How Powerful are YOU…Really?

Every human being is a powerful entity.  But it seems few may realise the full potential of their powerfulness!  One reason is that we learn to associate ‘power’ only with the physical dimension of our life.  So we talk about and attend to things like power lifting, power walking, power dressing and even power naps!  But power has it’s origins not in our form but in our consciousness.  We know when we have powerful thoughts and powerful feelings and we ‘empower’ others with an attitude of encouragement. However, before we can explore and speak about the power of our consciousness it’s necessary to define power.

Perhaps the simplest way to describe ‘power’ is the ability to influence future change.  It’s a definition that is prior to any judgment about the nature or direction of change i.e. good or bad, right or wrong. It is a future that could be minutes away or years away.  The power of fire has the ability to instantly influence and change the form of wood into light and heat.  The power of the wind has the ability, over time, to influence and change the contours of a beach.  The power of a good speech has the ability to inspire, influence and therefore change the lives of those in the audience.

To understand the nature of our personal power and be able to converse meaningfully about it, ‘power’ also needs to have a context.  In terms of the power of human consciousness the two contexts in which we all have the potential ability to influence future change are in the ‘inner’ and the ‘outer’.

Inner power is the ability that we all have to influence the thoughts and feelings that we create.  It sounds elementary, as we are the obvious originators of our thoughts, but it’s not quite as straightforward as we might think!  This is because most of our lives are not influenced by our own thoughts but by the beliefs, perceptions and thoughts given to us by ‘others’ in those innocent childhood years.  We may believe that we think for ourselves but in reality it’s our psychological inheritance that generate most of our thoughts and therefore shapes our lives.  Hence the reason so many people repeat the decisions and behaviours of their parents.

Authentic Power

Genuinely powerful individuals are not those who simply follow the ways and traditions of others.  They awaken from and break free of their inherited beliefs and they consciously challenge their conditioned perceptions in order to think for themselves.  Powerful people are not people who occupy a position and then use their position to force others to do their bidding.  They are not people who make great displays to attract others attention and attempt to manipulate others even though they may appear to be successful in doing so.  Powerful people are those whose thoughts and actions are informed and shaped by an inner level of awareness that is ‘prior to’ their learned and inherited beliefs and perceptions.  It’s almost impossible to articulate or describe that awareness as it is also prior to thinking and therefore language.

Perhaps the closest description of this ‘awareness’ would be ones own truth.  It seems everyone has a deep inner sense of what is true which, when held in awareness, automatically reflects and filters all that is false or that has degrees of falseness.  Thinking and acting from this sense of what is true is also the foundation of what we often refer to as authenticity.

It is this authenticity that makes a genuinely powerful person both attractive and an effective influence upon others.  They attract the attention of others because they think and act from a personal realization of their own truth.  They are radically honest because they have realised that they have nothing to hide because they know ‘their truth’ that they have nothing anyway!  They are instantly forgiving because they have realized ‘their truth’ that to hold grudges and resentments both burdens the self and keeps relationships in a state of ‘stuckness’.  They are ‘thick skinned’ which means unaffected by others insults or by what we often refer to as the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune because they have realised ‘their truth’ that they are completely responsible for how they respond to life and that they are never a victim…if they so choose. Their co-operation is always available because they have realized ‘their truth’ that we are all interconnected, interdependent as all our lives are interwoven.  They have recognized the gifted opportunity that comes with a life lived with an awareness of ‘their truth’ and it is an opportunity to ‘contribute’ to the community of all.   They will occasionally be totally introverted because they have realised ‘their truth’ that it is essential to withdraw their energy and attention from the world and all their external relationships for short periods in order to deepen their awareness of ‘their truth’.  In so doing they refresh and revitalise their energy.

The authentic person is powerful in the context of their own life because they don’t compromise, suppress or avoid ‘their truth’.  So their energy is never wasted or dis- torted.  It is as much the attractiveness that their authenticity radiates that gives them their power i.e. the ability to influence future change of the lives of others in a good way.

It seems there is a good chance that these and many other truths are present within us all (said he avoiding an unverifiable claim!)  But it also appears that we find it either difficult to rediscover these inner truths or have deemed it unnecessary.  Instead many of us tend to muddle through, struggle on, follow the herd and occasionally wonder what it must be like to have the kind of authentically driven influential power of the Mandellas, Ghandis and Mother Theresas.  By recognising their greatness we acknowledge their authenticity and therefore their ability to influence the future lives of millions.  The power of their example will likely endure for decades to come.

That said there are also likely to be thousands and perhaps millions of others living authentically and therefore powerfully ‘out there’ right now with neither the desire nor the necessity to be recognized.  While their presence is of priceless value to the world the question still comes down to ‘how powerful am I’?  To what extent am I living my truth?  Do I know my truth?  Do I yet know my self as truth?  Only from ‘living in’ and ‘reflecting on’ such questions can our own authenticity arise.  Paradoxically it’s likely to be an authenticity that would never judge the authenticity of others!

If someone asked you to articulate what is meant by ‘your own truth’ what would you say?

What is the difference between deciding and acting from what you have learned to believe and what you innately know is true?

Take a few moments each day this week and review the day writing down moments when you know you compromised your authenticity.

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Ross Galán, NLP Spiritual Life Coach
at the Spiritual Life Coaching School