6 Steps To Stop Giving Away Your Power.
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How do you feel about power?
Your Power!
While you think about that one… a little personal back-story:
During a session with my archetype coach and mentor a few years ago, she told me I was using my power to align myself with those who treated me poorly as a way to prove I was good enough in the world. She said I was leaking my power everywhere.
Her comments stung, they lingered in my gut and I was offended, so offended in fact that I cancelled our sessions for three months — while I stewed… thinking that would teach her.
I eventually realized she was right. I was doing what Brené Brown calls hustling for my worthiness. You know, busting ass to make sure everything is tied up with a pretty bow, hiding all those messy feelings and working double-time to make the outside look like a million bucks, because I was falling apart on the inside.
When I find myself in similar situations, I recognize it early for what it is. My responsibility.
A theme has emerged over the past year talking with women. What I find most interesting is that even when the specifics are different, there are strong similarities that all point to power.
There are many ways to give our power away — there are days when we leak it all day long, leaving us wondering why we are exhausted, sleepless, ravenous at night and just plain Pissy Pattys (our household term of endearment for cranky moods). One of those subtle yet accumulative things we don’t consciously think about.
Giving away your power can look like this:
* Worrying about what other people think.
* Seeking approval from others, or living up to their expectations.
* Making others responsible for our satisfaction — personal and professional.
* Spending time with people who drain our energy or make us feel bad.
* Putting the needs of others before our own, then resenting it in a Pissy Patty moment.
* Feeling like you need to explain or justify yourself and how you live your life.
Here is the big one that usually provides our first Whiskey Tango Foxtrot moment on the road to truth…
Continuing to live in a way that is not authentic to who we are, simply to please others and fool ourselves.
Living this way affects everything we do, even our business because promoting anything other than who we really are is not sustainable long-term, so eventually you gotta dance with the one who brung ya.
In my personal experience, it turned out that I was asking people to show up in my life in ways I was not showing up for myself, which made me miserable.
It was my way of shifting my power to others, making them in charge, so I wouldn’t have to be; then becoming frustrated when my Queenly desires were not fulfilled as I had imagined.
This Queen no longer hustles for anyone or anything, definitely not for approval. As I have written about before, the word hustle carries deep meaning for me. It’s my caution word — attached to giving my power away. My inner prostitute could tell you so many sordid stories about this.
Owning our power is different for each of us. It takes daily practice… sometimes hourly… or less.
Here’s my long-ish list to keeping your power right where it belongs, within you.
1. Take responsibility for yourself and your stuff.
2. Make decisions that feel good for you, not what you think others need you to do.
3. Do your own thing and do not worry what others think.
4. Put your needs first, so when you do for others, you feel good rather than resentful. No, that is not a typo. Put your needs first.
5. Take control of your perspective toward difficult situations.
6. When people are aggressive or rude to you, realize it is mostly to do with them… move on quickly.
My little cheat sheet. I call it The Sovereign Power Shift.
Owning your sovereign power is the spiritual art of not giving a shit about the small things. Being comfortable not giving a damn what people think because you are the queen in your life. Dust off that crown.
Feeling at home in your body is huge, because it holds your power. Your body is your most important tool and your beacon for wellness, it is smarter than you are. Trust me on that one.
Know that you are only responsible for your stuff, no one else’s. Sell those rescue life rings in your next garage sale. It is liberating to know that by owning our power we create the ability to design life experience.
Something I finally appreciated during my own experience, and I am also hearing from other women, is that the resistance I expected or initially feared from others rarely happens.
We get in our own way.
Owning our power does not make us hard-edged or uncaring, it makes us selfish (betcha that word just felt a little icky), healthy, and loving.
It takes time, so go gently, sister.
*****
Dana O’Dell is a Mindset Mentor and Writer. She is the founder of thebeautifulreal.com, where she writes about living with cancer from an outlier perspective. Where women who have experienced any life altering circumstance find inspiration. It’s all about love, forgiveness, faltering, falling down, and always getting back up. She holds space, witnesses women on overcoming fear and overwhelm. She is a vintage dress addict and smeller of roses, and is currently writing a memoir, her life navigation manual.
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