This Is Why Getting My Way Was Actually Getting In My Way

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Although I’m the only person that I can control, like most people, I was conditioned to be a control freak. When I’m unhappy, I was taught to try to change other people or events to get my way.

How successful was I with that? Not very. I would get what I wanted but it would leave a wake of emotional havoc. To get my way, I would use any of the methods we all use to bulldoze people – power, logic and reasoning, emotional blackmail, manipulation, etc. but at what price?

The price was giving away my power.

Say what? If you can control a person or a situation, isn’t that standing in your power?

No. That’s getting mine, but that isn’t powerful.

Standing in my power is owning that I am the only thing that has control over my world; giving away my power is giving other people and situations control of my world instead. What I feel, experience, and think is because of me. Not another person, not something outside of myself, not my past – me. It’s the filters and biases that we choose to see the world through that affect our thoughts, feelings, and actions.

To be powerful isn’t to change the world by doing, to be powerful is to change the world by being. It is the grace to allow people and events to be as they are, whether or not we agree with it and whether or not we like it. To be powerful is to choose to change our response to those people and events instead.

To be empowered is to realize that you are your best medicine. The responsibility for our problems isn’t dependent on other people or events changing, the onus is on ourselves to be the change we want to see in our world.