Being a Powerful Person

This is pulled from "Keep Your Love On" by Danny Silk (we are reading this... did you notice?) This is one of the first concepts described in the book and while it certainly is not unique or even the first time I've heard it it is described in a way that has seemed to click more than in the past.

Often one off the best ways to explain a thing is to describe its opposite. So I will begin by outlining what a powerless person is like. A powerless person can be identified most directly by their language. They will say things like "I can't", "I have to", "this is too hard". They try to push the responsibility for their actions onto others and "uncontrollable" circumstances because they feel powerless to take responsibility for their actions. They also will use "I'll try" to give themselves an out and give up responsibility for keeping their commitments.

The driving force behind a powerless person is anxiety. Life can be very scary when you are powerless to feel like you have no control.

That leads us to what we really want to know about of course. How to be a powerful person. You might think a powerful person is someone who commands attention. Who has control. Who evokes fear in those around them. But that is not it. It is much deeper and different than that.

A powerful person recognizes that they in fact do have control of their lives. Not of everything of course, but of enough that they can shape their life despite of circumstances. They do not let fear control them. They do not let anxiety constrict their world. They know what they want and they say "I can" and "I get to". Most fundamentally though, a powerful person is someone who can control themselves.

I unfortunately have spent a lot of time as a powerless person. I have allowed difficult circumstances to keep me down. I have wallowed in my "impossible" difficulties. But as I have started to take control of the things I can I have begun to see that I can do a lot more than I thought to affect my life. Circumstances can be overwhelming, but they will not have the last word.