I am POWERFUL

For me, the word powerful has always had either a neutral or positive connotation to it. To be honest, it conjures up visions of some fabulously witchy women of old, standing around a bubbling cauldron, working to set things right in the world. I think I’ve held the word tight, only attributing it to those who wield it well, so it’s never felt like a negative thing to me. So it’s interesting to me that some people see power, and thus the idea of being powerful, as a negative thing. 

Jason is one of those people. In a discussion between us and two of our dear friends, he shared that to him, power = control, particularly when exerted over others. He talked about it more in terms of a power dynamic between two or more people, rather than an inner quality that one possess. Whereas I now see power as something that we harness within ourselves as a tool to navigate life. 

Whether you see it through the lens of positivity or negativity, there is no denying that the idea of power and being powerful, is a complicated one. 

Power = Control 

I can easily understand where Jason is coming from. As a father and as someone who has held many positions of power throughout his career, he’s had to take control of numerous situations in order to steer the ship towards safer shores. However, he can also identify how often his ego has wrestled against reason for the helm, and thus he doubts the origins of his power. 

I think another layer for him might be the connection between power and anger. Unfortunately in our society, anger is not recognized as one of the many valid emotions that we are allowed to feel, let alone express. When women get angry, they are discounted and often labeled any number of nasty names, whereas when men get angry, that anger is often seen as a display of power. Ultimately true power has nothing to do with anger, but our society is so uncomfortable with anger, that is has to explain it away as other things. So when you’re conditioned to equate power with anger, and you’ve also been told to control your anger, when that anger rears is raucous head, and you’ve mistaken it for power, it can feel overwhelming and uncomfortable. Over time, the relationship between the two gets reinforced and eventually power becomes a bad thing. 

It’s not hard to find instances of power equalling control in the world, but for me, government is the first example that comes to mind. We quite literally turn our power over to political candidates by voting for them, thereby giving them the power to make decisions for us. The world population surpassed eight billion people this past November, so clearly we can’t all walk around making individual decisions in regards to how our towns, cities, states, provinces, countries etc., are run. We need a consensus to keep things together (if you can call this ramshackle ridiculousness, “together”), so someone has to be “in power.” However, it’s a short distance from voting to put someone in power, too feeling like you have no power over what happens to, and around you. Unfortunately, we can see this dynamic play out in so many stages of our lives.

Losing Your Power

It’s incredibly easy to feel powerless in your own life. It starts right from the get go, really. As a child you are told what to eat, what to wear, when to sleep, when to go to the bathroom and more. While the parent or guardian may be well meaning, this ultimately results in the child not learning to trust their own intuition and judgement: I don’t feel hungry, or, I don’t feel like I need to use the bathroom, but I’m being told I have to, so I must not understand my body’s needs.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand why parents/guardians do many of these things. It’s not exactly easy to have a tired, hangry child losing their minds while peeing their pants in the middle of the grocery store, so we try to avoid it at all costs. But in the attempt to avoid a challenging situation, we end up exerting power over the child, thereby taking away their own power or bodily autonomy. 

Eventually we make our way to school, at an age where developmentally we’re basically a bowl full of loud, jiggly worms and we are told to sit still and be quiet. If we do not behave, our teachers tell our parents/guardians that they must exert more control over us; when they do so, we revolt by being louder and jigglier, and in an effort to feel some semblance of control in their own lives, our parents/guardians become even more controlling. It’s a cycle that few are able to see beyond and break, but our society is not set up to support childhood freedoms because it doesn’t match up with our particular model. We cannot be productive in a world where the whims of our children are in control. And how will the world go round if we are not productive? 

As we age, we typically find ourselves working for others, who, from their position of power, begin to exert control over us as well. Again, we’ve been conditioned to believe that we must be productive at all times, and to do so, there must be rules laid down by those more powerful than us to ensure that productivity. Heck, even if you work for yourself, you still have the potential to feel powerless at times. 

Owning Your Power

Let’s come back to that image of the fabulously witchy women of old, standing around a bubbling cauldron, working to set things right in the world. You can bet they weren’t worried about being called the B word, nor did they give one iota about being productive in the way we use the word now. They owned their power. They worked with it to effect change in their lives and they used their inner power for good. 

I can think of so many fabulously witchy women who are working to set things right in the world, today. They are not afraid of the B word and funnily enough, they are incredibly productive, not because they need to be, rather because they want to be. And furthermore, their productivity inspires others up to claim their own power as well. 

To me, that’s what being truly powerful means. You understand and embrace the inherent power you have inside of you, and you are not threatened by others embracing their own, either.

Just like we are all Enough, and we are all Love, we all all POWERFUL. We have the power to shape and change our lives, yet we so rarely consciously wield that power. Most of our lives we’ve been forced to yield that power to others, be it parents or guardians, teachers, bosses, law enforcement officials, politicians and so on. So many other people have a say in our lives that we often forget that ultimately they only have power if we grant it to them. 

Don’t worry, I’m not suggesting full on anarchy here. But I am suggesting that you don’t have to feel so powerless in your life. The first step to owning your power, is to identify the ways that you are giving it away to others. 

Your time & energy 

For me, one of the easiest ways to feel powerless is to read the news. It instantly drags me down into the quagmire that is the world today, and I immediately feel overwhelmed and unable to help. For example, the devastating earthquake in Turkey and Syria totally captivated my attention. I felt compelled to check in for updates several times a day, in the days following the tragedy. I cried and felt lost and helpless. After a few days of this, it dawned on me that I was purposefully putting my time and energy into something I could not change. Taking into account my skillset and resources, I knew that I could not help the people of Turkey and Syria. But I was overwhelmed by the sadness of it all, which I kept reintroducing myself too each time I checked to see if the death toll had risen. Under the guise of “needing to stay informed,” I was triggering myself over and over again, only to be reminded that I could do nothing to help, thereby reinforcing my powerlessness. 

I was making an active choice to stay stuck in the story. I could have read about what happened, assessed my ability to help, taken action if possible, and then moved on. But I unconsciously decided that my only way to help, was to be sad alongside the earthquake victims, who were more than 5,000 miles away. Would I have helped dig through the ruble, hug those in need and do whatever I could, had I been there? Absolutely. But that wasn’t possible given my daily life. So I decided that sadness was my contribution. Did it help anyone, anywhere in the world? Heck no! You can’t get sad enough to make someone else happy. You can’t get sick enough to make someone else well. The Universe doesn’t work that way. 

So we have to consciously look at where we choose to put our time and energy. If we direct it to things that cause us to feel powerless, we will continue to reinforce that conditioning. However, if we choose to spend that time focused on areas of our lives where we can actually have a positive impact, we are reclaiming our power. 

But I have to work!

According to a job satisfaction survey, 65% of US workers are satisfied with their job, which I have to be honest, is higher than I expected. But that still leaves a third of the US population disenchanted with what they do all day long. Many people feel stuck in jobs due to financial responsibilities. So what do you do if you don’t like your job? 

Having explored many different avenues of work over the years, I can say that there were very few situations that I actually enjoyed, let alone felt empowered in. It was easy for my to rattle off all the external reasons why I was so unhappy, but the truth was, I was the common denominator in all of those situations. I continuously drew in challenging bosses, and always blamed them for my discontent. Now, my ego wants me to point out that my fellow co-workers always found those bosses challenging as well, so it wasn’t just me. However, I kept finding myself in positions of powerlessness, even when I was a manager! I kept manifesting those situations because I unconsciously believed that I was not worthy of wielding my own power. It was so much easier to hand it over to others than it was to learn to reclaim it. 

What I could have done was recognize that while I was working for other people, and therefore was required to do what was asked of me (within my job description of course), I didn’t have to give them power over me. Just like with the earthquake coverage, I have a choice in how I react to a challenging boss. Do I come home and bitch and moan about them to my partner and friends, thereby giving them even more of my time? Or do I spend my downtime enjoying my life with those that I love, doing something that brings me joy? It’s a choice. I recognize now, at 44, that I spent decades giving away that power, choosing to spend the time I wasn’t working, complaining about the time that I was. I try not to have regrets, but oooff, sometimes I wonder what I could have done with all that time had I not wasted it on being cranky. 

It’s important to note, of course, that we can also choose to get a different job. It’s not always easy to do so, but unless you find yourself imprisoned and in a work program, you do, in fact, have a choice of where you work. However, as my dad has been known to say, “You take yourself wherever you go!” So if like me, you keep ending up in disempowering work situations, it’s probably time to take a look at the part you’re playing. 

I am POWERFUL 

Ultimately, we are all inherently powerful. We all have the power, and the right, to choose and create the life we want to live. The problem is that many of us think life is happening TO us, rather than FOR us. This is YOUR life, you get to choose whether you feel empowered or powerless. And the good news is, if you’ve been unconsciously choosing a life of powerlessness, you don’t even have to change your circumstances to reclaim your power. It’s simply a mindset. Though I say “simply,” I recognize that it’s not simple to change decades of ingrained beliefs, but I know that it can be done. I’ve slowly been working on it for awhile now, and though I still feel powerless at times (i.e. the recent earthquake), I can now pull myself back from the brink much faster than before. So while I can’t get back all that energy I spent being cranky about old bosses, I now know that I don’t have to waste any more time bemoaning things that I have the power to change. 

And thankfully now, I’ve got a pretty kick ass boss…