By Dr. Andrew Smith, Clinical Psychologist, Professor, and Pat Tillman Scholar. To improve learn the skills to improve your relationships, download our free guide and checkout the REWIRE app
Depending on your values system, power is either a dirty word or something of high value, to be desired. I won’t bury the lead here– today my goal is to communicate about the simple truth of power and influence as they naturally occur. Without a doubt, you exert power and influence in your daily life. Today I’m writing to you about how central it is to a healthy and meaningful life for you to accept and exert your power and influence.
Power is generally defined as our ability to influence the behavior of others or course of events. We can further define power as the ability to influence things towards the outcomes that we want. Because humans are wired for survival, we spend quite a lot of mental energy noticing and ruminating on threats to our power and influence. We are naturally wired to tap into ways that we feel powerless as opposed to ways that we actually possess power and influence.
For example, we get stuck thinking quite a lot about powerlessness to make changes in our workplaces, conflicts in our families, political gridlock, the way that a group that you disagree with is dominating a conversation or issue, routine lager-heads between teenager and parent or husband and wife.
If we don’t change our perspective or lens, we risk staying stuck burning precious time and energy on uncontrollable external forces that diminish or threaten our power. We do so in part as a mental process to find angles to build protection and regain a bit of power. By nature of our biology what gets magnified are points of difference, pain, fear, and threats to power. What gets minimized are points of joy, beauty, connection, collaboration, and gratitude. And we have to work hard to cultivate these positive areas.
Because we are wired for threat detection, we are not naturally inclined to look for places that we already have power. As such, it is less ‘natural’ although exceedingly important to spend energy focused on the ways that we in fact possess power and influence. It is a higher-order calling to do this, requiring us to push back against our biology.
FAST thinking focuses us on threats and problems. Its useful in some contexts (being productive, survival, efficiency, predictability), and costly in others. Fast thinking naturally has us asking questions and making calculations around “What is a threat to my survival or efficiency or productivity today, this week, this month.”
SLOW thinking is required to step back and consider higher, values-based and goal directed ways of being. Slow thinking has us asking questions like “How can I be grateful, joyful, happy? Where can I express power and influence? What can I control today?” It is exceedingly important to push back against the natural flow of our biology, to step into identifying these higher order facets of life (power, joy, gratitude, influence). For more on fast and slow thinking in relationship patterns, see https://wordpress.com/post/rewirerx.com/198.
I want to propose to you something that I’ve seen over and over in my therapy practice and my own life. The joy equation in your life is directly determined by the extent to which you focus on your powerlessness and overlook the ABUNDANT source of influence that you have in your closest relationships and communities. When this balance tips towards powerlessness, joy is evasive. The scale re-balances towards joy when you orient around presence and care in relationships and community.
Regardless of how much power or influence you may feel that you have in the world outside of your closest relationships (maybe not much, maybe a lot), the place that we all have it in abundance is in our closest relationships. And much suffering comes from a failure to slow down enough to understand and express that local form of power.
This is not an argument about groups of people who have power, those that don’t, and where inequities exist in our culture (there are plenty). Rather, I am asking you to shrink your natural yet disempowering focus and rumination on where you (or others) lack power. And to work to shift your focus on where you indeed do have tangible, local forms of power and influence that are within your control. Shifting from focus on powerlessness, towards accepting your power and influence in relationships is critical to moving them towards healthy patterns and deepening them.
Beyond the logic steps that I just walked us through above to shift perspective, there is a final piece of logic needed to really pick up this idea. That is, self-knowledge and acceptance are required to begin expressing power and influence in ways that are values-aligned and goal directed. So, lets digress a bit about why thinking about our own ability to have power and influence are hard for us to do.
The shadow self is an exceedingly useful concept for thinking about your power and influence, introduced into the world by the famous Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung.1,2 Jung’s fundamental idea was that there are parts of ourselves that we don’t know—hidden from our self-knowledge and narratives about who we are. Power and influence are parts of us that we don’t like to name and look at; in part because to do so is a major faux pas in our culture. We carry deep and negative cultural norms about “what kind of person talks about and claims power and influence– a person who is self-interested, self-focused, greedy, etc.” We want to fight against “the man” who is in power, not see ourselves in the kind of person who claims and owns power and influence.
For our purposes in relationships, we can apply Jung’s shadow self concept by understanding that your power and influence are going to play out in one form or another—and by ignoring or repressing the reality or existence of your power in human interactions will risk having your power play out in harmful ways.
In other words, power and influence inevitably manifest in relationships. Are you going to name and understand how you can wield it in healthy ways, or let it play out automatically without knowledge of it?
- For parents of a young child or teenager: Is there an opportunity to step back and notice the strengths and dignity of your child? How can you focus less on what drives you towards fearfulness, anxiety, and control, and towards distributing your influence today in a small way by noticing something that you like or admire about them? Choose to transmit a legacy of security, courage, strength, and dignity instead of anxiety, fearfulness, and shame.
- For husbands and wives: Is there an issue that you can address with courage and bravery, that sees the other person in a generous light, as a friend? Can you step back and notice something they are struggling with, or a strength or victory that you haven’t yet given due praise? Can take up your power to communicate and weigh in to ease their struggle or magnify their strength? Can you find a way to use your influence to more consistently communicate deep security, acceptance, and cultivate courage in your spouse? Can you express healing power and influence in their life today?
- Son or daughter: Can you slow down to see your parent as a fellow human—a co-traveler on a complicated journey of life? Can you take the time to see what they’ve been through, accomplished, struggled with, and communicate that to them in some way today out of empathy or admiration? Can you express healing power and influence in their life today?
- For the fathers of adult sons and mothers of adult daughters: Are you going to pass the baton of honor, respect, and courage to your children as they grow into their own lives, or are you going to leave your influence and power to do that unexpressed? Can you express healing power and influence in their life today?
- For the friend: Can you claim the ways that you can intentionally speak truth, love, and acceptance into the life of your friends? Or are you going to choose to leave these gifts unexpressed because its…awkward? Can you express healing power and influence in their life today?
- For the co-worker: Can you see the value and giftedness of your colleague? Or can you take notice of something they have been struggling to accomplish? Can you find a way to express that, and build them up to do more good work? Can you express healing power and influence in their life today?
One of my favorite examples of the inevitability, reality, and importance of naming your power and influence shows up in the story of the Grateful Dead, as laid out in a recent documentary (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4143508/). Jerry Garcia is one of my musical heroes and the leader of a remarkable experiment that we will never see the likes of again. The ‘ingredients’ (independent variables) in the Grateful Dead experiment were shared living and constantly playing music together, going all-in on living, eating, breathing, sleeping next to each other. The outcome (in part) from that complete commitment was an irreplicable miracle of improvisation, spontaneity, and joy. Music that will never be made again.
Notwithstanding the beauty of what came from their grand experiment– there was a dark side of failure to claim natural power and influence that cost Jerry and the people surrounding him dearly. Jerry held a deep belief about power and influence that was bread and butter philosophy of the 1960s. That is, Jerry believed that power and influence were unnecessary human constructs, that they didn’t need to exist, and that he could and should build a band, family, and community without leadership or power.
Here was the problem though. Jerry had immense power and influence, and he chose not to express it intentionally. He denied his power and influence, and allowed the community that he loved to unravel. At the height of their band, he was responsible for an economy the size of small country with many employees and their families reliant on him for their livelihood. When Jerry’s health started to decline in his late 40s, it became clear that the economy was built on Jerry’s persona and genius. The results of Jerry failing to take account for his true influence and power eventually cost him his life, as well as the lives of a number of other people in the band. Jerry was swallowed up by the responsibility and power that he had, in part because he didn’t acknowledge and develop his capacity to wield his true power and influence in healthy ways. Jerry’s power was loud, and it was built around a neglect to assume that power.
The alternative is to own and accept the fundamental reality of your power and influence in relationships. To courageously look at your shadow self– the ways that your power plays itself out if you aren’t paying attention to it. That you have the power and influence–as a father, mother, son, daughter, husband, wife, friend, partner, co-worker– to be a healing presence or hurtful presence, and that sometimes you fail to realize the power of your presence. It is critical to own and accept this serious responsibility, and the potential to wield power in ways that are harmful. These are key aspects of knowing yourself, optimizing the ways that you move your life and family forward in healthy ways, and reducing the collateral damage that results from your human condition.
So—since your power and influence are going to play out no matter what– you can decide if you want to be intentional about it.
Here are some ask yourself to build towards intentionality.
- How do I want my power and influence to play out?
- What are the outcomes I’m after…in this relationship specifically?
- In my family, what is the vision for our future, and how do I see my power and influence shaping us towards that vision?
- In my marriage, how do I want to use my influence to move in a healthy direction or break out of an unhealthy pattern? Where can I notice when I am prioritizing “winning,” “being right,” or “dominating” for my own preferences (i.e., a form of power)? How can I shift my influence towards goals of connection, respect, and friendship?
- What are my values and goals around power and influence? How do I want to wield those realities in a way that is aligned with who I want to be? How do I align with my aspirational self? How do I notice and take account when I am not living up to this?
- Where am I wielding my influence to win, reduce anxiety and fear, or retain control? Where am I wielding my influence to build up others and depth of connection?
- Does power mean that I win? What is winning in the short term (emotional relief to quell or quash conflict before fully processing it)? What is winning in the long term? Is it to get my way, or is it to build deeper connection, collaboration, and understanding?
What if you realigned with this idea: You have the influence to be a healing force in the lives of your children, parents, friends, classmates, significant others.
Not reconciling or acknowledging your power and influence leads to a nonchalance about or an overlooking of your unique capacity to share someone else’s load or burden. You act and behave in ways that, when you aren’t sure of your influence or power, create effects on people without knowing what they are.
More intentionally accepting the responsibility that comes with your power and influence- you can make your son’s day by noticing him. That your off handed reactions are filled with opportunities to express love, dignity, admiration, and support. Your influence isn’t in question. It is ever present. Whether you choose to express it in honest and healing or avoidant and harmful ways is where the money is.
Life is hard. Wouldn’t it be sweet relief to stop losing resources toward powerlessness, and start stepping up to the places that each of us have the power to influence one another in healthy ways in the small moments? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if our closest relationships, households, and communities gave us shelter from the storm and built us up to be more courageous, secure, and loved. You have the power and influence to make it so.
“Twas in another lifetime, one of toil and blood
When blackness was a virtue the road was full of mud
I came in from the wilderness, a creature void of form
Come in, she said, I’ll give ya shelter from the storm”
“I was burned out from exhaustion, buried in the hail
Poisoned in the bushes an’ blown out on the trail
Hunted like a crocodile, ravaged in the corn
Come in, she said I’ll give ya shelter from the storm”
– Bob Dylan, Shelter from the Storm, Blood on the Tracks, 1974
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1, 2: Jung, C. G. (1951, 2014). Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self. Routledge.
Long Strange Trip (2017). https://www.imdb.com/video/vi3352475673/?ref_=tt_vi_i_1
Bob Dylan, Blood on the Tracks, 1974