I begin with the question – what do we mean when we say personal power?
It’s a word we use all the time. The dictionary has numerous variations, from animate to inanimate objects. We all think we know what Power means, but I think we’d be hard pressed to give it a concrete definition. We tend to think of it as a state of being, a level that means “you can do whatever you want”. Yet, we use it as a noun: he/she HAS the power to do that. So it’s something you can possess. Since we think of power as being exclusive, we assume that not everyone has it. So it’s something that must be acquired. This implies that we, as individuals, are not born with power. Although, if we look at, what we call privileged families, we could say that perhaps THEY are born with power. So then what is it? And if power exists only for a select few, how is the idea of personal power even possible?
Let’s start at the etymological roots of the word. The word come from the Latin POSSE, which means to be able. So really it’s less of a noun and more of a condition. You must be able to do/be/have something. It needs a qualifier. If we walked around all day saying “I have ability” most people would ask “to do what?”
Now personal means “of a person”, meaning that which belongs to the person. So if we mix the two we start to get an idea of an ability to be of ourselves. The power to belong to ourselves.
Well what makes us ourselves? Our hopes, our dreams, our wishes, our choices, our beliefs, our desires, our values, our path. So think of personal power as our ability to have our hopes belong to us. Our dreams belong to us. Our choices belong to us.
If you think back to a time when you felt most powerful – what was going on? What had happened? Had you done something that you wanted? Had you ticked off something on the bucket list? Were you just in a moment where you felt like you were doing what you wanted to for you? That you held the reigns to your own life? When we feel we are living by our personal standards and according to our wishes – we feel powerful. We feel great. We stand differently. We carry ourselves differently. We feel more centered. We feel more sure. We’re less interested in the opinions of others and less tolerant of bullshit in general.
One note I want to make here is that true personal power is a closed circuit between us and ourselves. So if we feel powerful because of someone else, perhaps they lifted us up: that creates a dependency on the outside. So may be a feeling of power, but it’s not sustainable. It’s co-dependent. Or if we feel powerful because we’ve made someone else smaller, that’s not power so much as coercion.
GIVING AWAY OUR POWER
We give away our personal power when we abdicate our ability to own ourselves & the course of our life. That means allowing others to decide our hopes, dreams, choices, beliefs, values. Worse, expecting them to do so. We give away our power when we don’t listen to ourselves & assume that others know better for us. We give away our power when we betray what we know to be true.
Why would we do this? Well, if we have doubt in our ability to make those choices, or to know what’s best for us, we will look for confirmation outside of ourselves. If we don’t like the idea of having to take responsibility for the consequences of our choices, then we will look for others to do that for us. This allows us the ability to assign blame when things don’t go the way we want. This, however, is a role that keeps us in victim mentality. Not much personal power in that.
Why would we doubt our ability to make choices for ourselves? Shouldn’t we be the CEO of our own lives? Who better than us would know what we want for ourselves? The truth is that since birth we’ve been absorbing everyone else’s vision for us. Of course, their vision for us is based on their life & their experiences. It’s a bit like taking the plumbers advice on fixing your car engine.
Much of the time people don’t know they’re trying to take away our power – nor do we. Many times people assume that if you make the choices they made then that is a validation of their own choices. Sometimes people look to you to correct, what they experienced as, mistakes in their own choices. This may even be done with the best of intentions, but it ignores the basic principle that everyone has their own path.
We may find in our family of origin that love was contingent on making the parents, the family, the neighbors, whomever…happy. We’ve all been exposed to this kind of emotional manipulation. You know how it feels. It literally eats away at your stomach (the life center). Lose the love of someone I care for because I choose what I want for me? It’s a rough situation.
Over time we develop the habit of abandoning ourselves or our choices to make peace in our external existence. Yet this does nothing but dig a hole, that gets deeper, of insecurity, lack of self-confidence, and co-dependence.
So how do you recognize when your power is in jeopardy? Look for the word “should”. Are you saying it to yourself? Is someone saying it to you? It’s the smallest word, but it is filled with so much…bullshit. When you hear it ask yourself…why should I? Who says I should? What do I want?
Let’s say you decide to go with the “should” – then own that too. As soon as you tell yourself that you are knowingly & intentionally deciding to do what someone else asked/suggested, that’s still you taking your power back. This is what we mean when we say own it. The choice, the decision – belongs to you. Every time you own your choice – even if it’s a “bad” choice – your power comes back to you. Literally, more power to you.
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