Regaining Your Personal Power
People with a low personal power or self-worth are generally fearful of what they perceive to be attacks on them as individuals. They have experienced and internalised the consequences of failure and rejection and it really scares them. The most unfortunate thing is, in this all to prevalent scenario, they usually have a distorted view of what failure truly is.
This counterfeit appears real when you allow others to set the values and standards from which success or failure and acceptance or rejection are measured. Your goals and dreams may have been battered an bruised, but your ideas of rejection and failure are usually based on what others have said to you. You seem to have relinquished control over your future and are completely at the mercy of the forces around you.
People who exhibit a low self-worth think that because they have failed in one part of their life’s journey, they have also failed at being a good person. They can not separate their act of failure from the destruction of their identity, so they equate their perceived failure to meet other people’s standards with low self-worth. Self-destruction is as painful as the rejection, so they will eventually end up fearing not only failure but their own self-abasement as well. The American author and advertising executive, Bruce Barton, summed it up in this brief but powerful verse. “How curious it is that men who will die for the liberty of the world will not make the little sacrifice needed to free themselves from their own bondage”.
During certain stages of my own journey toward a healthy level of Personal Power, I have reflected the above definitions perfectly. Building an identity, based on my ability to gain acceptance, drove me deeper into the bondage of the performance trap. If only I can do more it will make up for my failure to be a good husband and father which led to being rejected, judged and labeled. Then one day someone encouraged me, and I cannot for the life of me remember who, to use the self-affirmation “What other people think of me is none of my business”. I was looking for unconditional acceptance from people who were not wired up to give it to me. Their own journey had conditioned them to see things the way they wanted to see them and therefore their view of me was based on my actions going through their unique filtering system. It wasn’t until I learned that true unconditional acceptance could only be gained from within, that I could overcome the fear of what other people thought of me and move forward into my full potential.
Fear of others opinions can be overcome by not relinquishing to them your Personal Power. Positive self-talk, practiced every day, can negate the negative words of others. Remember, you are more qualified than anyone to have an opinion about yourself.
Have the best week possible, you deserve it!
Cheers Grant
