The Truth of Power

When we think of power, it’s easy for certain images to come to mind. It may be someone holding up an insanely heavy barbell screaming through the pain or roaring with achievement. Or perhaps it’s the so-called ‘leaders’, those out-of-tune with humanity and the environment who rule too much of the world, that come to mind for you. Perhaps you were raised with harsh discipline and it was a parent who held all the power.

You may not even realise your capability for power until much later in life, when you discover the courage to know yourself – at a soul level, knowing the truth of who you are and what you’re capable of, even if it still scares you (as it does most of us).

Your potential can only be realised through permitting your power to be expressed.

And it certainly doesn’t need to look like most of our government leaders.

Power is not about bringing others down. It lifts them up. But not before you lift yourself up first.

During my earlier decades of healing, it was through expressing myself within the family dynamic where I started to discover my power, rather than allowing old patterns to continue. I can’t say I really felt powerful, but I certainly felt brave. And that’s a key to power: having the courage to express yourself.

In the last decade or two, I think most of my power has evolved through my work: being clear about what is and isn’t working for me in business. There is so much that goes on behind the scenes of my working life. It’s certainly not all sitting at a desk creating words for books. In fact, it rarely is.

And wandering the paddocks with my camera for my monthly vlog, well that’s not even work. The algorithm will never show my wildlife vlogs to my main audience as I don’t use the word ‘Regrets’ in any of the titles! It’s lucky that one is a love project instead, for a small and dedicated audience. (I love you all! You’ll see this sweetie in the next vlog.)

In my professional life, I’ve knocked back numerous opportunities with reputable businesses that others may have jumped at, because my heart wasn’t in it or there was too much control over my creative expression. Such decisions are always a financial risk, but living inauthentically would kill me more than starvation.

Sometimes the offerings were just too dry and clinical with no space for being human, only space for being a leader instructing people how to live their lives. I don’t know about you, but I find that showing up as a human actually helps leadership skills.

Recently I was offered another opportunity to create something and it felt light and doable, with a business I’ve worked with before and like. Then the requirements changed and my free expression was under threat. So I stepped into my power.

And this is the thing about power: you don’t have to be anyone other than yourself to be so.

True power is simply having the confidence to clearly articulate how you’re feeling and sticking to your values.

The result of me doing that was healthy. I will still be moving forward with the opportunity, but on the original terms.

Power doesn’t need to be aggressive. In fact, aggression is much more driven by weakness.

True power comes with calm.

If you’re not feeling that, then you’re probably not in alignment at the moment with the power of who you are.

(And we all get out of alignment. Wisdom is recognising such times and readjusting things.)

You don’t need to be a leader to be powerful, though. Gosh, no!

Power is available to all of us and is found through knowing yourself and choosing to show up in the word where everything about you is in integrity with who you know yourself to be.

It is hardly even dependent on external factors, although they are there to show us what we’re capable of and to discover our strength.

I wish you the freedom of power, that calm knowing of being enough, of daring to show up as yourself, and knowing that sometimes you will have to speak up in your own defence.

With love,

Bronnie.

(A moment from my garden this fortnight.)

PS. Writing Bloom was a hard (but good) lesson in power for me in the early days. It was the book that wanted to come through at the time, even though the best thing I could have done financially was to write about regrets 6 – 10 (which would have been fictional regrets, since the real ones were already in The Top Five Regrets of the Dying). Creating a series out of regrets for great publishing success would have made some people happy. One of my foreign publishers actually wanted me to do that, or to at least write more about the regrets of the dying. But to truly live a life free of regrets, you also need to learn the art of surrender and to grasp how much love comes with our hardest lessons, to crack us open into our power. Bloom is about that.

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