “It prompts their employees [and] their teammates to share some real feedback,” John says.
If you’ve ever ruminated on a moment of sharing after the fact and worried how you were perceived, often known as a vulnerability hangover, or what John calls a “disclosure hangover,” it’s normal to want to pull back. “If you cross the line and say something a little bit too much, people might cringe,” she says, but adds, “they also might admire your guts.”
Still, there is such a thing as oversharing, John says, and it’s important to know that not everyone is trustworthy right off the bat. At work, for example, building relationships with coworkers first can create space for revealing down the road. But if you do feel like you crossed a line, remember there’s a way to redeem yourself.
“We often think these disclosures are a high-stakes event, but I view revealing as a campaign. So if you say something that you think you shouldn’t have said, you can stop by your colleague’s office later in the day and be like, ‘How are you feeling?’” John says. “Even when you have these cringy moments, even when you overshare, oftentimes there’s redemption.”
So, maybe it’s just not that deep.
“A key to longevity would be revealing wisely, understanding how and when to show more of yourself because when you do that, you are known for who you are,” John says.