Have you been confused between personal power and power over others? There is actually a vast difference between them. In fact, people who attempt to exert power over others are people who lack personal power.

Power over others is about trying to control them to give you what you think you need to feel that you are safe and worthy. This occurs when you define your worth externally by your looks, performance, achievements, money, things, attention, validation, and approval.

Personal Power

Personal power is the result of defining your worth intrinsically by your caring, compassion, honesty, generosity, empathy, integrity, reliability, devotion, and so on. When you value who you are intrinsically, you become motivated to take loving care of yourself in many areas of life - emotionally, physically, spiritually, organizationally, financially, and relationally.

Personal power comes from trusting your inner source of guidance – your feelings – and your higher spiritual source of love, wisdom, strength, and guidance. When you ignore your feelings, you are ignoring a vital source of information from your soul.

This can be confusing to some people, as you can see in this question from a client.

I have difficulty taking to heart the fact that our feelings are a trustworthy guide to act upon. I always understood that it is our thoughts that lead to our feelings and therefore 'we' - (the thoughts we think) are generating how we feel. Surely if this is the case, our feelings cannot be trusted since we potentially will have misguided and misperceived ideas and thoughts. It's therefore quite a conundrum I find myself in. Any guidance as to how to trust that our feelings are a reliable guide would be most appreciated.

This woman’s confusion is the result of not understanding what her feelings are telling her.

Our feelings are an infallible source of guidance regarding two different areas:

• Our feelings of anxiety, depression, guilt, shame, anger, aloneness, emptiness, jealousy, resentment, and so on are letting us know that our thoughts are out of alignment with the truth, and that we are abandoning ourselves in various ways. Our feelings of peace, love, and joy are letting us know that we are taking loving care of ourselves. Our feelings are 100% trustworthy regarding whether we are operating from self-love or from self-abandonment.
   
• Our existential feelings of life, such as loneliness, grief, heartbreak, outrage over injustice, helplessness over others and situations, fear of real and present danger, true remorse when you’ve done something out of line with your own values, or sorrow, are letting us know that something is happening externally that needs our attention. They let us know if someone is being unloving or even dangerous. They are important expressions of loss. These feelings, also, are 100% trustworthy.

Trusting Your Feelings Supports Your Personal Power

When you learn to stay present in your body with your feelings, and trusting the information your soul is giving to you (our soul often communicates with us through our feelings), you experience a sense of personal power. When you give others authority over you, you relinquish your personal power. When you try to have power over others with various forms of controlling behaviors, you are exhibiting your lack personal power.

Choosing to take compassionate responsibility for your own feelings, rather than judge them, ignore them, numb them with addictions, or make others responsible for them with controlling behavior, will develop the personal power you need right now to manage the stresses and challenges of life today.

We abandon ourselves when we define our worth externally and ignore the messages our feelings give us, which leads to feelings of insecurity and a need to try to exert power over others.

Personal power comes from defining our intrinsic worth and trusting our feelings. This is what we all need to learn to do to have the inner power and resilience to manage life’s current challenges.

Join Dr. Margaret Paul for her 30-Day at-home Course: "Love Yourself: An Inner Bonding Experience to Heal Anxiety, Depression, Shame, Addictions and Relationships."

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