Take Back Your Power
One day, a few months ago, I was at a bookstore that had my books for sale. The proprietor of the store introduced a lady to me who was about to purchase the book “Dowse This… Your Journey to Emotional Balance”. That lady and I had a long chat. During our conversation, she just happened to tell me about a neighbor of hers. She said, “This neighbor of mine drives me crazy. They had late night parties, and are always doing something to annoy me!” How disruptive to one's peace of mind that must be, I thought. She told me that that was one of the reasons she wanted to purchase the book. She asked me if I thought it would help if she were to do some "emotional balancing" work on her neighbor. I responded by saying that it probably would. BUT I couldn’t help asking, “Why would you spend your time and energy working on your neighbor? Maybe it would be just as beneficial, or even more so, and effective too, to work on yourself, rather than on your neighbor. After all, it is you who is annoyed by your neighbor. For all you know, your neighbor is perfectly content and happy.” “Why don’t you take the opportunity to explore the reasons behind YOUR discontent? Why does this neighbor annoy you so much? Is it just one of them, or is it all of them?”, I asked. She raised an eyebrow - her eyes widened with interest. A slight smile appeared on her face and she seemed to relax. Her body language reflected a new found sense of personal power and control over that situation. The anticipation of actually working on her OWN “Emotional Balance” excited her.
It is indeed a wonderful gift to be able to help others on THEIR journey to emotional balance. But why work on someone you don’t even know when it is really you who is really feeling discontent.
All too often when some people do healing work (I’m not referring to those who do healing for a living) it is always interesting to observe that they are always thinking about who they can work on next. Some folks never even consider working on themselves FIRST. With good intentions, some are more concerned with helping their family, pets and friends first; and if they have time, they might do a little bit of work on themselves. As considerate and selfless as it may sound, you may not be able to help too many others if your own emotional state is not balanced. In extreme cases, if a person is an emotional “wreak”, they may even be a burden upon those whom they are attempting to help. It is NOT selfish to think in this way; would we not be able to help our families, pets and friends more if we too had the benefit of all the work we wanted to do on them? I mean they really care about us too.
I believe that if you want to do some work for someone else, that you must FIRST spend some time preparing yourself. You too deserve to feel in control, content and wonderful!
The previous story does not just apply to the effective use of the book “Emotional Balance”, but to all of the energy and balancing work that you might do.
Here is another example of “taking back you power”: One day I was out shopping with my daughter. We were having a great day UNTIL .... one of the cashiers in one of the shops annoyed her. She came out of that shop angry and consumed, in some way, with the cashier’s behaviour. She ranted on about the “insensitive creature in the shop”. I looked at her and said “You just gave away your Power dear”. Of course my dear Daughter didn’t want to hear any more about that. After a short while, I continued to ask why she would give her power away to that person whom she didn’t even know? The power to disrupt her good mood, and peace and contentment; the power to change who she really was, and the power to ruin her day.
Similarly, we may have heard from some that the way a person was raised has ruined their lives? Why would any adult give away the control of THEIR life in that way? Although we all seem, at times, to want to blame our predicament on elements outside our control, it always fails to fix or solve anything. Isn’t it funny how we allow strangers, or even some family members, to disrupt our moment, or even worse, those moments that shape our life? Isn’t it time to “Take Back Your Power” by taking responsibility for your life, and making those choices that create the future that YOU want?
To expand a little on that point, another story comes to mind. I once heard about a father who had two sons. Unfortunately, the father was an alcoholic. He loved his sons but he was often depressed and felt that "bad things only happened to him". One of the sons grew up to be just like him, an alcoholic and prone to bouts of depression and unhappiness. The other son grew up to be an ambitious and successful businessman, and satisfied with his life. At different times, both sons were asked “What made you turn out the way you did?” Amazingly, both of them responded by saying, “Well, with a father like I had, how could I have turned out any different”.
I often wonder why people CONTINUE to dwell on present or past events that negatively affect them? When we focus on that driver that just cut us off, for more than a moment, haven't we just given away our power? You cannot change his or her behavior by doing so. When we spend time thinking about that Bully, back in our school days, who did all of those mean things to us when we were children, are we not STILL giving that Bully our power? Even years later? Do we even know where that School Bully is? Can we still see his or her face? Yet they still may have the power to negatively affect our future . . . IF we let them. Sure we make choices based on our past, and we should. It is important to remember the past, but live in the present. If we are giving away our power to control our own peace and happiness to someone else, then it is time to TAKE IT BACK. Live in the present, remember the past and there is no need to fear the future, for it doesn't exist, YET. Live NOW and NOW is the right time to create the future that you want. I believe that if you choose to think about positive things, and re-frame negative ones - if you have to - then a new sunrise will always appear. And it will illuminate the path that you need to walk to get to what YOU CAN SEE in the distance. The future that you want is within your power to create!
