Five Points of Power: How To Be Powerful and Peaceful

Sep 30, 2014 9:00:00 AM Mirais Holden Ontological Coaching

how to be powerful and peacefulWhen I talk about moving powerfully in the world, I’m not talking about overpowering other people or getting my own way all the time. Rather, power is a judgment I can make about how effectively and peacefully I am moving in the world. The more effective and peaceful I am in a particular domain of my life, the more powerful I am in that domain.

The “Five Points of Power” are five valuable tools that we can practice to help us become more effective and peaceful, and therefore more powerful, in our own lives: 

  1. Pay Attention
  • How often are we just cruising through life on autopilot? We frequently don’t pay attention to our moods, the types of language we use, the types of conversations we are having, or what is going on in our bodies.
  • To move more powerfully in the world, we have to be willing to learn something new all the time. Our moods, language, conversations, and bodies have something to teach us. And we can’t learn unless we are paying attention.
  1. Keep Your Agreements
  • How often do we break our agreements to others, and to ourselves? If we are willing to take a look, we probably break our word more often than we realize.
  • We tell ourselves that if we break small agreements, people won’t notice or they will understand. The part we miss is that every time we break an agreement, no matter how large or small, there is a negative effect on (1) our public identity, and (2) our self-esteem.
  • If I want to live more powerfully, I get to live my word as if my life depended upon it. I do what I said I would do, simply because I said I would.
  1. Ask For What You Want
  • How often are we disappointed or angry because we haven’t gotten what we wanted, but we never even asked in the first place? Like Wayne Gretzky said, you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.
  • If we want to move more powerfully in the world, we can make effective requests instead of living in unspoken expectations.
  • Asking for what we want will decrease the anger and resentment we experience and help us to live more peacefully.
  1. Speak the Truth
  • How often do we sugarcoat, tell half-truths, or live in denial about what is really going on?
  • To become more powerful in the world, I get to speak the truth about what is going on with me. I call this “speaking what is so for me” – whatever I am thinking or feeling – instead of stuffing it down, acting like it doesn’t exist, or hiding it from others.
  1. Be Accountable For Your Own Experience
  • How often do we blame other people when things do not go our way, instead of being accountable for what we bring to the table?
  • When I go through life blaming others and refusing to be accountable for my part, I turn myself into a victim and rob myself of power.
  • For Example: Let’s say I fail to pay attention, I run out of gas on the highway in the middle of the night, and a criminal robs me at gunpoint in my car.

o   Did I deserve this? Absolutely not.

o   Should the criminal be held accountable for robbing me? Absolutely.

o   But if I want to move more powerfully and peacefully in the world, I get to take a deeper cut and hold myself accountable for the way I contributed to the mess. I failed to pay attention, and I ran out of gas. If I accept accountability, I can take new action or learn new skills to prevent this from happening again, and I take my power back.

Join us for our Effective Living I course and learn how ot use the five points of power to be powerful and peaceful.