When I train others in how to reclaim or grow their power, I often reference how I learned to rock climb. You know it's going to be cool and fun. You know it's going to be the type of challenge that's totally fulfilling. But when you're tugging on your rock shoes for the first time as you stand at the base of that climbing wall, you realize - how am I going to build the know-how to get up that wall in fun and interesting ways?
The answer is: build your abilities slowly and consistently, be open to experimentation, track how you do, and get coaching/training to grow faster than you would on your own.
The parallels are many. In rock climbing (for me, fave was bouldering), there you are coming from being a flatlander, having spent a lifetime walking on nice even sidewalks, probably never using your fingers to maintain a tight chalked-up grip on tiny little plastic nubs leading up a wall. So, climbing is accessible, but it's also that much outside your experience that it takes climbing a lot to learn it well. Meanwhile, your hands may be pretty strong, but only strong for a set amount of time before they fatigue in any particular climbing session. And your perceptions need to be different as you realize, your two legs and two arms now represent four separate positional possibilities on this vertical surface.
In reclaiming your power, you're coming from a lifetime of being in and around power, but not necessarily having yet made it your wise game plan to take it on for yourself. Like climbing, it's accessible, but it's also that much outside your experience that you need to train and practice to gain the skill. Meanwhile, your ability to exercise it may be strong, but only strong for a set amount of time as you work to eradicate old powerless habits. And your perceptions become different as you realize, your power-core brings you a new level of opportunity, responsibility, and wise, heart-centered possibilities upon the infinite surface of life's experience.
"Your perceptions become different as you realize, your power-core brings you a new level of opportunity, responsibility, and wise, heart-centered possibilities upon the infinite surface of life's experience." Click to tweet.
The aspects that will lead you to the most success are the same in each discipline: consistency to ensure you keep growing, a mindset that is open to failure-feedback and experimentation, tracking so you can see how much you can do and in what areas you're growing, and coaching/training to speed your learning
Consistency. To build skill in any domain, what works best is consistency across many shorter sessions. In the beginning, frequent short efforts are more important than long intensives. For power building, think of it as checking in with your new, more powerful self throughout the day. As an example, you could structure your day as including morning reflection, intention for the day, specific activities or thoughts you'll do or maintain, evening check-in as you reflect back on the day. Many small touch-points will serve you better as you repeatedly dial in to your skills.
Open mindset. Keep an open mind, and a sense of curiosity and exploration. Many of the changes and behaviors you'll be asked to experiment with to reclaim your inner power will feel strange, or false, or weird, because of course, they're not part of your current experience. Learning future-pacing is one example. Telling the old story is SO embedded as "normal" in our society, that clients can feel it is "false", "Pollyanna-ish", "unrealistic", or "fake" to be telling future-paced stories of success and mastery instead (while telling the old story feels "realistic", "familiar", "common sense"). Those who have the best success explore, play with it, get past that feeling and into the success zone. Willingness to experiment is also important to process those initial efforts when you may not get optimum results. Remember, failure is not a full stop unless you let it be. It's merely feedback for your learning.
Tracking. An important note is to make some way to track your efforts so you can perceive your progress. For climbing, I worked with a tracking structure of multiple 10-minute sessions with 5-minute breaks so that I could quantify the training load I was putting on my hands and toes to avoid strain and train wisely. The more I trained, the more I sessions I could do before fatigue set in, and my tracking log showed this growth (yay!). Reclaiming your power isn't quite as technical, but still benefits from tracking. A simple, date-based journal lets you look back and see how issues that impacted you in the past no longer affect you. Or, using Google calendar to log last or first milestones is also very effective, such as logging that "6/30/19 was the LAST day I held back from speaking up in meetings" and pasting that in to recur every month for year. (It's VERY empowering to read some of these as time goes by and see how long ago you stopped doing it.) Or, pick a technique and see how many times you can do it in a day. The possibilities are endless - pick what is most meaningful to you.
Get coaching. Coaching helps you make faster progress, because it cuts down on the time spent experimenting with things as you figure it out for yourself. I appreciated coaching on footwork, because it was one of my less-used areas as I began to climb. It was also inspiring to see my coach tackle those overhangs and realize I'd soon be able to do that. The beauty and brilliance of coaching is the richness it brings to whatever you're working to grow. It never takes away from the experience, which is your own growth -- it always adds.
Make a commitment to explore, experiment and have fun as you work on building your skill over time. It's going to be cool and fun, and it's going to be the kind of challenge that fulfills you in immeasurable ways. The reward is a life of wise, inner, authentic power and the achievements you've dreamed of.
Keep Growing,
