At times we can all feel a sense of powerlessness, so how do we change powerless, into powerful?
As should be the case I’m writing this today with the intention of empowering myself. I need to know how to change the occasions when I feel powerless into a far more powerful state of mind. At the very least, I want to feel that I’m in control, of myself.
Ultimately, this feeling of power that I desire, must be drawn from somewhere deep within my mind
I must apply the method I use with my clients. I must practice what I preach. And so the trick, is to bring my awareness into a time and place where I felt particularly powerful and in charge of myself.
My mind is instantly taken back to rugby tackling the school bully. I clearly remember making up my mind: once he has possession of the ball, I’ll charge him. And that’s exactly what I did. Now I must remember and reassociate myself with the feeling that powered this decision.
Once I have this feeling it’s then a case of applying it to whatever I feel powerless to change. I will use self-hypnosis and replace the feeling of powerlessness to one of power
All well and good and of course very effective, however, there is something that I must do in order for this to last. I must have sufficient reason and motivation to achieve this thing. I must find this missing ingredient in order to conquer. Why, I now ask myself, was it important for me as a child to rugby tackle the school bully? Where did the courage come from?
In answer to why it was important, I think having being picked on by the bully in the past, it was important to have some kind of recompense for my loss of face. I was once severely humiliated in front of my peers by this guy and so needed to raise myself back up again. I needed to right the wrong, to once again, feel a little more at peace with myself.
What about where the courage came from? Well, as you may have already guessed, the overriding emotion was anger. It was also the knowledge, that whilst on the rugby pitch, I was involved in a game. A game that was being supervised by a teacher, and therefore, afforded me licence to tackle the bully. It was within the rules of the game. I was licenced to kill. Oh yes.
As I remember it, I didn’t actually bring him down (he was massive), but that isn’t the point. The point was in having a go
Has any of this retrospection helped me find that missing ingredient? Well, one thing it’s helped me with, is understanding what I must do to transform powerlessness. I’ve now become aware that the decision to make the change has always been within my grasp. It’s a choice. I can either continue to feel powerless within the game, or I can better understand the rules. The rule, that I must clearly understand, is that it’s entirely up to me.
Powerlessness is a state of mind we can either choose to overwhelm us or fight against
Inaction, in the face of negative feelings, will of course mean they eventually overwhelm us. Simply staying frozen to the spot, when we should be running toward our fear, means we remain powerless. We must find the motivation. We must find our competitive spirit. We must find the desire to conquer the conflict.
We must all remember that there may well be some reward for our powerlessness. Our seeming inability to move might be awarding us the illusion of power over our situation. As I consider what the consequences for standing still on the rugby pitch that day would have been, I realise the game would have gone on without me. We must make the decision to get involved and take personal responsibility for ourselves. We must play the game. Once we do, our power builds and builds into a recourse. Something we can tap into whenever we need.
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