Empower Yourself from Within

SUMMARY

Do you look to other people all the time to give you approval? Do you feel doubt about yourself and not always back yourself in?

Stick with me, because this week I want to introduce you to a place to draw from instead of other people. This is one of the greatest lessons I have learned in my life, and I find it's the biggest area that people need to work on to thrive and survive in today's environment.

The competency I want to talk to you about today is what I believe to be the most beneficial to develop, as it underpins everything else that you and I are working on. It's the competency that I call, PERSONAL POWER.

This is a different sort of power and is not having power over others.

This is a power that comes from within that sustains you and helps you understand that you have everything within and around you to get ahead in life. It helps you build self-confidence and remove self-doubt. And it's something that is very dear to me because, in my experience, most people are just like me. The story and content were different, but what we make that mean about ourselves can diminish that sense that we have, that we are capable and able.

Personal Power removes the need to get approval from others.

Well, that's it from me for another week. Join me again next week as we continue looking at emotional intelligence, shift into the self-management area, and look at how you can manage your behaviour so that you get the results you want.

I'll see you then.

TRANSCRIPT

Do you look to other people all the time to give you approval? Do you feel doubt about yourself and not always back yourself in?

Stick with me, because this week I want to introduce you to a place to draw from instead of other people. This is one of the greatest lessons I have learned in my life, and I find it's the biggest area that people need to work on to thrive and survive in today's environment.

Hi, this is Grant Herbert, Leadership and Sustainable Performance Coach, and today I want to continue our conversation around the shift in our personal leadership around intelligence by helping you to discover an empowerment that comes from within.

Over the last few weeks, we’ve been talking about shifting from someone who relies solely on their technical ability to someone who can look at the other intelligences that are a part of you as a human being.

You're not just what you know; there is much more to you, particularly, we've been talking about your Emotional Intelligence.

The competency I want to talk to you about today is what I believe to be the most beneficial to develop, as it underpins everything else that you and I are working on. It's the competency that I call, PERSONAL POWER.

This is a different sort of power and is not having power over others.

This is a power that comes from within that sustains you and helps you understand that you have everything within and around you to get ahead in life. It helps you build self-confidence and remove self-doubt. And it's something that is very dear to me because, in my experience, most people are just like me. The story and content were different, but what we make that mean about ourselves can diminish that sense that we have, that we are capable and able.

Personal Power removes the need to get approval from others.

When people approve of what you're doing, and they like you, that's great. However, when you do everything you do to get that approval, it strips away your true identity. We've talked about the performance trap, imposter syndrome, approval addiction, and many other names that it goes by. But what it is is an erosion of confidence that you have what it takes to get where you want to go.

Those past experiences and what you made them mean.

Those failures that you label yourself as going through.

That internal dialogue.

Those external voices that remind you of the times that you couldn't.

Today is the day to draw a line in the sand and remind yourself of why you can.

Personal Power is having a sense of your own self-worth.

It's that inner confidence and just because your current conditioning has pulled you that away, that doesn't mean that you can't build it back up. As I said before, the beautiful thing about neuroscience, particularly neuroplasticity, is that you can rebuild that conditioning. It doesn't matter what age you are; you can rebuild those neural pathways so that instead of when you initially have a certain thought leading to that unresourceful behaviour, it actually can shift to a different behaviour, one that's good for you, for others, and the greater good.

How do you build this thing called personal power?

Firstly, you need to decide that you are worthy of having it. This is a little bit of a catch-22, or it can be. This is because a lack of personal power often leads to a lack of self-worth.

So, if you don’t feel worthy of having personal power, then you will do whatever you can, not to get it. It's a combination of working on changing that internal dialogue, reprogramming that mini-me that we've talked about before, and getting yourself to a position of going:

“You know what? I’m sick and tired of this. It's time for me to step into who I truly am.”

It's time to pick up the mantle again of your purpose and say, “I’m not doing this anymore. I'm not looking for approval from other people anymore. I don't need others to validate me. I'm going to do that myself."

Sometimes, we look for other people's love without loving ourselves. By doing that, we behave in a way that makes it harder for others to love us.

I know all too well, and so do the people who have been a part of my life, how devastating that can be and how that can hold you back.

Now that you've decided to go: “This is me. I'm going to be on this journey with you, Grant, and I want to build my own personal power.”

Now that you've done that, 90% of the battle is won.

As you step into the things that I'm going to help you do, you will incrementally (over the coming weeks, months, and years) build yourself up and keep it there.

The first thing you can work on is looking at your past in a different way. I want you to do an exercise where you sit down and think back to the times in your life when you were really proud of yourself.

Whether that's as a small child going through school, university, or the workplace, it doesn't matter. But what you are looking for is a frame of reference or frames of reference of when you did and when you could so that when that unhealthy dialogue feeds you facts that aren't in evidence of “why you can’t," you're able to rebut that and come in with real evidence that says, “Hang on a minute, here's when I did."

By recapturing those moments when you felt good about yourself, however short that time might've been (and I know that was the case for me), you’re able to do two things:

The first one is to have that frame of reference.

The second one is to build a pattern. Feeling good is an enjoyable feeling. The beauty of the brain is that when something feels good, the brain wants to do it again. So, building up a pattern of being able to (instead of going down the negative path) remember when you did, giving yourself evidence of why you can, is going to change that dialogue. It’s going to change the way we think about opportunities that come.

Looking at individual situations where you might have made a decision, where you made an experience mean something about you, and then formed a belief about yourself that was not empowering. And getting into that, looking at why you felt that way, disputing that evidence, and bringing in what was real.

I remember talking about this many times, where I learned about a story that happened to me as a child. There were two sides to the story that I could have believed, and I believed the negative side because that lined up with what I believed about myself. But the real story, the real evidence, would build me up and go:

"You know what? You are lovable, liked by people, and therefore, you don't need to try to get people to like you because you just need to be who you are.”

So, that's the experience that I want you to have. I want you to go through a timeline and look for positive things so that you've got those things to throw back at that internal dialogue when it tries to pull you down.

The second thing is to develop a sense of assertiveness.

I'm not talking about being aggressive here. I'm talking about looking at what you believe in, your values, and your priorities and being assertive around that. Setting boundaries around what it is that you will allow people to say and do to you. You should be able to stand up for that confidently so that you get to be who you are, show the world your gifts and talents, and not try to fit into what everybody else expects you to be.

In my experience, most of the time, that’s a perception anyway. Unrealistic expectations that you have of yourself are portrayed to other people.

And there’s that: “They want me to do this….they want me to be this….”

And, a lot of times, it's not the case.

However, by you being that way, it holds you back to that level of self-worth that you've got.

My belief is that self-worth is far more important than net-worth. And I'm going to do what I can to help you to build yours back up, just like I've had to do for myself.

Another key area that I want you to work on is looking at saying yes and no appropriately.

Being able to make sure that if you are a self-labelled people-pleaser, where you just say “yes” to everything and then regret it later, I want to help you structure the conversation so that it gives you space and a chance to actually look at it and go:

“Well, hang on a minute. If I say ‘yes’ to that, what am I saying ‘no’ to ?"

And vice versa:

“If I say ‘no’ to that, what am I saying ‘yes’ to?”

To do that, you need to understand your priorities. You need to understand what is really most important to you.

It's like an opportunity that I had many times in my corporate career to work back, and I would just say “yes" because I thought if I did that, they would like me, they would think that I'm good enough and that I belong—those three universal fears, but at what cost?

And the cost was missing out on time watching my kids grow. By putting myself through that filter that I now use subconsciously that says:

"If I say ‘yes’ to this, what am I saying ‘no’ to ?

I'm able to go:

“No, I'm not able to do that every night this week because I promised my son I would go to his soccer match.”

PERSONAL POWER is that inner sense of worth. It's the greatest power, and it comes from within. So, instead of being exhausted trying to be who you believe the world wants you to be, is it time to call on that power to build it back up and reserve so that you've got enough energy to be who you need to be in every area of your life.

Whenever I am working with people in groups or coaching them one-on-one, this area is common to every one of them. And it's only the level of work that we need to do in that area that changes.

It's time for you to cut yourself some slack to remind yourself of your worthiness and build that personal power back up.

Well, that's it from me for another week. Join me again next week as we continue looking at emotional intelligence, shift into the self-management area, and look at how you can manage your behaviour so that you get the results you want.

I'll see you then.