Beyond personal power. What does this mean?

Power is one of those words that is packed with emotion. People who love power are reluctant to admit to it unless they are either high achievers or well on the way. Power is often thought of as something you have that gets you what you want even if it means that others lose out. There can be only one CEO of the company, one person winning the golf tournament, one winner at the Oscars for each category.

I’ve pointed out though that when you achieve power it needn’t be at the expense of others. Personal power is an inner strength that lets you become the type of person you want to be. This needn’t come as a cost to others. Continue Reading

If you’ve been working on the ideas offered to improve your life and your relationships by exploring personal power and increasing your assertiveness, here is a another approach that you can add to your list of skills.

When we’re in a relationship, at some point we’ll disagree. Disagreement in itself doesn’t matter, it’s how we disagree and how we resolve our differences. Mostly we find ourselves in the problem, we react negatively and then we try to patch things up.

What if there was a way of correcting the problem before it occurs rather than trying to fix it later? Continue Reading

Personal power is your ability to be true to yourself and to express this truth. It is a life long journey, challenging and infinitely rewarding.

When you set out along this path you will need to take some necessities with you as with any lengthy journey. These necessities are:

- a belief in yourself

- an awareness of your values

- enough energy to take the trip

- a plan of action Continue Reading

What are the emotional responses to us that might occur when we have been assertive? The two most common ones are

Being aggressive

or

Becoming upset

The first and most important question to answer before working out your response to this emotion is

Who is responsible for our emotional states? Continue Reading

Last week I wrote about some of the things that get in the way of you being assertive. The first thing mentioned was not having energy. What exactly does this mean?

Physical energy is pretty clear. You know when you get out of bed each morning how much effort you have to make to get going. During the day you might be aware of drops in your energy. This could be before a meal because you’re low on nutrients or for a number of people it’s the mid afternoon slump.

So this is one kind of energy you might be lacking at a time when it’s really important to be assertive.

Another kind of energy and possibly an even more important one is your emotional energy. Continue Reading