Building Personal Power

Building Personal Power

Published Date: 2006-10-25 14:50:02 WorkOnInternet.com

Read More on Home Business & Small Business ArticlesPenny, a thirty-one-year-old public relations specialist recalls her worst experience. "Basically, my job was to convince feature writers at the local newspapers to write a story about a client's charity event. I phoned the first reporter on the list and went into my pitch.

"Look," he yelled, cutting me off mid-sentence, "there's some damn charity event in this city every other week. Why are you bothering me with this?"

"I started feeling like an idiot. "But this is for muscular sclerosis," I stammered.

"Big deal," he said, hanging up.

"I knew he was just a jerk, but I couldn't make another one of those phone calls the rest of the afternoon. I felt completely shut down."

Shut down. That sinking feeling that begins like butterflies in the stomach then turns into something that feels like a fist is an event most people can identify with. Like a balloon deflating, our entire emotional state sinks down in seconds. We become quiet, withdrawn, ashamed. Curiously, only certain situations and people tend to "shut us down" and make us lose our personal power. One person criticizes us, and we shrug it off. But another person so much as looks at us the wrong way and we're devastated.

What shuts us down? Usually it is a combination of the following:

Fear of rejection. Carole, 38, admits, "I'm a peacemaker; I hate to upset anyone." Carole doesn't realize that many of the people who get "upset" do it as a way of controlling her. She misinterprets other people's anger as an invalidation of herself. If you believe you can't assert yourself because it might make someone else unhappy, you're stuck avoiding confrontation--and your personal power-- at all costs.

An overdeveloped sense of responsibility. Some people are emotional sponges who soak up all the tensions in a room. "I'll bet John's depressed; I wonder if it's because I didn't return his call; Barry seems upset; maybe I should forget about asking for that new software program."

When your antenna for other people's emotions is tuned that high, the noise (and your imagination) is loud enough to distract you from your goals. Your unwavering focus on pleasing everyone around you is what's shutting you down.

Fear of emotional independence. Louise, 29, came from a long line of 'victims' who confused suffering with sainthood. "Everyone in my family was depressed about something. If you acted like you believed in yourself, everyone thought you were conceited and the way you got attention was to pretend to be sad." If you believe you're going to get what you want by showing how much others have hurt your feelings, you're shut down before you even start talking.

Fear of risking a relationship. Do you believe that if you made your feelings and desires known, exactly as they are, no one could possibly accept you? You're a good candidate for getting shut down. The payoff for hiding your true self is always distance from other people. You're bound to be powerless in relationships in which the fear of being fully yourself keeps you on constant guard.

Fear of change. You can be quite comfortable feeling one-down to everyone else if that's what you're used to. Plus, when you exert your personal power, the feedback from others--especially those who have something to gain by your powerlessness--can be quite negative.

You may resist