Your Personal Power
by Carolyn Foster
Personal Power comes from within, from a strong and healthy sense of self. Your
personal power includes several components: your self-esteem, how good you feel
about yourself; your independence, how well you can decide on your own what is
right for you to do; and your initiative, how well you can take action and follow
through. It consists of knowing what your individual talents and resources are and having
the confidence to act on them.
All In The Family
As with your sense of self, your personal power develops from your family roots. Your
family laid its foundation with their attitudes and actions. As your first answers to the
question "Who am I?" came from family members who reflected to you who they
thought you were, your first answers to the question "What can I do?" also came
from your parents and other relatives who showed and told you what they thought about your
capabilities.
Your identity and your personal power are always linked, because you express your sense
of self in action, and your actions reveal who you think you are. Just as your family may
have pressured you to be who they wanted you to be, they may have pressured you to do what
they wanted you to do. In defining yourself and choosing how to act on your self-defined
identity, you were either helped or hampered by your family's willingness or reluctance to
let you act independently.
We naturally grow up looking to parents and family members for the affirmation of
abilities that gives us confidence. Your earliest achievements, such as standing and
walking, took place in the family context, and you looked to your parents for reassurance
that what you were doing was good and admirable.
As a toddler, you experimented with separating from your parents, but you looked back
to make sure they were still there as you bravely walked away. Each new stage of
independence, from starting school to leaving home as a young adult, included a mixture of
forward and backward pulls from within. You wanted to grow up, but you were scared of the
responsibility. Would you succeed on your own? Your ability to take initiative and move
forward now is linked to your family's past record of encouraging this development of your
personal power.
However, if your family had difficulty seeing you as separate from them, if they wanted
your identity to serve their own self-hood needs, they may not have been able to help you
develop the personal power characteristic of self-esteem, independence, and initiative.
All parents struggle with letting their children grow up and away from them, because
children give parents' lives focus and meaning. As your emerging identity made your
parents question who they were, your emerging abilities pointed out the areas of their
lives that they may never have had the time, money, energy, courage, support, or resources
to develop. Any painful or unresolved issues of self-esteem, independence, or initiative
in your parents' own lives made it harder for them to encourage you.
To the degree that you are held back by the family messages you internalized about
your abilities, your sense of personal power is limited. If your family did not help you
build strong self-esteem, and discouraged your independence and initiative, you may find
that you:
* doubt your own abilities ("I'm not smart enough to go on to graduate
school.")
* have a strong need for control ("If you would just do it the way I asked
you to, things would work out fine.")
* are never satisfied with your achievements ("Yes, it was nice to get that
award, but there are lots of people better than I am.")
* feel that you always have to prove yourself ("If the work's all done
well, then I can relax.")
* prefer being a follower to being a leader ("Just tell me what to do and
I'll be happy to do it.")
* desire money and success as symbols of security ("If I would just get
that promotion and raise, I'd know I was doing well.")
* refuse to take risks ("If I do that, it might not work out and then I'd
be in worse shape than I am now.")
* set limits on what you believe you can do ("I can probably get an article
published in a local paper, but I'd never make it as a writer for the mainstream
magazines.")
* have relationship problems related to power issues ("If he would only let
me do what I want, then I could...")
Become Aware
By becoming more aware of how your family addressed issues involving personal power and
the effects of your family's approach to your current sense of power, you can discover the
origins of many things that keep you from doing what you want or from feeling satisfied
with your actions. A more developed sense of personal power contributes to your individual
growth and the health of your relationships.
Positive expression of personal power involves both independent initiative to take
actions that are fulfilling for you, and caring and responsibility in relation to others.
This balance between considering your own and others' needs and wishes requires a
high degree of awareness and flexibility. Without that balance, you can easily draw back
from your personal power because it is risky to act on what you believe or hope for, or
you can become overbearing by using your personal power without regard for its effect on
others.
Your family experiences may have taught you that power is either something fearful to
be avoided or something vital to be seized and controlled. The emotionally charged aspect
of personal power extends to the word power itself. Students have commented that
their associations to the word reflect their mixed feelings. You might stop and reflect on
your own associations; others have suggested these words: struggle, money, conflict,
status, oppression, tyranny, intimidation, selfishness, and hierarchy.
Reclaim Your Power
The root word of power, however, simply means "to be able," so you might
think of personal power as a confident, thoughtful use of your abilities. By evaluating
what you know about the development of your independence in your growing-up years, you
will understand how past family experiences may be impeding your ability to stand on your
own today. You can also clarify your current needs for independence and implement
strategies to become more autonomous.
According to Erik Erikson, you first began to absorb family teachings about initiative
when you were about four or five years old. At that time, you naturally became more
assertive and active, and your family's reactions to the choices you made were important
in shaping your self-image. If they encouraged your efforts, applauding your successes and
minimizing your failures, you learned that when you took initiative and planned well you
could carry out your intentions successfully. If they discouraged your initiative,
ignoring what you did well or criticizing or punishing you for what you did poorly, you
learned that exercising your personal power was associated with pain and guilt.
The consequences for you as an adult if you absorbed negative teachings about
initiative in childhood include indecision, hiding your talents, lack of direction, and
blaming yourself when things go wrong. John Bradshaw, in Bradshaw On: The Family,
describes the result of family-learned shame and guilt as "disabled will," a
blockage of your sense of power and purpose. To release such a block and to learn how to
take initiative now, you must free your will by engaging your feelings. You can't know
what you want to do until you know what you feel.
No matter how much your family circumstances either helped or hindered the development
of your self-esteem, independence, and initiative, you have a powerful inner spirit that
can be further released and empowered. As that spirit becomes freer, you will have a much
greater range of creative responses to life.
Book edited by this
author:
She
Writes: Love, Spaghetti and Other Stories by
Youngish Women
edited by Carolyn Foster.
Info/Order this book.
About The
Author
Carolyn Foster, M.S. is a pioneer of using writing for growth and
personal insight. She teaches, lectures and gives seminars on personal growth. The above
was excerpted from her book, "The Family Patterns Workbook", ?1993, published
by Jeremy Tarcher/Perigee Books, Putnam Publishing. Visit her website at
www.creativechoices.net.
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