Do you play your relationships safe? Do you fail to stand up for yourself? Do you find yourself going overboard trying to please everyone by doing things you don’t really want to do? Do you feel you are unworthy of love and acceptance? Do you put your dreams on the back burner? Do you live in the fear of the unknown?
If you answered yes to any of these questions, when did you forget how powerful you are?
Far too often, we neglect our needs in relationships; whether intimate, professional, friendships or family. You’ve heard the phrase, “giving away your power,” but what does it mean?
Your personal power is your ability to influence others and your surroundings. It’s the ability to attract and create circumstances that help fulfill your needs. This, in turn, builds your own sense of power.
You cannot choose what happens to you, but you CAN choose how you react. Power is not about intimidating people. Nor is it about using aggression to get what you want. Power is about knowing your worth.
So how do you give away your power in your relationships? You give away your power by:
• Avoiding negative consequences. One of the key reasons you may shy away from or suppress your power is because you are afraid of creating undesirable outcomes.
• Diminishing yourself to please someone else. You make yourself smaller for the comfort of those around you or for the convenience it provides or because you feel you cannot be yourself around this person.
• Avoiding conflict: Perhaps you walk around and stick your head in the sand or do whatever it takes to circumvent feeling uncomfortable. You may think you are taking the easy way out, but actually you are allowing situations to simmer and boil, making it more difficult to handle as time passes.
• Comparing yourself to others. There is an unlimited amount of people with whom you could compare yourself and your accomplishments. Inevitably, comparing yourself to others will only cause you misery and pain. Anytime you look outside yourself for validation, you will be disappointed.
• Being afraid of what others will think. When you start to rely so heavily on what other people think of you, or relying on their opinion more than your own, you’re doing yourself a great disservice. If your start to live your life by conforming to the expectations of others, you start to lose out on who you really are.
It is very common for people to relinquish power and give it away without even realizing it. If we do this on a daily basis, this behavior becomes a habitual cycle of disempowerment.
One of the biggest roadblocks to success is giving your power away. Have you been caught up in chronic complaining or overthinking about something in your life? Once you begin to understand your value, you’ll be more likely to protect it.
Therapy tackles these issues helping you recognize the signs of disempowerment and giving you the necessary tools to reclaim your power.
