by Christine Whelan-Mccoy

Created on: February 05, 2010

We, as human beings, trudge through life basically doing two things.  Everything else falls under these two things.  We go about getting our needs met and we gain and maintain personal power – and one of our needs is to gain and maintain personal power.  If we don’t know how to get our needs met in healthy ways, we find unhealthy ways.

For most of us, gaining and maintaining personal power in a healthy way is a matter of choosing to undergo a whole re-thinking process.  This is because we were not taught, as children, the importance of personal power, but rather the focus was on manners and how we looked as reflections of our parents.  We were also taught that other’s needs and personal power were more important.  Anything different was considered “selfish”.

So, what is “personal power”?  In the simplest of forms, personal power is a set of beliefs, an understanding of those beliefs and a responsibility for those beliefs.  If these beliefs are in place, everything else about us falls into place.  Think of these beliefs as our control center.  In someone who maintains personal power, they should sound something like this:

I believe whatever I am feeling at any point in time is the right feeling.

I believe no one can tell me what I’m feeling is wrong.

I believe no one can tell me what to feel or how to feel.

I believe that I have the right to think for myself.

I believe that no one can tell me how to think or what to think.

I believe that I have the right to make my own decisions.

I believe I have an understanding of what I can and cannot control.

I believe I am responsible for my own thoughts, feelings, decisions, actions and reactions.

I believe I am not responsible for other people’s thoughts, feelings, decisions, actions and reactions.

I believe that I only have the right to make changes in myself and not others.

I believe the only thing I can control about other people’s actions is my own reactions to their actions.

When we incorporate this set of beliefs into our core being, we are able to set corresponding boundaries with ourselves and with others.  With these boundaries, others will not be able to make us feel silly for our feelings and thoughts, or believe them if they call us over-reactive or over-sensitive.  Others will not be able to change our minds about decisions we have made.  This all might sound basic, but it’s powerful

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