Get Your Power On!

by Nancy Jonker

  Many women (and men too) would be mortified to say something like that for real, but the experience helps open up something in people that they’ve previously been closed to. The exercise can give them permission to say something they maybe secretly think or even want to say though they never would.

  In this way, people can have the experience of a broader use of personal power in the emotional realm, in the personal energy dimension, and along the boundaries dimension. Having a different reference point can create avenues for change in how we live day to day.

  Repetition Compulsion as Expressed in the Body

  One of the things we learn when we try new things is that our physiology—our bellies in particular—have a huge pull in keeping our patterns the same. You’ll know what I mean if you ever recall a time when you tried saying no to someone (a boss, a spouse, a parent, a sibling) and you got such an active churning in your gut that you were compelled to call them back or go after them to “rectify” the situation.

  There’s a term in psychology called the “repetition compulsion.” The idea behind this is we continue to put ourselves in a similar situation that we found ourselves growing up in in an effort to recycle and eventually correct the pattern. Hence the repetition part.

  But the compulsion is the really interesting part. Compulsion is very body-oriented. Think addiction. We get a “fix” by undoing that which makes us feel guilty. We can hardly stand the feeling in our gut when we take a stand with our spouse and have to wait for him to approach us rather than us apologize to him (or whatever the pattern is). We have such an urge to go back and repeat our status quo pattern that we can hardly stand it.

  I remember being at a conference with my husband where this exact thing occurred. I made a request of him, and he declined. This was no small request and no neutral response. It felt to me that the health of our relationship depended upon what I had asked. He said no; I pushed the issue to the point that I left for the day, angry, disappointed, and the conflict unresolved.

  For the next several hours, I endured crippling rumination and gut churning. I was convinced I was asking too much, that I should not put these kinds of demands on him, that I should go back, apologize, and tell him it was okay.

  Needless to say, this is not how change happens! If I had done that, I would have perpetuated the status quo in our relationship. It was agonizing to act differently, but without enduring those hours of confusion and distress, I would not have changed a thing.

  This is why so many people have trouble changing their boundaries and asking for what they want or need. Our internal gauge of what’s okay screams at us that what we’ve just done is not okay. Our bodies churn and stay unsettled, convincing us we need to apologize, conform, withdraw our request, or say yes to what we just said no to.

  Most people are unprepared for this bodily response when they try to change their behavior. If we’re not aware of what’s coming, it’s easy to misinterpret the signs and tell ourselves we’d better “behave right” and go fix what we did.

  So you might be realizing at this point that changing boundaries is challenging. And it involves the body and effective self-talk. If we tell ourselves the same old story, we will not find our way out of our old patterns.

  The good news is that there are lots of ways to work with ourselves to create the kind of life and the freedom we want, and to develop increased personal power along several of the various dimensions.

  Communicating Boundaries

  So how do we communicate our boundaries? How do people know whether we want them to stay away or get close?

  Remember that exercise I call “boundaries and bodily cues?” Remember that most of our internal signals are body based? Like our eyes drawing back or tightening up, our chest tightening, or our breathing becoming more shallow or fixed. Maybe our jaw tightens and our throat closes.

  An astute observer might notice these things and, if so inclined to behave according to our wishes, back off. But most people aren’t that consciously aware of these signals. Plus, we don’t want to leave this to chance. We want to communicate our boundaries—our preferences and choices about who comes close and just how close—clearly and unequivocally.

  One of the interesting things I’ve found when doing the “developmental boundary” exercise is that many women, when instructed to use only a word or two, are more powerful and clear than when they have more “resources” available.

  For instance, women who said things like “No” or “Back off” were unambiguous in their meaning and intent. But when able to use full sentences, these messages often got lost in politeness and civility. “No!” changed to “I don’t want you that close” and “Back off!” changed to “Would you move back please?”

  These are fascinating changes. And they teach us something important about the lessons women learn about power and the permission we feel or don’t feel about setting and protecting our boundaries.

  Once we feel permission to set boundaries and protect them, we can use anything available to help us communicate them. For instance, we can say no with our eyes. Try this now. Lift your eyebrows high into the forehead and say no. Then try to harden your eyes. You can do this by frowning a bit and bringing tension to your eyes as though you’re trying to read something you can’t quite make out. Now try saying no and see if it’s any different.

  If you’re like most, the second way feels more effective. Eyes that are hardened or “uninviting” are more congruent with saying no than eyes that are wide open. Open eyes tend to be expressions of warmth and invitation, and extremely wide open eyes tend to communicate fear, alarm, or surprise. When one part of our body says one thing and another part says something completely different, viewers are left to make up their own minds.

  If you actually try to have your eyes say one thing while your words say another, you’ll probably find it’s kind of hard to do. I’ve run workshop exercises where we purposely try to be incongruent. And it’s not easy to do. Yet many of us do it unconsciously very easily!

  Awareness is key. Feedback is important in developing that awareness because many of us never realize what mixed messages we’re giving off. Getting ourselves aligned with one decision, one message to convey, is the first step. Next is making sure that our bodies support what we’re saying. “Body” here includes the eyes, voice, shoulders, arms, hands, torsos, as well as legs and feet.

  “How could our shoulders have a part in this?” you ask. Well, imagine yourself making a strong statement to someone about your political beliefs. Then, at the end of it, you shrug your shoulders just a bit. The shoulder shrug could be saying something like “Well, that’s just how I see it,” “You may not like what I just said,” or “For whatever that’s worth.” Sometimes we add those words, but even when we don’t say them, our bodies can say them for us—with or without our knowing it.

  We do other little things like that to diminish our message or take it away. We might tilt our head to the side as in “What do I know?” or again “That’s just how I see it.” This might even be coupled with a shrug. Sometimes these are friendly little gestures meant to say, “I mean no harm, I’m not trying to take you on.” But sometimes they rob us of our power.

  Working with Boundaries in the Body

  As with grounding, so with boundaries. Grounding helps us redistribute energy that is caught up in our heads or deep in our cores, sending it back down into the power of the hips, legs, and feet. When we’re working directly with boundaries, it is all about getting the energy out to the edges of ourselves—the periphery of our bodies, such as the muscles in our arms and legs. Some people feel tingling all along their arms when they do this.

  Bringing our energy into the periphery of our bodies is one reason weightlifting can be helpful. If we think of our muscles and skin as the container for our tissue, blood vessels, and organs, it makes sense that we need a strong container.

  Psychologically we need a strong container too. Because of the unity of body and
mind, having a strong physical container can help us have a strong psychological boundary so long as we stay aware of what we are doing and why.

  Depending on where we land on the continuum of boundaries, we’ll work with boundaries a little differently. If we are overly protective of our boundary, too vigilant about letting people in so that we suffer from isolation, the issue is about softening the boundary, not strengthening it.

  Instead of hardening the eyes and sending more energy outward, we would work to soften the eyes, allowing ourselves to be seen. This can be a scary prospect when much of our energy has been to keep people out and to keep ourselves hidden.

  When we are on the more rigid side of the boundary continuum, it can be hard for us to center. So not only do we keep ourselves hidden from others, we may actually be hidden from ourselves. The centering exercises in the earlier chapter may be really important, but really hard to do!

  When so much of our energy gets directed outward and is contained in the muscles and skin, we may not have easy access to our feelings. So part of the work for those of us on this side of the continuum is to spend more time centering and visualizing our inner life.

  One more aspect of softening rigid boundaries is using our voice to invite. When we want the full range available to us—to be able to keep people out when that’s appropriate and to be able to invite them in when that’s what we want—we have to work with each area of the body and each mode of expression to develop that range. So with the voice, we want to be able to be loud and unambiguous, but also to be soft and inviting.

  This concept of range is a critical concept for being able to have choice and options in our life. We don’t want to be stuck on one end of the continuum or stuck with just one way of being in the world. We want to be able to function with high levels of personal power across the seven dimensions, including here emotional functioning, boundaries, personal energy, and relationship quality.

  Up Next . . .

  We now have a clear idea of the importance of boundaries for our overall healthy functioning, and we understand the difference between the border patrol versus fort style of boundaries. We have seen how rigid boundaries can result in gradual isolation and how extremely porous boundaries can leave us depleted and even at risk.

  The drawbridge analogy helps us understand the art of flexible boundaries. We discussed ways of communicating boundaries with our eyes, voice, and posture, as well as ways of developing more flexible boundaries through new ways of interacting. Next we move into my POWER formula for increasing personal power in every aspect of our lives.

  Chapter 8

  My POWER Formula—How to Increase Your Personal Power

  Good for the body is the work of the body, good for the soul the work of the soul, and good for either the work of the other.

  —Henry David Thoreau

  For all of us who want to be more empowered but aren’t exactly sure how to get there, I developed the POWER formula, a simple acronym to help us learn and remember how we can have more efficacy and impact.

  P—Permission

  We begin with permission. We give ourselves permission to be ourselves, to have power, to set boundaries, and to be selfish. We give ourselves permission to tend to our health, to practice exquisite self-care, to honor who we are inside.

  We give ourselves permission to be bold, unapologetic, and courageous. We give ourselves permission to be compassionate toward ourselves. And we claim both the privilege and obligation of being fully ourselves.

  Until we give ourselves permission, we cannot live in accordance with our full power. Power is not something simply gifted to us; it is something we need to nurture and cultivate. Giving ourselves permission to develop our personal power along the seven dimensions, and to live out of that power, sets us on the road to being our best selves.

  Permission is not always the easiest thing to grant. Sometimes those pesky beliefs creep in about ambition, selfishness, and strength. We need a framework for holding these new ideas in our minds and hearts.

  Have you ever heard the expression, “Have a strong back and a soft front?” This is a concept developed by Joan Halifax, author of Being with Dying: Cultivating Compassion and Fearlessness in the Presence of Death. She writes about the importance of developing a strong spine that helps us face the demands of life. We need a sturdy backbone to stand up for what we believe and to stand tall under the weight of ordinary and extraordinary challenges that come our way.

  In addition to our strength, however, we need softness. We need an open, compassionate heart that pulsates with grief, joy, sadness, pain, happiness, and gratitude. A softness that invites people to us and showers them with compassion.

  Either of these by themselves wouldn’t survive. A strong backbone all alone becomes rigid and susceptible to hardness and eventual collapse. A soft heart by itself might bleed out, get squashed, or become overwhelmed by the weight and shifting of feelings.

  One of the things I like best about yoga is its balanced emphasis on strength and flexibility. For many women, we confuse strength with rigidness or overuse of power. When we aim to be strong, we might fear that we’ll lose our softness and approachability. Approachability without the strength can make us doormats, and strength without the softness makes us lose some of our best qualities as women. So let’s marry the two, just as yoga does.

  In the original Star Trek television series, there is an episode called, “The Enemy Within” which vividly portrays this truth. For those of you who are familiar with the series, here’s the recap. The transporter system is down, unusable, because it has split its users into two halves. First a dog and now Captain Kirk have been split into two. One “personality” is docile, kind, gentle and indecisive. The other “personality” is conniving, manipulative, aggressive, and power-hungry.

  In this episode, crew members are trapped on a planet, and temperatures down there are dropping so low the crew will not be able to survive for long. But they cannot be transported back to the Enterprise without being killed or damaged in the process because of the problems with the transporter. Kirk has to deal with this crisis with a very tight deadline (nothing he’s not done before, but now he is functioning with only half of his faculties).

  We see the “good” Kirk almost undone by his compassion for his crew. He cannot make a decision or plan. Meanwhile the “evil” Kirk is being aggressive with a female crew member, as well as trying to get control of the ship.

  In one memorable scene, gentle Kirk realizes he cannot function without his other half. Even though he is afraid of and disgusted by the behavior of the other Kirk, he realizes he needs him—they both need each other to function effectively and compassionately in his role as captain.

  So it is with us. We need aggression, sometimes to ward off people who would take advantage of us. We need our wits about us. We need to look out for ourselves. We are allowed to be selfish as well as compassionate.

  We are allowed to nourish ourselves with good food, to make time for exercise, to arrange our lives so we can get adequate and nourishing sleep. We are allowed to get massages and to socialize with friends. We are allowed to have personal power and to exercise it along all seven dimensions. We are allowed because WE give ourselves permission.

  O—Observation

  We also need to observe ourselves and how we’re relating and functioning in our lives. Remember, self-awareness follows body awareness. We need to tune in and develop an attitude of curiosity. We need to observe and allow without judgment.

  Change is a process. It occurs in increments and approximations. Journal writing can be helpful in this process because it helps us track what we’re working on and the progress we’re making. We can keep a journal to develop our attunement and to practice non-judgment and awareness.

  What is it that we need to observe?

  We can observe our physical reactions to people, to invitations, to requests, to job demands, etc. We can observe our repetitions—those conflicts with peopl
e or around situations that we find ourselves in again and again.

  We can observe and write about our strong urge (compulsions) to fix problems and to maintain the status quo. We can observe our guilt, shame, and insecurity, noticing whether they’re running the show or whether we’re willing and able to tolerate the feelings, so that our inner wisdom directs our decisions and behaviors.

  We can observe how we talk to ourselves. Not only the things we say to ourselves, but the tone of our inner voice. We need to listen for acceptance and encouragement versus judgment and criticism.

  Many of us feel that we need that “kick in the pants” to get us off the couch, to keep us moving. When I ask women what their fear is if they stop being so hard on themselves, more often than not their answer is they’re afraid they’ll become a couch potato.

  Most of us have had the experience of being judged, shamed, or prodded into performance. Maybe this approach even improved our performance. But most of us have also had the experience of being inspired by someone—maybe a teacher or coach. Take a minute and compare the impact of being criticized into good performance versus inspired into doing your best. It is a myth that we need criticism and kicks to get us motivated.

  Effective Self-Talk

  Recent research on self-talk suggests that many of us talk to ourselves in ways that reinforce negative habits and behavior. We tell ourselves we’re idiots. We berate ourselves for what we just said. We tell ourselves we’re worthless. And we say all these things in critical, condemning tones (even in our mind’s ear).

  Far better self-talk starts with us calling ourselves by name. Fascinating research suggests that we are far wiser when we talk to ourselves using our name rather than using “I.” It actually activates different parts of our brain. And, as most of us already know, we are much kinder to our friends than we are to ourselves. We make allowances for our friends’ mistakes and mishaps. But we are unforgiving when it comes to ourselves.