We are powerful beings. Even children have power that, as soon as they realize they possess it, they exercise it to the max. A two-year-old will want to do it. They want to put on their own clothes themselves. They will do all that is in their power to keep their power, so they can do it. It may not be an appropriate display of power, but they will fight to keep it every single time.
The sad point is that as adults, we work so hard to try to stifle that power, then we wonder why that child doesn’t reach for the stars when they are older. We have told them from the start NO. You can’t do that. You can’t put on that shirt. You can’t turn the light on. We as adults try to take that little toddlers’ power and autonomy away the moment they realize they have it. Don’t try so hard. Slow down. You have heard yourself tell your kids these and more. Just so we can try to condition them to think they don’t have any power. Often hear the words that sum up to You don’t run things around here.
As kids, we start to believe them. Our parents have reasonable thoughts. Our teachers lord over us. Eventually, we believe that we don’t have any power. We are supposed to do what we are told. The kids who do have their own thoughts are often associated with troublemakers and are looked down upon. Yet those kids often turn into CEO’s because they will not conform. They will march to their own beat, and they are holding the drum.
Sadly, so many people project a sense of victimhood because they give away their power to their wives. They give their power away to their kids. They give their power away to their boss. They give their power away to their family members. They give their power away to anybody but themselves. This is a big problem, and why men feel so empty so much of the time. They want to say they have power, but to have that power is often scary. It’s easier to hand that power over to somebody else than to actually hold onto it and face the responsibilities that you have to have to hold onto that power.
What is meant by power?
So, at the base of everything that we are talking about today, what is meant by power?
- Ability to do or act; capability of doing or accomplishing something.
Everyone has the power to better themselves.
Synonyms: capacity
Antonyms: incapacity - political or national strength.
The Second World War changed the balance of power in Europe. - Great or marked ability to do or act; strength; might; force.
Synonyms: energy
Antonyms: weakness - The possession of control or command over people, authority, or influence.
Words have tremendous power over our minds. - Political ascendancy or control in the government of a country, state, etc..
They attained power by overthrowing the legal government.
Synonyms: sovereignty, rule, sway, ascendancy - legal ability, capacity, or authority.
The legislative powers are vested in Congress. - Delegated authority: authority granted to a person or persons in a particular office or capacity.
A delegate with the power to mediate disputes. - A document or written statement conferring legal authority.
- A person or thing that possesses or exercises authority or influence.
Now, each of these definitions comes from Dictionary.com, and I ended after 9, but there are 20 different definitions of the noun of power.
There are two definitions here that fit what I think most people mean when they talk about power and what I mean when we’re talking about power in this blog post.
- Ability to do or act; capability of doing or accomplishing something.
- A person or thing that possesses or exercises authority or influence.
We often want to blame the lack of our action on somebody else. The route of all victimhood is us giving away our power of autonomy and actions to somebody else. We wanna point a finger that our wife is not letting us do something. I can’t because I have to watch the kids tonight. I can’t. I have to go to work this weekend. There are a lot of times we will say we can’t take action, and we will point the blame at that lack of action on somebody else.
So, power is your ability to take action. This Harkins back to the two things you can control: your thoughts and your actions. This is why we struggle as much as we do.
How do you lose your power?
We lose this power in any power by our own voluntary actions. Yes, you lose your power because you give it to somebody else. When you blame somebody for your shortcomings, you’re giving them your power. You are taking your actions, your autonomy, and your abilities and throwing them in the trash. You’re saying that you have no power over yourself and that somebody else who has nothing to do with you has all the power in the world to control you.
Now sit back and think about that just a little bit, and you’ll see how audacious and weak that excuse really is. Even your wife actually doesn’t have any control over it. Because again, you have control over two things: your thoughts and your actions. That means your wife has control over only two things for herself, and those are her thoughts and her actions. Your boss has only two items he can control: his thoughts and his actions. So, to blame anybody else for your problems shows that you were actually just giving up passing the control panel over to that other person. Simply for the fact that you don’t wanna have to take that responsibility for the action or lack of action you took.
How do you abdicate your power?
So, how do most people seem to give up their power? And if having personal power is so important, why do they give it up? Those reasons all boil down to about seven excuses and actions that people use on themselves.
You play the victim
The first one is the worst shot to the foot that people make. This is the doom loop of making yourself the victim. We will tell ourselves that we are not worthy of our power, we aren’t observing enough, we’re smart enough, or who knows what other reasons we believe we have as to why we don’t wanna make a decision. It could be out of fear or something else, but for whatever reason, we will simply let others dictate our actions for us.
Now it is easier to play the victim. However, you get no respect for being a victim. And eventually, you will come to want your own autonomy, and with that autonomy, you’re going to have to stop playing the victim.
You don’t exercise your opinion.
What do you wanna eat tonight? Famous question between couples, right? Neither person wants to give their opinion. Out of sheer fear that they may get shot down. Playing with the nice guy often creates more exacerbation with the frustration of even making a decision of where you want to eat tonight.
You have power in your opinion. When people accept or reject the opinion, the question would be, what do you make that acceptance or rejection mean about you? Then know that that is just your thoughts about yourself. Those other people are gonna have thoughts about your opinion. Yes, that is true. However, they do want to know your opinion. And besides, it’s an opinion, it’s just a thought itself, so why not share it? You may cause someone to have a life-changing epiphany about a topic simply because you shared your thoughts and opinions about a topic.
You have the power to express what’s on your mind. Even a two-year-old has that power, and they do it often. But you hold off because you’re afraid someone may not like what you say. Why does that become the most important part of your life? Why do another person‘s thoughts hold you back from doing something you wanna do? Wanna go see a movie but your wife doesn’t wanna go out, then you can take those actions. You can express the opinions and thoughts of I’d like to go ahead and go see it by myself, and then do it.
Claiming that power and taking it back is your own is one thing the feminists have realized a long time ago, and they’re finally getting their marketing message cleaned up enough so that people are listening and actually trying to apply it.
Then turn around and accept the fact that you may not like exactly how you feel, or you may like how the results turn out. They’re just emotions, they don’t hurt you, and they don’t last all that long when you know what you’re looking for.
Playing the Nice Guy
Now, if you know anything about this site, I am no friend of the nice guy. I know this because I am a recovering nice guy. I would do things that I actually didn’t want to do in the hopes that it might play out in my favor in the long run. There are times that I would do everything for my wife out of sheer hope that I doing so would cause her clothes to fall off and she’d be ready for me to get ready to go to bed. You wanna know the secret, it doesn’t happen. We have to actually do the really scary thing and express our opinion and our thoughts about whether I clean the house, will you blank. In my case, would you like to have Nookie? And if the answer is no, would I be OK with still doing that activity?
You see, the nice guy doesn’t have their own opinions because what if their opinions rub somebody the wrong way? They want to appear to be nice. They don’t want to be the jerk. The problem with that line of thinking, though, is that a nice guy and a jerk are two sides of the same asshole. They are both jerks, and nice guys try to manipulate people so that they feel better. They don’t want somebody to be overly happy, overly sad, overly angry, or overly whatever because they don’t like how that particular circumstance leads to them feeling. So they try to fix the problem that they feel inside of themselves by changing the other person’s emotional state. The problem is that the majority of people don’t wanna be manipulated like that.
One of the many ways nice guys give up power is they giving in to guilt trips. And because they don’t express their opinions, nor do they express their thoughts, they’re going to try to avoid feeling bad about the guilt trip, and are easily manipulated in their own way. So they become the victim of their own lack of power.
Running from conflict
One of the big things nice guys and victims often do is avoid conflict. This is one of the crucial places in a relationship where you need to have the strength and fortitude to stand firm and have discussions that are awkward. Sometimes they are extremely uncomfortable, but if you’re willing to lean into those conflicts and come to a resolution, you will find that your relationship becomes stronger.
Yet if you run from the conflict, you’re not willing to face that discomfort and mental uncertainty that comes with it so you end up showing your wife that you can’t fully be trusted with her emotions let alone your emotions so she can’t trust you to be the real woman you want her to be. And so the connections between you and your wife start to weaken.
Much like exercise, and how that discomfort tears down the muscles of your body so that your body can build them back up and make them stronger, conflict in your marriage does the very same thing. That discomfort strengthens the emotional and physical, and mental connections that you have with your wife. This is the reason why conflict intimacy is vital for a long and lasting marriage.
Being emotional
When we become overly emotional, one issue that crops up is that we cannot make rational decisions. We make emotional decisions.
The time you need your logical part of your brain the most many times when we emotionally decide to give up our personal power. When we lose our emotional control, we stop making thoughtful decisions at that moment.
A good example of this is what happened during 9/11 and all the bad decisions that came from that. Our civic leaders were making emotional judgments instead of logical ones, and because of that, we do not have the freedoms we used to have.
Lack of boundaries
What are the best ways that you can actually hold onto your power in every sense of the word is by setting boundaries. The problem most people have is that, yes, they understand what a boundary is and they’ll “set” a boundary, but they won’t hold that boundary.
Their loved ones and relatives will see how far you’re willing to let that boundary be pushed before you have enough. They will often make fun of and attempt to get you to relent on that boundary, and when you do, they understand that you weren’t fully serious about your boundaries.
Boundaries are often the root of our power. If blank happens, then “y” will be the result. And you have to be prepared to actually execute the result if someone pushes the boundary.
Yes, you will have thoughts of how horrible you are and you’re being unfair, and that’s just your mind wanting to make sure that you don’t get kicked out of your community, the neat thing is you want. You’ll even have to rinse and repeat that boundary several times because your friend’s family boss will try time and time again to see if you’re still upholding your power. Then, eventually, when you say you’re going to do something, people will understand you are going to do that, but it takes time, it’s not an overnight deal. You have to actually show other people what the ramifications of their actions are.
The stories you tell yourself
Ultimately, it all boils down to the stories we tell ourselves. We’re not good enough. We’re not capable enough. Nobody will listen. Every excuse that you make is a lie you tell yourself. If you wanna have power, you have to be truthful with yourself to begin with. Many nice guys will stand tall and say, I tell the absolute truth, except for when it comes to them and they lie their faces off to themselves. The problem is that you have an integrity gap that forms the moment you lie to yourself because you’re mine already know you’re lying.
So you have to stop with the bad programming. You have to start changing the programming that you have done. Start telling yourself that you love to read books if you claim not to like books. You have to start believing that you are someone who walks 15 minutes every day. You are an attentive husband.
Stop buying the stories other people tell you. Stop agreeing with the lies that they say about you and claim your power. Stop saying your wife made you mad, but in all reality, you made yourself mad. Start claiming your power and take responsibility for your actions. This will allow you to become a better man, a better leader, a better husband, and a better father.
