How to recover your personal power without having to do years of psychotherapy

Do you question each word, decision or action you make?

Where’s your personal power?

When did you lose it?

Did you ever have it?

 

 

 

 

What’s Personal Power?

To me, personal power is an internal connection.

It’s that self-confidence that gives you the power to make the decisions that lead you to live the type of life that you want.

And, also, a satisfactory life.

As an answer to the question of whether you ever had personal power, I can say of course.

We’re all born with that personal power, that connection with ourselves which, over time, we lose.

In this article, I’d like to give you some clues on how to recover it.

The question I’d ask you would be:

What happened to you, specifically, that made you lose that trust and confidence in yourself?

How does one lose personal power?

It can be lost in several ways, but I’ll list a few so you can determine which suits your case the best.

Childhood

Childhood is one of those stages where you create ideas about yourself, about others and about the world.

Some of these ideas, or many of them, are wrong.

You create them from a series of messages that you receive from people that are important to you, such as:

• your parents
• siblings
• or people who took care of you.

People whom, as a child, you appreciated, admired.

And, in that early stage of your life, BELIEVED in blindly and WITHOUT QUESTION.

Your brain hadn’t matured enough yet as to rethink certain things.

Thus, based on the type of relationship you had with these people or any references, you created an IDEA about yourself on several topics:

• Your personal value: Did they tell you that you’re worth it or not?
• Your skills and competencies: Did they tell you that you’re smart or stupid?
• Your weaknesses or strengths: Did they tell you that you’re strong or that you can’t be told anything because everything affects you?
• Your future: Did they tell you that you’d go far or that you’d never accomplish anything?

And these “expressions” can be said, with gestures, looks or attitudes.

It doesn’t always have to be said with words.

Evaluations and judgments that, often, even with the best intentions, can cause disastrous effects.

Because tell me something:

The person or people who told you these things, were they seeing your true potential or were they just making judgments or even projections?

A judgment is a negative assessment of something or someone.

A projection is seeing in others what I can’t see in myself.

Generally, we all have mistaken ideas or beliefs about who we are.

The problem is that the ideas created during your childhood, may still be ruling your life.

How can that happen?

Because they lay hidden in your subconscious.

And, if you never stopped to work on yourself, you may not even know you have them.

However, you feel insecure and/or don’t trust yourself and you don’t know why.

Well. it could be because of your SUBCONSCIOUS BELIEFS.

A traumatic or significant event

You may also be the victim of a traumatic event, either because

• something happened to you,
• to someone close to you
• or because you witnessed something.

When this happens, some things may happen:

1. Your resilience, that is, your ability to face difficult events is so strong that you manage to overcome anything without anyone’s help and are strengthened by the experience.
2. You get stuck in what happened and can’t move one.
3. You kind of get out, but you feel that every time something happens that reminds you of that event, you lose all your power.

We could say that a part of you stayed in that event and, as long as you don’t recover it, you won’t regain all your personal power.

And let me tell you that it isn’t only traumas that cause you to lose your personal power.

Significant events in life such as

• a relationship or friendship in which you didn’t feel valued
• you underwent some type of bullying at work or school

Any event that caused a lot of stress and destroyed your self-confidence.

So, if you suffered a trauma or significant life event, you need to review that issue or work on it so you can recover that piece of yourself.

Repetitions of small actions, emotions or thoughts over time

Another option is when you repeat something that ISN’T good for you or that takes away your value, repeatedly.

For example,

• Thinking that “you aren’t worth it” or “can’t do it”
• Feeling frustration, sadness or failure most of the time
• Discouraging yourself every time you look at yourself in the mirror
• Etc.

If you repeat this often, after a while, where do you think your personal power will be?

Exactly.

It will have disappeared.

What happens to you when you lose your Personal Power?

Many things can happen to you, because each person is a world and will react differently to the events that life presents them, but, here are a few examples in case you identify with any:

• Your insecurity increases
• Your fears multiply
• Your (wrongly) believe that you’re incapable
• Negativism and victimhood take over
• Your emotions rule your life and you can’t control them
• You disconnect several times “to NOT feel” (or because feeling “hurts”)
• You stress filling your agenda to avoid feeling any negative emotions
• You get blocked when making decisions
• You run out of strategies to fight your problems
• You become demanding and perfectionist
• You put everyone before you and forget about yourself
• You don’t have clear limits, with others or yourself
• Self-criticism dominates your inner dialogue
• You doubt everything
• You feel dissatisfied with your current situation
• Etc.

Do you see yourself in any of these things?

What do you need to do to regain your personal power?

1. Define what YOU want

To know the path you need to take, first you need to define where you want to go.

What do you want to change in your life?

• Regain your personal power?
• Manage your emotions?
• Increase your self-confidence and trust?

Your goal should be as concrete as possible

Remember that “recovering your personal power” or “increasing your security and confidence” could mean something different to you, to me and to someone else.

To help define it, you can ask yourself this question:

What should happen in your life so that you can claim that “you’ve regained your personal power”?

If you need more help answering this question, you can also read these two articles: mistakes planning your goal and progressing in your goals.

2. Identifying in the Attempted Solutions that DIDN’T work

In my day to day, I meet many people who try to solve their problems with the wrong strategies.

The funny thing is that, if you try to solve a problem with a strategy and the problem isn’t solved, the logical thing would be to change strategy, right?

But notice that you may be left with the consequences both in the short and long term.

Allow me to explain:

Imagine that, due to your insecurity, whenever you had to defend your point of view before other people, you began questioning yourself.

• You doubt yourself
• Whether what you’re saying is right or wrong
• How other people will take it
• Whether it will have repercussions…

in short, your head might go on overdrive.

All those thoughts make you feel even more insecure, fearful, stressed and angry.

And as a consequence, you decide that “it’s better not to voice your opinion”.

“Not voicing your opinion” is your “Attempted Solution”.

But let’s analyze the situation well:

What happens when you stop voicing your opinion?

Think of two phases:

1.    What happens Immediately after?

By not having to give your opinion, you automatically relax. Your nerves and doubts disappear and there’s no trace of frustration.

Therefore, in the short term, we could say that this solution “works”.

2.   Now, tell me, what happens in the long term?

Every time you “avoid” giving your opinion, after a while, do you feel more or less able to give your opinion the following time?

And if you feel less able the following time, are you increasing or decreasing your personal power?

Therefore, if you feel less able and are also decreasing your personal power, is the “not voicing your opinion” strategy working or not?

It doesn’t of course it doesn’t.

Do you see it now?

Therefore, to avoid spending YEARS trying to solve something with a strategy that MAINTAINS the problem, instead of solving it, you need to block the attempted solutions that DON’T work.

3.  Investing time, money and energy into your personal development

You can only advance up to a certain level, then, you’ll need professional help to reach the next level, because as that saying goes: “It’s easier to see the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own”.

• If something hurts, you go to the doctor right?
• If you want to fix your car, you go to the mechanic, right?
• If you want to get a haircut, you go to a hairdresser or a barber, right?

So…

• When you feel overwhelmed by your emotions
• It’s difficult to you to make your own decisions
• You question every thought or action to make
• Your emotional pain is unbearable
• Etc.

Who do you go to?

Why is it so  hard to invest in your personal development?

I think it’s an educational issue.

They don’t teach us to value our emotional state.

And notice that you need a good emotional intelligence to function better in life.

I’ve been investing in professionals since I was 19 years old… and I’m still doing it…

do you know how much money I’ve spent? A lot.

But I don’t see it as an expense, but as an investment.

Thanks to all the professionals I’ve hired:

• Today I am the person I’ve become
• I have gained my Inner Calmness
• I have managed to increase my self-confidence and trust
• I can set limits
• I have regained my personal power

And you?

• What annual budget do you have to invest in your personal development?

And I’m not only talking about money.

• How much time do you devote to yourself?
• How much energy do you invest in doing what helps you feel better?
• Who guides you in this process?

If you don’t have anyone, I recommend reading this post.

 

 

 

 

In short, recovering your personal power and no longer questioning yourself can be done without having to do years of psychotherapy.

Of course, to do so you need to prioritize and value your personal development.

Have you decided who’s going to help you in this process?