Next Time Someone Wants to Empower You, Tell Them “I’ve Got This”!
When someone wants to empower you, they limit the power you already have.
Published first on Substack | January 8, 2024 — Zurich, Switzerland
Of everything that negatively impacts the quality of our lives today, power is arguably the one most misunderstood. The consequent mess surrounding empowerment is maybe even more dangerous.
When it comes to power, a large part of the world is roughly divided in those that love it and strive for it, and those that despise it because they associate it with greed, injustice, wars, and a long list of wrongdoings. I’ve come to realize that neither of them get the full spectrum of what power is.
When it comes to empowerment, it’s at the forefront of a lot of initiatives in society at large and in the workplaces that claim to stand for democratization, justice, equality. Hence, I assume there will be voices according to which if I am talking against empowerment, I am talking against democratization, justice, equality. That, however, could not be further from the truth.
Whatever your thoughts now are, allow me to take you on a journey through the concepts of power and empowerment…
Power Enters Our Lives Early On
I’ve had my own relationship with power throughout my life’s journey and I assume it has been similar to many other people out there, especially other women (women have different relationship with power than men).
For all of us, it starts with our parents. Despite having noble intentions, parents often act out of the belief that they always know better than us what’s best for us. That’s often true, but sometimes it’s not. Then comes the educational system which claims also to know better than us what’s good for us. The reality is that school systems are designed with the broad interest of society and the needs of the main employers in mind, rather than the needs of the individual. Along the way, we get manupulated and rewarded to fit in within the existing system and play within its rules. With this mindset we enter the workplaces where we meet with the way power is distributed in organizations. And the story continues until we decide not to play according to the rules. Then, at first, we find ourselves in an even more uncomfortable place. Some people remain stuck there and disappointed, others move on to a wiser understanding that informs a better life.
The Choice Is Not About Being either Powerful or Powerless
In the words of Martin Luther King Jr., “…one of the great problems of history is that the concepts of love and power have usually been contrasted as opposites — polar opposites — so that love is identified with the resignation of power, and power with the denial of love. Now we’ve got to get this thing right. What [we need to realize is] that power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. . . It is precisely this collision of immoral power with powerless morality which constitutes the major crisis of our time.”
It has been now more than five decades since these words of Martin Luther King Jr., but we continue to live by that limiting belief. I see it in how we think of politics, in how we think of leadership and power in organizations, I see it with changemaker-wannabes and in every other sphere of our lives.
Our world is dominated by Immoral Power and Powerless Morality, and very little in between. Together, they make the world we live in.
I would simplify the dominant believes like this:
Those that play according to the system often believe that:
1. Those in power are better suited to decide what needs to be done.
2. Success in life is measured by an increase of power and money.
Those that detest the system often believe that:
1. Everyone in power is bad and corrupt and interested only in themselves.
2. Power and money are bad, they corrupt so it’s better not to have them.
Take this as an invitation to recognize that these beliefs are equally limiting and equally wrong. They are two sides of the same.
My invitation is to exchange them with the following:
1. Power and money are neither good, nor bad. They are energy.
2. Success is best measured by how easy joy, wellbeing, and prosperity flow.
Unlearning Power & Empowerment
Unlearning Power
The evolution of my perception of power was a journey with many breakthrough moments. It started with my relationship with my parents and continued throughout school and work. The biggest breakthrough was when I lost the false “power” and “self-identity” attached to the visible aspects of my career expressed by the executive titles I was holding. That marked the beginning of a journey which helped me to acknowledge and embrace my real power and light.
One of the many breakthrough moments on this journey happened while listening to John-Paul Flintoff during an intimate gathering of a Pioneers for Change group in London almost ten years ago. Later I found a TED Talk where he talks about our role when it comes to societal change and he starts by talking about our relationship with power. I will present how he invites us to think about power here below, but I encourage you to listen to him directly.
John invites us to first look at how we’ve learnt history. The common way in which we look at history is the way the British philosopher Thomas Carlyle put it — as “the biography of great men.” That immediately creates a separation between the few “great men” at the forefront of history and the rest of mankind destined to have history “happen to them”, blaming others for their misfortunates, believing nothing depends on them, and therefore — waiting for someone else to save us.
Then John talks also about Tolstoy according to whom history is more accurately considered to be an “infinitely large number of infinitely small things that we do or don’t do every day”. There is a lot more wisdom in Tolstoy’s view according to me.
Whatever each one of us does or doesn’t do ultimately shapes the world we live in, no matter how small or big it is.
That bridges the gap between those that think that history happens “by them” and those that believe that “things happen to them”, and brings the idea that we all make history all the time and each one of us can change the course of history by a tiny change in the way we do or don’t do something.
What can help us understand our role is realizing things happen “to us” and “by us”, but also “through us” and “as us”.
Now let’s go back to John Paul Flintoff and his story of power. John proposes that we look at power as a powerful king on a stage. What makes the king powerful are not his attributes (crown, etc) but the way we perceive him. If the king is on the stage but some of us in the audience start telling jokes and stop listening to the king, his power gets diminished. The fact that we dare not to obey his power opens up an opportunity for others to question it as well. And if even only one person turns his back and leaves, the power of the king is compromised. If a few more do it, it starts a change process.
We, the people looking up at those in power, are the ones giving them power.
Unlearning Empowerment
According to the definitions from Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries, empowerment is:
“1. the act of giving somebody more control over their own life or the situation they are in (female/black/personal empowerment; the empowerment of the individual, and
2. (formal) the act of giving somebody the power or authority to do something.”
Then Wikipedia gives a different meaning: ” Empowerment is the degree of autonomy and self-determination in people and in communities. This enables them to represent their interests in a responsible and self-determined way, acting on their own authority. It is the process of becoming stronger and more confident, especially in controlling one’s life and claiming one’s rights. Empowerment as action refers both to the process of self-empowerment and to professional support of people, which enables them to overcome their sense of powerlessness and lack of influence, and to recognize and use their resources.”
I am not going to do a thorough research of the origins of this word and its usage because I am not that interested right now in its history. I am slightly more interested in why it’s in such a trend. And what interests me most is who empowers whom.
Accepting to be empowered by someone follows the assumption that we are powerless. I invite you to NOT accept that; recognize that you have been granted power when you were given life.
I am talking of the power which makes a seed push through the soil. A seed does not wait for someone to empower it. It has an enormous drive to grow and thrive and overcome anything that stays on its way. That power is programmed in its very nature.
We, humans, are granted the same power and more. There are numerous examples of people overcoming incredible circumstances in their life when they embody this innate power for life and self-realization.
Also in Wikipedia, there is a definition of empowerment offered by Robert Adams which comes close to my understanding:
“Empowerment is the capacity of individuals, groups and/or communities to take control of their circumstances, exercise power and achieve their own goals, and the process by which, individually and collectively, they are able to help themselves and others to maximize the quality of their lives.”
Another definition of Rappaport, again in Wikipedia views empowerment as:
“the mechanism by which people, organizations, and communities gain mastery over their lives.”
Any of these work for me except the one of Oxford Learner’s Dictionary. I wondered why and I checked the Cambridge dictionary. That gave me the answer. According to the Cambridge dictionary, empowerment is “the process of gaining freedom and power to do what you want or to control what happens to you: female/youth empowerment, political/economic empowerment.” But then it went on to say “Part of the philosophy of the World Wide Web is the empowerment of the individual.”
For me, that translates to: “the philosophy is to limit the original power of the individual by directing the process of empowerment.”
How Can We Relearn Power/ Empower Ourselves?
1. We acknowledge that power is a given when we’re fully alive.
In the words of Martin Luther King Jr.: “Power properly understood is nothing but the ability to achieve purpose. It is the strength required to bring about social, political, and economic change. . . . “
Simply put, power is what gives strength to a “seed” to penetrate through anything standing on its way, grow, and bring its fruits to the world.
Power is the outcome of living purposefully, embodying a healthy drive for realization. Being in full power is about being fully alive.
In his book “Power and Love”, Adam Kahane says: “In order to address our toughest challenges, we must indeed connect, but this is not enough: we must also grow. In other words, we must exercise both love (the drive to unity) and power (the drive to self-realization). If we choose either love or power, we will get stuck in re-creating existing realities, or worse. If we want to create new and better realities — at home, at work, in our communities, in the world — we need to learn how to integrate our love and our power.”
If power is the outcome of living our purpose, the belief that we don’t have power and we need to be empowered by someone, rips out our lives from meaning.
In that state, we are neither fully alive, nor fully dead.
In that state, we often live with addictions; more on that soon.
In that state, we give away our power driven by the perception that we don’t have it and we look at those in power in awe and celebrate them if they empower us.
By recognizing that power is a given, it’s something we are granted when we are granted life, we awake to life and empower ourselves, we embrace our human agency. For me that’s part of the process of embracing our Human Advantage.
2. We Continue to Embrace Power by Becoming More Aware How We Allocate It
We hand over power to others by believing we don’t have it and someone else does. By realizing that we are the ones giving the power, we open to the possibility of allocating it differently.
Let’s start easy by checking the last 20 likes we’ve given on SM.
How many likes did you give to someone because he/she is a recognized authority or an influencer?
How many likes did you give to someone you know or someone in power just because you want that person to like you or notice you?
How many likes did you give to someone who is a “no one” just because you thought that he/ she shared something profound and wise?
Be honest- no one else (except you) is looking.
If you put a hand on your heart, you don’t need to even to go and check.
You already know… The further down you go, the smaller the number…
We all have the natural tendency to look up to people of power, authority, and influence. We look at the significance of their work and their beautiful photoshopped faces and we measure ourselves against them. Most people would do anything to be seen by the people in power. To be them.
We might even acknowledge that we look up to people, and value and admire them, without really knowing them and their work.
And if we were to really know them through their work, if we could be inside the organizations or countries they lead, what should we experience there to make them truly worthy of our admiration?
Looking up to authority and power is natural but we can disrupt that and consider instead …
Who should we value and look up to even though they might be unknown or perceived as weak or powerless?
How can we support the people, organizations, activities that are aligned with the future we want to see for ourselves and our children?
Let’s divert our attention away from the people who make the world the way it is today.
Then, let’s think how does the world we want to live in looks like.
And last, let’s allocate our power differently by bringing attention to the people who are working towards making that world a reality.
3. To Feel Empowered, We Need to Better Understand Ourselves & the World We Live In
Our full light cannot shine if we live in a false paradigm.
As someone wiser was saying, if we keep being surprised by what’s happening to us and in the world, we live in a false paradigm. If our paradigm is calibrated to the world we live in, things which happen do not surprise us because they follow a predictable logic.
I will be writing separately on this theme because to understand the world we live in today; we need to look into the system of Democracy and Capitalism. What I will say already now is something I’ve learned the hard way: when it comes to the transformation of economic and political systems, by the time we — the so called ordinary people — understand what is’ happening, it has already happened… More on that soon.
4. To Fully Embrace Our Innate Power, We Need to Remove All That Stands on Our Way
- Embracing our power starts with embracing the whole package of being human and being alive, and removing all the entanglements, limiting beliefs and chronic issues that stay on the way of our love and power. When I say chronic issues, I am referring to everything that keep standing on our way despite our repetitive efforts to eradicate it. My work right now is focused exactly on such chronic issues when it comes to our health, relationships with power and money, relationships with family and other people, and relationships with change in general. Contact me if you feel ready to try something utterly new.
- Empowering ourselves does not exclude getting support from others. Being unwilling to ask for support, and to accept it, is in fact a sign of weakness, and not a sign of power. Additionally, learning to ask great questions is one of the most precious competence one could develop.
5. How Would We Know If We’re Empowered?
Humility & Wisdom: First, let’s not mix power with celebrity status and fame. The most powerful person I have ever met was also the most humble one. Having said that, humility is not about being invisible or voiceless. It is about approaching things from a place of not knowing it all. That puts you in a state of curiosity, acceptance, and openness to keep learning. As Socrates put it, “the only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.”
Our Light & Voice: The ultimate checkpoint can be found in the famous words of Marianne Williamson who says that we are all “powerful beyond measure” and “it is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.” According to her also, “as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” Part of that is also about living and speaking our truth.
We are empowered when we keep expanding our horizons and pushing our boundaries, we speak and live our truth, we remain humble, our light shines, and it shines in ways which light up others.
Cheers to that and Happy New Year!
With love and gratitude,
💜🙏Natalia
