When you go in to negotiate a new salary with your boss, do you operate from a position of personal power? Do you feel powerful or do you feel squeemish and weak?
How about when you try and get your kids to see things your way, are you confident in your ability to teach them important lessons from your experience or do you fear the whole exercise turning into a confrontation that will only make things worse?
Thinking about the number of situations we end up in everyday where we must comminicate with other people – often struggle to get our true feelings, talents and desires heard, suddenly the importance of personal power becomes so obvious.
A fundamental principle to improving yourself – including your ability to exhibit more personal power – is your ability to control your mind. Understanding that we can gain more control over the way think, act and behave is critical to improving our personal power.
Here are 5 keys to getting more personal power in your life, do you have others?
1. Self-confidence. It is impossible to command personal power without a very strong sense of what is important for you and a knowledge that you can stick to your convictions being confident in doing so. You hear people mention that he was "very comfortable in his own skin" which is simply a way of saying he was so self-confident. In most social situations people want to be led, directed or at least be comfortable that the direction they will go will work out. If you demonstrate self-confidence, then you immediately put people at ease convincing them to follow your direction.
2. Listening More Than Speaking. When you think of personal power you may first think about "powering" your way over other people – not true. Yes, you need to stick to your convictions, be consistent and unwavering in your positions, but you also must listen. Why? When we listen intently we will hear and see (through body language) triggers highlighting how we may convince those we are communicating with toward our point of view. By understanding where they are coming from first, you can then re-position your message to best fit their situation giving you greater personal power.
3. Have a Purpose. Society looks to follow someone with great purpose. Look at how society follows its heroes. You need to become a hero for your cause giving you the increased personal power to achieve the things you most want to achieve. The most important charcter trait in heroes is that they have a purpose and do not waiver from that purpose for any reason. What is your BIG purpose?
4. Be Consistent. If you are a person that changes his or her convictions as much as your clothes then don’t expect to increase your level of personal power. People who achieve great things in life tend to simplify their gameplan to a very small number of BIG objectives and then fight for constant consistency in their pursuit of these goals. How consistent are you? By aligning your actions more consistently with your goals you can make a giant step forward toward increasing your personal power.
5. Always Promote Upwards and Communicate Downwards. You may have great convictions, amazing ideas, a truckload of enthusiasm and miles of skill – but you won’t achieve true personal power until you learn to become comfortable working with those above you. To achieve greater personal power, overcome the very common fear of dealing with those you look up to whether they be lead people in your company, mentors in your chosen self-employment field, people you admire for their strong relationships, healthy and happy people, etc… You cannot achieve greater personal power by continuing to spend time with underachievers – you’ve got to raise your standards, overcome the natural resistance to engage those that are have more personal power than you do.
In case you are feeling a little overwhelmed, Rome wasn’t built in a day, neither do you have to make massive change in all 5 areas today. Small, incremental steps following these 5 areas will get you more personal power followed by major acceleration in achieving the major goals within your life.
Do you have other factors you have found important for increasing your personal power? Let us know by commenting on this post.
For more great reading and research on the topic of self-improvement, visit Peak Personal Development.
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