How You Relinquish Power
And How to Regain It
We All Want More Power
While many of us see ‘power’ as an ugly work, we yearn for more of it — at least over ourselves.
We vote for politicians to give us more rights.
We petition ourselves for higher salaries.
We desire more free time.
In short, we want to do what we want to do when we want to do it.
But what do we do with the power that we have?
We Squander Our Power…Often Unknowingly
How do we do this?
Through Blame and Complaining
Blame and complaint — two of the most counterintuitive attitudes.
Counterintuitive because in wanting power, you are giving up any power you already posses. What a stupid waste.
But feels good to complain. It takes the responsibility off ourselves and puts it on someone else.
That’s just the thing: we’re relieving our power over the situation and giving it to another — they screwed up. Not our fault.
By giving up your power over what you don’t want, you forfeit your power over all things — you forfeit your power over your emotions and mindset.
And then we demand our rights? Our freedoms? Our control over our mind?
If you want true freedom, strength, power and control, you must accept all blame and all responsibility for everything in your pursuit — even those you have no control over.
It will be painful. It will seem unfair. But that is the yang to the yin of you having freedom.
When you blame, you are a slave to someone else — your attitude is based on outside events that are beyond your control.
I don’t care if it was your fault. Through the mindset of accepting responsibility over the situation and over your thoughts, you will gain the power in your life that you desire.
Through Anger
You’re letting someone else make you angry? Really?
People piss me off and disappoint me all the time.
But what was I expecting? What were you expecting?
As Marcus Aurelius says…
“Begin each day by telling yourself: Today I shall be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness.” — Marcus Aurelius
Know this and you will no longer be put off guard.
You should expect people to piss you off.
But you should also know that these people who are humans are no different than you and are in fact, everything you will ever have to work and live with.
Through Jealousy
You have the power to be grateful for everything you have, yet we give it up for the sake of what we don’t have.
Worse yet, we give up our power only when we see what others have. If you never saw that your neighbor had a brand new convertible, you’d still be in a place of gratitude for what you have.
But as soon as you saw him driving away with the droptop down, you felt that what you already have power over — possession over — is no longer good enough.
You’ve relinquished your power.
I’ll let Kurt Vonnegut tell the story of fellow author, Joseph Heller, to illustrate this power.
“True story, Word of Honor:
Joseph Heller, an important and funny writer
now dead,
and I were at a party given by a billionaire
on Shelter Island.
I said, “Joe, how does it make you feel
to know that our host only yesterday
may have made more money
than your novel ‘Catch-22’
has earned in its entire history?”
And Joe said, “I’ve got something he can never have.”
And I said, “What on earth could that be, Joe?”
And Joe said, “The knowledge that I’ve got enough.”
Not bad! Rest in peace!” — Kurt Vonnegut
Through Fear
Fear. Fear. We all experience fear, yet we are ashamed of it at the same time.
If we all experience fear, then there is no need to feel ashamed.
The only shame is in allowing it to rule the decisions you make.
Accept that you have fear, then see the fear for what it is — just an emotion — then proceed with whatever it is you were going to do. There is no bear trying to eat you.
All this is to say…
You Are Not Your Thoughts and Emotions
Do not be ashamed by any of the aforementioned emotions — just don’t be ruled by them.
“Rather than being your thoughts and emotions be the awareness behind them.” — Eckhart Tolle
The Stoics were never immune to emotions, nor did they claim to be. What they promote is how to deal with these emotions so that they continue to control their own minds.
This comes back to the power that so many of us relinquish every day without even knowing it.
It’s not other people who make us feel powerless — it’s us allowing ourselves to become powerless because we refuse to control the emotions that we feel.
Blame, anger, jealousy, fear, etc. These derive from chemicals in our brain and nowhere else. So if they only exist in you, you have power over them.
Take responsibility for them and for everything good and bad in your life and you will begin to feel the power come back that you had lost.
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This article is Day 24 of the 30-Day Fishbowl Series
You can start the series by clicking HERE.
