Maybe you've wondered what the phrase "you're giving your power away" means.  I usually hear it when I'm dealing with difficult people or situations, and blaming them for the crumminess of it all.  The kind of situation where I'm not in the mood to hear that I'm giving my power away!

If you've ever thought, 'but they gave me no choice, I had to...', you may want to read this article by Rebecca Hamm, MA, LPC, therapist and Master Sufi Teacher.  It's truly a concept that, when grasped and applied, can make a huge difference in the quality of your relationships and your life.

Where to begin?  As this amazing year continues to unfold, and people’s lives remain precariously tangled amid the desire for relationship and the experience of power, we find how truly difficult this dance can be.  This tantalizing and yet, painfully elusive topic of “not” giving one’s power away is challenging to describe, let alone change when we’re not even aware of it.  Equally important, and not as easily accepted, we cannot discuss this issue without also acknowledging the role of the Divine in our lives.

If you’ll remember, the ‘Divine’ is an inner source of truth or knowledge that is deeper, higher, or more accurate than our own knowing. The ‘Divine’ can also be an experience without words, but which gives us a sense of clarity, peace and direction that transcends our own guidance or that of someone else’s opinion.  

To own and accept our power we must have a connection to the divine so that we’re not relying only on ourselves or others for advice. In other words, the more independent we become in this world the more pain we will experience.  We will continue to seek, albeit unsuccessfully, a false sense of power that ultimately will leave us feeling lonely and lost.

The most common reaction people have when you gently and lovingly point out that they once again have given their power away is, “What do you mean? I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”  Simply put, most of us don’t realize how elusive this power thingamajig really is. Just when we think we’ve got it, we’re left standing somewhere with our thumb in our mouth, saying, “What”?  

This often undetectable tick that meanders under our skin, eating away at our ability to witness truth, instead embeds itself deep into our unconscious, whispering some of the most ludicrous things you’ll ever imagine. We’ll start believing that we actually do deserve to feel like crap, or that we are meant to be a doormat for our partners and coworkers. When we give our power away we end up feeling like others own or control us. That what they say matters and is more important than what in our highest good.

For instance, I met a woman once who was suffering from advanced stages of Multiple Sclerosis. She came to my office for healing and within a very short amount of time it was clear that her core whisper (tribal belief) was, “I have to keep working it, I have to make it work (referring to her business).”  I said to her, “Says who? Who is telling you this?”   She began to cry after sitting quietly for almost five full minutes saying in a very low voice, “My family. It’s my family’s voice. In my family it’s duty over self. We have to be successful, otherwise, we’re seen as a failure and I’ve been doing it my entire life.”  

A tribal belief, in general, is understood as a group identity, group force, or group belief pattern that we follow or go along with for fear of disturbing a larger system. This system can be our family, our corporation, or even something as simple as our marriage. In this woman’s situation, she bought into the notion that if she didn’t make her business successful she would be looked upon as a failure. Thus, she was willing to forfeit her health in order to uphold this tribal belief, which resulted in her giving her power away to her family without even knowing it.

Sadly, this woman made it her job to abandon herself for the greater good of her family. Yes, she gave her power away.  Yet when she got quiet, opened her heart, and listened to a “deeper whisper” within she found that this truth she had bought into all these years was simply not real, nor in her highest good.  As she began to make a conscious decision to take her power back, she was astonished at how the symptoms of pain in her legs and the heat in her body shifted dramatically. Because her awareness had opened, she was able to take full responsibility for her illness, her choices, and her healing.  She no longer blamed her doctors, the medication, her life, or her husband for things that didn’t work. By accepting what was true for her (taking ownership) she was able to embrace a level of strength and power that was previously unknown to her.

As a result of her hard work and commitment to herself (and not her family’s long held beliefs), she was ready for her next step. I suggested that she read “The Diary of a Medical Intuitive” by Dr. Christel Nani, and ponder the impact of what was written between the pages of this book.  She did, and her life has never been the same since. As they say, it takes one to know one.

The book served as a “mirror” for my client where she could see the parallel of Dr. Christel Nani’s life and her own. She discovered that this book was written by a woman who had not only healed from Multiple Sclerosis, but whose story was identical to hers.  As a native New Yorker, Dr. Christel Nani served as an emergency room trauma nurse for over sixteen years. While doing so, and like the woman above, she continued to ignore the signs of an ailing body until everything came to a screeching halt. Like many of us, it takes a serious illness or major incident in our lives for us to realize where and why we give our power away. In both cases, these two women made the decision to take their power back and listen to a deeper more pervasive truth that led them both to more success than either could have imagined.