Giving Your Power Away

 "Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense." -Buddha

So what exactly does it mean to give your power away?  Giving your power away means to give authority if your own life to something outside of yourself.  This can be a person, an organization or a material object.  It occurs anytime you feel powerless and unable to assert control over your own life.

The problem is every time that you give your power away you allow yourself to someone else, you give up your autonomy.  You stop living consciously and instead, become a product of your conditioning and the desires that others have for you. You give your power away any time you engage in behaviour that is not in alignment with your core self and your core values.

When you own your power, you think for yourself.  You live life consciously instead of in reaction. You take full responsibility for your life and you feel completely in control.  Life becomes easier because you start living it on your own terms.

How You Give Your Power Away

1. Blind faith in "experts" - Anytime you blindly accept what anyone else says as truth because of some preconceived authority you have, you are giving your power away. This could be someone in your life, someone you see on TV or the author of a book. Instead using critical thinking and seeing if their words make sense given your personal judgment, you automatically believe what they are saying. This isn't to encourage cynicism, however. A healthy scepticism is a good thing, close-mindedness is not.
2. Being a victim of circumstances - When you use your present circumstances to justify why you can`t do something you desire, you give your power away. For example, if you had the desire to start your own business but have up because your parents didn`t want you to, you have just made yourself a victim of circumstances. You are living in reaction by allowing your circumstances to dictate what you can and can't do.
3. Goals - Now, on the one hand, goals are great because they provide a sense of direction that shapes your daily decisions so that you can achieve an outcome you desire. On the other hand, when you seek your happiness in the fulfillment of goals, you have given you're your power to your goals. You have allowed the attainment of your goals to dictate the happiness you are allowed to feel. As an alternative, seek to happily achieve your goals instead of achieving your goals to be happy. seeking happiness in their fulfillment - instead of achieving to be happy, happily achieve. Make goals about creative self-expression.
4. Giving in to the demands of others - Doing something nice for another person is great. The problem arises when you do something for another person that you don`t really want to do. When you do this you are basically handing over the reins of your own life to the other person. This includes behaviour that stems out a sense of obligation, gaining approval or feeling guilty.
5. Manipulating others - This is a counterintuitive one. Why is manipulating others giving your power away? You are making the reaction you elicit from someone else far more important than your core values. You are sacrificing your authenticity in order to gain some short term benefit.
6. Allowing yourself to be manipulated - Have you ever been in the situation where you know someone is taking advantage of you are not being entirely clear about their intentions but you just go along with it anyways. People often let these things slide because they want to avoid conflict or disapproval. However, to do so is to put the opinions of others above your core values and your personal integrity.
7. Giving away power to money - Although money is important, it cannot be the primary driver in your life. Ask yourself what you would do if you were guaranteed financial freedom for the rest of your life. So what stops you from doing that right now? (Hint: it probably has something to do with fear.) Whether or not you have money can affect the scale of what are you doing, not the actually activity itself.
8. Give away power to status/reputation - Have you ever purchased something that, deep down, you didn't really want but thought it would make you look good? I know that this is something that I have done plenty of times in the past. Similarly, you may say things to other people that you think sound impressive even though it might not be entirely true (something I struggled with when I was younger). Seeking status robs you of your authenticity and alignment with your core self.

 The previous list provides just a small sample of the ways we can give our power away.  There are a multitude behaviours but it ultimately comes down to abdicating responsibility for your own life and/or acting inauthentically.

An Example

Thinking for myself is something that I struggled with a lot when I was younger.  I would also acquiesce to authority.  For instance, when I first started reading self-help books, I lacked critical thinking skills.  I would take what the book said to be truth.  I was young, naïve, gullible at the time. I would apply a technique learned from the book blindly and even after it didn't work, I would keep slamming away at it for hours and hours. I trusted the author because I assumed they were an authority.

Now, I take a far more intelligent approach. I willingly try the exercises I read in the book and see the results they provide.  In my experience, most self-help books out there are garbage (likely because they sell well and are simple to write).  If I don't find value in something, instead of assuming the problem is with me, I realize that it could just be that the book is not useful in general or at least for me.  

Why do we give our power away

1. Lack of experience - In a lot of areas, you simply do not have the requisite experience to make intelligent choices. Often, in a desire to avoid making mistakes, people give authority to someone else. The problem is that often, this person isn`t more knowledgeable than anyone else, they are just able to communicate with greater certainty.
2. Lack of self-trust - This can often be the result of confusion and a lack of self-esteem. It can often feel safer to blindly trust someone else who knows what they are talking about. However, the short-term gain of security comes at the cost of the long-term habit of putting authority for your life outside yourself.
3. Avoid responsibility - The nature of life is that people make mistakes. However, growing up, many learn that it isn`t okay to make mistakes. By giving your power away, you always have someone else you can blame if things don`t turn out the way you want.
4. Gain a sense of security - In an inherently uncertain world, many people strive to find certainty. By putting blind faith into something outside of yourself (in a belief system for example), you are able to gain that certainty you desire. The cost of that certainty, however, is no longer thinking for yourself.
5. Win the approval of others - Avoid disapproval and gaining approval is common motive behind giving your power away. This is a huge topic in and of itself - I will definitely do a post on it in the future.

All of this rooted in fear.  Every time you give your power away it stems from a fear that something will or will not happen.  To stop giving your power away, you need to start overcoming these fears.  This is often a long and arduous process, but the results are definitely worth it.

Avoiding Closed mindedness

One concern you may be having as you learn to stop giving your power away is "won't I become closed-minded and stubborn?" This is very valid apprehension as one the core attitudes that contributes to personal growth is an open mind and willingness to try new things.

The solution, naturally, is find an optimum point of balance.  Be open to new ideas as much as possible while simultaneously refusing to take them on blind faith. This also means to stop giving your power away to authority figures and just their ideas on their own merit.  Trust your own judgment and experience above all else.

Putting It Into Practice

This knowledge about giving your power away is great and will give your something to contemplate.  In the end, though, it is useless unless it results in behavioural changes.  Here are two simple exercises you can do to help this process.

First, start noticing where you give your power away.  Most of the ways that you give your power away are habitual - you don`t consciously decide to give your power away in particular situations.  Bring awareness to these areas and accept that you are engaging in behaviour that isn`t useful to you. Acceptance and awareness gives you the freedom to choose to act differently in the future.

Second, consciously decide to express your authority in your own life.  The next time you have a decision to make that you are uncertain of and your opinion differs from the opinions of others, decide to trust yourself.  Even though you might be wrong, you will learn something and more importantly, you will begin to foster the habit of trusting yourself.