Reclaiming Your Personal Power
When we hate our enemies, we are giving them power over us: power over our sleep, our appetites, our blood pressure, our health, and our happiness. — DALE CARNEGIE
Giving other people the power to control how you think, feel, and behave makes it impossible to be happy and successful. Do any of the points below sound familiar?
- You feel deeply offended by any criticism or negative feedback you receive, regardless of the source.
- Other people have the ability to make you feel so angry that you say and do things you later regret.
- You’ve changed your goals based on what other people have told you that you should be doing with your life.
- The type of day you’re going to have depends on how other people behave.
- When other people try to guilt you into doing something, you reluctantly do it, even if you don’t want to
- You work hard to ensure other people see you in a positive light because much of your self-worth depends on how others perceive you.
- You spend a lot of time complaining about people and circumstances that you don’t like.
- You often complain about all the things you “have to” do in life.
- You go to great lengths to avoid uncomfortable emotions, like embarrassment or sadness.
- You have difficulty setting boundaries, but then feel resentful toward people who take up your time and energy.
- You hold a grudge when someone offends you or hurts you.
Can you see yourself in any of the above examples? Retaining your power is about being confident in who you are and the choices you make, despite the people around you and the circumstances you’re in.
Why We Give Away Our Power
Anytime you don’t set healthy emotional and physical boundaries for yourself, you risk giving away your power to other people. Perhaps you don’t dare say no when your neighbour asks for a favour. Or maybe you dread receiving a phone call from a friend who constantly complains, but you continue to pick up on the first ring. Each time you avoid saying no to something you really don’t want, you give away your power. If you don’t make any attempt to get your needs met, you’ll give people permission to take things away from you.
A lack of emotional boundaries can be equally problematic. If you don’t like the way someone treats you, yet you don’t stand up for yourself, you give that person power over your life.
The Problem With Giving Away Your Power
There are many problems with giving away your power:
1. You depend on others to regulate your feelings
When you give away your power, you become completely dependent upon other people and external circumstances to regulate your emotions. Life often becomes like a roller coaster—when things are going well, you’ll feel good; but when your circumstances change, your thoughts, feelings, and behaviour will shift.
2. You let other people define your self-worth
If you give others the power to determine your self-worth, you’ll never feel worthy enough. You’ll only be as good as someone else’s opinion of you and you will never be able to receive enough praise or positive feedback to meet your needs if you depend on others to feel good about yourself.
3. You avoid addressing the real problem
Giving away your power lends itself to helplessness. Rather than focus on what you can do to improve the situation, you’ll find an excuse to justify your problems.
4. You become a victim of your circumstances
You’ll become a passenger in your own life rather than a driver. You’ll say other people make you feel bad or force you to behave in a manner you don’t like. You’ll blame others instead of accepting responsibility for your choices.
5. You become highly sensitive to criticism
You’ll lack the ability to evaluate criticism. Instead, you’ll take anything anyone says to heart. You’ll give much more power to other people’s words than those words deserve.
6. You lose sight of your goals
You won’t be able to build the kind of life you want when you allow other people to be in control of your goals. You can’t work toward your goals successfully when you give other people the power to get in your way and interfere with your progress.
7. You ruin relationships
If you don’t speak up when people hurt your feelings or you allow them to infringe on your life in an unwelcomed manner, you’ll likely grow resentful toward them.
Reclaim Your Power
Without confidence in who you are, your entire self-worth may depend on how others feel about you. What if you offend people? What if they don’t like you anymore? If you choose to put uphealthy boundaries, you may receive some backlash. But if you have a strong enough sense of self-worth, you’ll learn that you can tolerate the repercussions.
Identify People Who Have Taken Your Power
Choosing to forgive someone who has hurt you, either emotionally or physically, doesn’t mean you have to excuse the other person’s behaviour, but letting go of your anger frees you to focus your energy on a more worthwhile cause.
If you’ve spent most of your life feeling like a victim of your circumstances, it takes hard work to recognize that you have the power to choose your own path in life. The first step is to develop self-awareness by identifying when you blame external circumstances and other people for how you think, feel, and behave. Take a close look at the people you are devoting your time and energy toward. Are they the people you want to receive it? If not, you may be giving them more power than you think they deserve.
Each second you spend commiserating with co-workers about how unfair your boss is, you are giving your boss more power. Every time you tell your friends how controlling your mother-in-law is, you give her a little more power over you. Resolve to stop giving people your time and energy if you don’t want them to play a big role in your life.
Reframe Your Language
Sometimes retaining your power means changing the way you look at the situation. Examples of
language that indicates you’re giving away your power include:
- “My boss makes me so mad.” You may not like your boss’s behaviour, but does he really make you feel angry? Perhaps your boss behaves in a manner that you don’t like and it may influence how you feel, but he’s not forcing you to feel anything.
- “My boyfriend left me because I’m not good enough.” Are you really not good enough or is that just one person’s opinion? If you took a poll of a hundred people, it’s not likely that they’d all come to that same consensus. Just because one person thinks something, it doesn’t make it true. Don’t give one person’s opinion of you the power to determine who you are.
- My mom makes me feel really bad about myself because she’s always so critical of me.” As an adult, are you obligated to listen to your mother make critical statements about you over and over? Just because she makes comments you don’t like, does it really have to lower your self-esteem?
- “I have to invite my in-laws over for dinner every Sunday night.” Do your in-laws really force you to do that or is that a choice you make because it’s important to your family?
Think Before You React
If someone says something you don’t like, and you yell or begin to argue, you give those words you don’t like even more power. Make a conscious choice to think about how you want to behave before you react to other people. Every time you lose your cool, you give that other person your power. Here are some strategies to help you stay calm when you’re tempted to react negatively:
1. Take deep breaths
Frustration and anger cause physical reactions within the body—an increased rate of breathing, an elevated heart rate, and sweating to name a few. Taking slow, deep breaths can relax your muscles and decrease the physiological response, which in turn can decrease your emotional reactivity.
2. Excuse yourself from the situation
The more emotional you feel, the less rational you’ll think. Learn to recognize your personal warning signs of anger—such as shaking or feeling flushed—and remove yourself from the situation before you lose your cool. This may mean saying, “I am not willing to talk about that right now,” or it may mean walking away.
3. Distract yourself
Don’t try solving a problem or addressing an issue with someone when you’re feeling overly emotional. Instead, distract yourself with an activity, like walking or reading, to help you calm down. Getting your mind off what’s bothering you, even for a few minutes, can help you calm down so you can think more rationally.
Evaluate Feedback Critically
Retaining your power is about evaluating feedback to determine if it has any validity. While criticism can sometimes open our eyes to how others perceive us so we can make positive change—a friend points out a bad habit, or a spouse helps you see your selfish behaviour—at other times, criticism is a reflection of the critic. Angry people may choose to offer harsh criticism quite regularly just because it relieves their stress. Or individuals with low self-esteem may feel better about themselves only when they put other people down. So it’s important to really consider the source before making any decisions about how you want to proceed.
When you receive criticism or feedback from others, wait a beat before responding. If you’re upset or emotionally reactive, take the time to calm down. Then ask yourself these questions:
1. What evidence is there that this is true? For example, if your boss says you are lazy, look for evidence of times when you haven’t worked very hard.
2. What evidence do I have this isn’t true? Look for times when you have put in a lot of effort and have been a hard worker.
3. Why might this person be giving me this feedback? Take a step back and see if you can find out why this person may be giving you negative feedback. Is it based on the small sampling of your behaviour that the person has witnessed? For example, if your boss only watched you work on a day where you were coming down with the flu, she may decide that you aren’t very productive. Her conclusion may not be accurate.
4. Do I want to change any of my behaviour? There may be times where you choose to change your behaviour because you agree with the other person’s criticism. For example, if your boss says you’re lazy, maybe you’ll decide that you haven’t been putting in as much effort at the office as you could. So you decide to start showing up early and staying late because it’s important to you to be a good worker. Just remember, though, that your boss isn’t forcing you to do anything different. You are choosing to create change because you
want to, not because you have to.
Keep in mind that one person’s opinion of you doesn’t make it true. You can respectfully choose to disagree and move on without devoting time and energy into trying to change the other person’s mind.
Recognize Your Choices
There are very few things in life you have to do, but often we convince ourselves we don’t have a choice. Instead of saying, “I have to go to work tomorrow,” remind yourself that it’s a choice. If you choose not to go to work, there will be consequences. Perhaps you won’t get paid. Or maybe
you’ll risk losing your job altogether. But it’s a choice.
Simply reminding yourself that you have a choice in everything you do, think, and feel can be very freeing. If you’ve spent most of your life feeling like a victim of your circumstances, it takes hard work to recognize that you have the power to create the kind of life you want to live.
Taking Back Your Power Will Make You Mentally Stronger
You don’t get to be named one of the most powerful people in the world by giving away your power. Just ask Oprah Winfrey. She grew up in extreme poverty and was sexually abused by several people throughout her childhood. She bounced between living with her mother, father, and grandmother, and as a teenager, she frequently ran away from home. She became pregnant at age fourteen, but the infant died shortly after birth.
During her high school years, she began working at a local radio station. She worked her way through several media jobs, and eventually, she landed a job as a TV news anchor. But she was later fired from the position.
She didn’t allow one person’s opinion of her on-air suitability to stop her, however. She went on to create her own talk show and by the age of thirty-two, her show became a national hit. By theage of forty-one, she had a reported net worth of over $340 million. Oprah has started her own magazine, radio show, and TV network and has co-authored power more than five books. She’s even won an Academy Award. She’s started a multitude of charities to help people in need, including a leadership academy for girls in South Africa.
Oprah didn’t let her childhood or her former employer take away her power. A woman who was once teased because she was so poor she wore potato sacks as dresses was named one of the world’s most powerful women by both CNN and Time. Statistically, her upbringing would have predicted a poor prognosis. But Oprah refused to be a statistic. She chose to define who she was going to be in life by not giving away her power.
When you decide that no one else has the power to control how you feel, you’ll experience empowerment. Here are some other ways how retaining your power will help you become mentally strong:
1. You’ll develop a better sense of who you are when you’re able to make choices based on what’s best for you instead of what will prevent the most repercussions.
2. When you take responsibility for your own behaviour, you’ll become accountable for your progress toward your goals.
3. You will never be pressured into doing something that you don’t want to do based on guilt trips or what you think other people want you to do.
4. You’ll be able to devote your time and energy to things you choose. You won’t have to blame other people for wasting your time or ruining your day.
5. Retaining your personal power reduces your risk of depression, anxiety, and other mental health issues. Many mental health problems are linked to a sense of hopelessness and helplessness. When you decide not to give other people and external circumstances the power to control how you feel and behave, you gain more power over your mental health.
When you hold a grudge, those feelings of anger and resentment do nothing to lessen the other person’s life. Instead, harbouring anger and resentment gives that person more power to interfere with your quality of life. Choosing to forgive allows you to take back your power, not just over your psychological health, but also over your physical health. Research shows some of the health benefits of forgiveness include the following:
1. Forgiveness reduces your stress
Over the years, many studies have shown that holding a grudge keeps your body in a state of stress. When you practice forgiveness, your blood pressure and heart rate decrease.
2. Choosing to forgive increases your tolerance to pain.
In a 2005 study of patients with chronic low back pain, anger increased psychological distress and decreased a person’s tolerance to pain. A willingness to forgive was associated with increased pain tolerance.
3. Unconditional forgiveness can help you to live longer
A 2012 study published in the Journal of Behavioral Medicine discovered that when people were only willing to forgive others under certain conditions—like the other person apologized or promised to never repeat the same behaviour—their risk of dying early actually increased. You don’t have any control over whether someone will apologize. Waiting to forgive people until they say they’re sorry gives them control over not just your life, but perhaps even your death.
Troubleshooting And Common Traps
Monitor your personal power and look for ways in which you are voluntarily giving it away. It takes hard work, but increasing your mental strength requires you to retain every ounce of personal power for yourself.
What’s Helpful
- Using language that acknowledges your choice such as, “I’m choosing to . . ..”
- Setting healthy emotional and physical boundaries with people.
- Behaving proactively by making conscious choices about how you’ll respond to others.
- Taking full responsibility for how you choose to spend your time and energy.
- Choosing to forgive individuals regardless of whether they seek to make amends.
- Willingness to examine feedback and criticism without jumping to conclusions.
What’s Not Helpful
- Using language that implies you’re a victim, such as “I have to do this,” or “My boss makes me so mad.”
- Feeling anger and resentment toward people you allow to infringe on your rights.
- Reacting to others and then blaming them for the way you handled yourself.
- Doing things you don’t want to do and then blaming others for “making” you do it.
- Choosing to hold a grudge and harbour anger and resentment.
- Allowing feedback and criticism to control how you feel about yourself.