Developing Personal Power in a Crowd
How do you develop your personal POWER in the midst of people who want to make you exactly like them?
I spent the last few days at our home-away-from-home (ironic since we travel full time and don’t have a home…but work with me here). We belong to an entrepreneur group that is more family than business at this point. We trust that community to help us raise our daughter and we develop relationships that serve to catalyze our personal and professional growth. We’re known as the “due diligence” people and we consult and advise companies regarding their due diligence and risk assessment needs.
Over the last year, as we continue to show up in integrity and service, people seek me out to help them with their more personal needs. They come to me and confess that there are things they don’t know and areas of their lives that confuse them. They feel guided to do particular work, but fail to see how to make it happen. Or they’re clear about their mission but information they receive from coaches, mentors and advisors contradicts what they “know” to be true.
I’m honored to be part of their journey and trusted to guide them for a small portion of it. And each time we leave that environment I reflect on the themes running through all of the messages and conversations I shared. One of the blatant, screaming themes this time was the concept of VERY personal POWER. Or personalizing POWER. The very process of figuring out for yourself what Standing in YOUR Power looks like.
It feels like a lot of people are stuck in between not wanting to stay where they are, but not knowing exactly where they want to go. They desperately seek people who have “been there, done that” looking for someone to emulate.
But here’s the catch..you cannot wear anyone else’s POWER. You can pick and choose aspects of others’ POWER to use in the construction of your own, but you cannot take someone’s on entirely. You may see someone who appears confident, in control, and POWERful. And you may want to be “just like them.” But true personal POWER requires congruency. Only YOU can uncover and stand in your own POWER. And no one can tell you what that will look like.
So in order to develop your personal POWER, remember these key points:
- Choose your coaches, mentors and advisors very carefully. There are some amazing and highly successful folks out there who have a lot of advice to offer, but if it doesn’t resonate with you the advice may be detrimental to your growth and your business.
- Dream YOUR dream — not someone else’s. You have your dream for a reason. YOU are the one who has the skills, experience, passion and vision to manifest your dream. But you cannot manifest someone else’s dream as your own. Not for long.
- Be coachable, but not gullible. If you tried coaching with someone and it just didn’t work for, ask yourself if it’s because of a fear coming up for you or if your intuition is steering you elsewhere. Initially these two “warning” signs appear very similar until you train yourself to feel the difference. If it’s a fear, ask your coach to help you bust through it. If it’s an intuitive nudge in a different direction, heed the warning.
YOU are the expert in YOUR life.
