Reclaiming Our Inner Authority and Personal Power

I am sure I came out of my Mother’s womb as a fighting rebel. I did not want to be controlled by another . I had this stubborn streak that I felt I had to fight to be One who marches to the beat of her own drum. In spite of this I still allowed self doubt and fear to block my true self. For a long time in my life I wore a mask of hiding myself from the world, from my family of origin, from friends, from bosses, from co-workers, and from partners. I was not exactly a people pleaser but my self worth was wrapped in the belief that if I really showed all my essence, my identity… I would be rejected and criticized.

I made those whom I thought had control and authority over me in charge. Though I defied rules and social mores (at least in my mind) I still held back. I was an aggressive doormat! I freely gave away my personal power (the internal power within myself) often and vented about it frequently!

Many of us grew up believing there are types of authority we have to conform to and obey: Pay your taxes, Go the speed limit, Come to a complete stop at that red octagonal stop sign. Then there is a group of the collective who are so against the authoritarian rules that they refuse to go along with any rules of the world. On the other side of the spectrum are the fearful ones, who believe they must follow all authoritarian- based rules to the exact letter. Between those two groups is the real issue…the one I fell into the abyss of for a long while..my and maybe your ideas of the role authority and the power of others has over us. Until I woke up and really got it that my belief of the big, bad authority figures living outside of myself got to create and force choices on all the rest of us (especially on me) was not true!

The day I came to believe my personal power and internal authority was within me, not outside of myself was the day I knew I had choices, options based on MY core values…no one else’s. I no longer “HAD” to trust that someone else knew what was best for me..not my coach, not my therapist, not my romantic partner, not the deceased parent who lived in my head, not my medical practitioner, not my best friend. Not that all these people were always wrong about what I needed to do but my inner voice of authority and personal power was tied to my intuitive gut feelings and my internal LightHouse shining truthful answers out to my heart! However I learned too that it was important to discern the messages of the wise authority within vs the wounded other version of myself who tried to voice messages that still lived in my subconscious mind (those unhealed voices ).

Within that unhealed wounding also was fact that the emotional processing center of the brain convinced some of us to make decisions that were not so great. For me part of my learning to own and re-claim my personal power and internal authority was to tap into a new skill of emotional intelligence. To do this and to maintain a flow of it I had to get grounded and really pay attention to what I was truly feeling; to acknowledge both my strengths and my limitations ; to build self love and self confidence; to forgive myself and surrender mistakes (yes acknowledge I am a human being not a machine); to embrace change; to be vulnerable with others without having expectations of their response(s); and to have compassion and empathy for myself and for others.

Yes it takes work..inner work to keep our personal power and internal authority. The reward for me has been when I have paused, checked in with myself, and given myself permission to choose relationships and activities that are ones I truly want..not those someone else insists I choose or act upon there is an inner smile on my heart that extends to brighter eyes and an outer smile on my face! Choosing that no one will have the power to control how I feel , think about the world around me, or decide if my day is going to be amazing, magical and awesome or if it is going to be a depressive, negative one is why I love I learned and am enlarging still my own authority as I skip through this thing called my life.

“I saw that everything really was written there before me, and that the doors had only been closed before because I hadn’t realized that I was the one person in the world with the authority to open them” — Paulo Coelho

“It doesn’t matter how one was brought up. What determines the way one does anything is personal power.” –Carlos Castaneda