I used to believe that power was bad, and that I shouldn’t try to get it. Moreover, I shouldn’t even want power, and both wanting it and getting it were bad.

Over the past few years, I have thought a great deal about power. I know that I have judged others harshly for what I perceived as misuses of power, and I have feared and hated power because of its capacity to destroy and to harm, and also its capacity to corrupt.

I have felt for my whole life that I have a purpose, some lessons I have come to learn and old wounds I have come to heal. I sense that my primary lessons are about power, and the right use of my personal power. I am beginning to see that—so fearful was I of misusing power—I used my personal power to undercut, sabotage, and diminish myself. I was afraid of being too powerful. I was also afraid of appearing too powerful, in case this would make others dislike or reject me. I was so afraid of not being accepted and not being loved that I tried to keep myself small by hiding and by pretending to be less than I was.

I am beginning to see that diminishing one’s personal power is a misuse of power. Power can be used to protect, safeguard, build, heal, mend, honor, and create beauty and value in the world. Denying my personal power and playing small so as not to ruffle anyone else’s feathers when I know that I have work to do on this planet is disingenuous and violates my sense of integrity. I have had to admit to myself—as uncomfortable as it is—that my desire to be liked and accepted has kept me from stepping out and using my voice more boldly.

I do a lot of work around this in my coaching practice, including assisting others (especially other women) to see where they are giving away their power, dimming their own light, or muffling their own voices. It’s so easy to give others advice about how to take back their personal power and avoid doing the messier and far more challenging work of owning my struggles with power loss and compromised personal power. It’s so much easier, in fact, that I am continuing to bring into full consciousness all of the many the ways I have given my power away in my life. I will likely continue this work for the rest of my life.

One of the steps for me in reclaiming my personal power has been to identify the stories by which I define myself and my life. The narratives that I choose to recount the events of my life—privately to myself, and in turn how I present myself to others—say a great deal about my underlying beliefs. Because my deeper, motivating beliefs are often unconscious, my chosen narratives can serve as portals into the primary beliefs that motivate my life.

Stories are powerful, and each of us lives out the stories we tell ourselves, and if we are doing so unconsciously, we run the risk of spending all of our time defending ourselves as “right” and our stories as “true” rather than being open to new possibilities that might be more beneficial to us. The scariest and most empowering decision I have ever made (and I keep re-making it every time I get stuck) has been to own my role as the chief storyteller in my life. It’s scary because then I can no longer feel victimized by forces larger than myself, at the mercy and the whim of faceless systems or plagued by the facts of my history, the challenges of my family of origin, the struggles I have endured and what I have decided they mean about me. When I risk losing my old, worn out stories (which are mostly dispiriting, scary, and limiting), I step out into totally new territory, a space of complete and humbling not-knowing. (Ahhhh! Scary stuff, right?)

As I continue to shine light on my fear and find a way to take back my power, I can see that owning my personal power is the most healing step to take for me and for the planet. If I am taking care of my needs in a real way, I have more to give and my contributions come from a place of authentic generosity rather than trying to buy others’ love and acceptance with my giving, or wanting to shore up my sense of self-worth by being impressive or productive or making big, visible gestures of good-hearted generosity. Until I address old wounds, they are still there and they will continue to get tangled up in my efforts to be of service to others and the planet. When I fully release my old pain, I can be fully present and grounded in what I am creating, without it getting mixed up in my “stuff”.

I now believe that I am powerful, and my primary responsibility is me.

If I try to step outside of my own life in order to save or rescue another person or do their soul work for them, then I am not only overlooking my primary responsibility; I am also depriving another individual of the opportunity of doing his or her own soul work. Paradoxically, the most enlightened approach to having the impact I want to have in my lifetime is to do my own work first, to take back my power as the chief storyteller in my life, and to continue to call myself out when I feel powerless.

Food for Thought:

1. At your very best, who are you and what are you about?
2. What’s stopping you from being more of the person you want to be?
3. How do you defend and justify these narratives about yourself?
4. What is at risk if you let go of these disempowering narratives? What might happen?
5. Is there one relatively small, simple risk you can take to challenge the disempowering narratives? In other words, is there a way that you can test your assumptions about what is possible in your life? (Science!)