There are so many things that we give power to besides our own voice and our own gut instinct (which are the two things that always know what is 100% best for us, by the way). Some of these include:
-Fear, which includes fear of embarrassing ourselves for doing the “wrong” thing.
- The horribly wrong and hideous Belief That We Are Not Good Enough or That We Don’t Deserve To Get What We Want.
- What Other People Might Say or Think About Us.
Let’s unpack these a bit, shall we?
The dictionary definition of fear is "an unpleasant, often strong emotion caused by anticipation or awareness of danger." There are times in life when fear is important – like when we’re standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon, so we take care not to slip or pitch ourselves over the side. It’s also important when real danger might be present, like in a situation that involves fire or severe weather when we might need to evacuate from our homes. But more often than not, when we give into a fearful feeling, it’s not because there’s actual imminent danger. It’s because we don’t want to feel embarrassed, or we don’t want to say or do the wrong thing in front of other people. Which isn’t actually dangerous, no matter how much we might want to put it into that category.
When these kinds of situations come up, (like when I’m trying to speak to someone in a foreign language or I have to sing or make a speech in front of hundreds of people, for example) and I’m afraid of messing up, I like to ask myself, “What’s the worst thing that could happen?” The realistic answer is always something like, I’ll feel foolish for a few minutes and then it will pass and be over forever. Which I can completely handle. Assessing this beforehand helps to tamp down the fear as my brain realizes the insignificance of the situation – as opposed to a real danger – and then I’m no longer fearful…possibly just a bit trepidatious, which I know I can also handle. It takes the power of the fear away so that it can no longer affect me negatively.
How about when we feel like we’re not good enough to try something new or even to continue pursuing we’re already doing? In those cases, it is supremely important that we realize where those feelings are coming from, usually from voices that we are playing over and over in our heads that did not come from us in the first place. No one is born with a low self-esteem, we are taught to have low (or high) self-esteem from the people who raised us and the community around us. So, when those discouraging statements come into our heads, we need to banish them immediately and remember that we are 100% in charge of our own self-esteem now! We are adults who can choose to feel any way about ourselves that we choose, and if we’re choosing happiness then we are absolutely choosing to feel like the strong, talented, ambitious, fearless, and worthy people that we are. We do not have to dull our shine or make ourselves feel “less than” for ANYONE ELSE. We need to remember this when we’re giving too much power to the old voices who have trained us into believing that we don’t deserve to have everything we’ve ever dreamed of on this Earth and in this life.
And how about the fear of what other people might think or say about us. To this I reply with the words of the endlessly inspirational RuPaul: “What other people think of me is none of my business.” Hear hear! The other day I was at the gym and I was feeling self-conscious (as I usually do) and then I realized, no one here cares one iota about what I’m doing. They are all concentrating on what they are doing (and possibly their own insecure feelings), plus, I myself am not looking around and judging all of the other people here, so why should I naturally assume that they are doing that to me? More importantly, if they have nothing better to do, and they are choosing to think disparaging things about me, who cares? Not me! I’ve got bigger fish to fry than to spend even one moment of this precious life worrying about what a complete stranger might be thinking of me. Quite honestly, it’s nonsense, and yet so many of us put so much stock into what we think other people are thinking. We are putting our own fear and self-doubt into other people’s minds, and if they knew what we thought they were thinking of us, they might be really offended and say, “How could even imagine that I would think that about you? Do you really think I’m that mean and nasty of a person?” And yet, that’s how we talk to ourselves sometimes, which means we’re just putting our own voices into the minds and thoughts of others.
The worst is when we do that before we even get anywhere. We assume that people are going to be thinking bad thoughts about us, or that things are going to go wrong, or we can’t enjoy the happiness of a situation because we’re too busy expecting the worst to happen, and for the proverbial “other shoe to drop.” How many times have we been dressed to go out to dinner or to a friendly party and our thoughts aren’t taken up by happy anticipation of the fun night we’re about to have, but instead all we can think about is how awful we look and all of the terrible things that the people we’re about to see will undoubtedly be thinking about us. What a rotten way to live, and yet I find myself doing it unconsciously to this day. And I know better! It’s a terrible old habit and I need to stop giving so much power to those negative and judgmental thoughts that aren’t even true and have no place in my life or in my choosing happiness journey whatsoever.
We have to keep examining how and where we give our power away to other people, even if the other people are imaginary. We owe it to ourselves to treat ourselves with love, kindness, and tremendous amounts of compassion. The only power we should be harnessing in our daily lives is OUR OWN, and in the words of author Alice Walker: The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any. We need to remember that we have all of the power we could ever need, and that power is not fueled by fear, it’s ignited by our own strength. When we choose to pay attention to our own strength and our own power, we are most definitely choosing happiness.
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