The Telltale Signs You’ve Depleted Your Personal Power

Okay, so by now we understand what it means to have personal power. But what about the other side of the equation? What does it feel like when we lack personal power? Or, what does it feel like when our personal power starts to wane and weaken?

Well, there are some telltale signs to look out for. Here is a list of warning signals that indicate you lack personal power:

• You regularly succumb to other people’s expectations of you.
• You often complain but make no positive changes to your life.
• You don’t trust yourself to make the right decisions and allow others to do this for you.
• You are often very dependent on other people and therefore succumb to their influence.
• Because you are prone to being influenced by others, you often succumb to manipulation.
• You feel helpless when trying to influence other people and circumstances.
• You regularly seek approval from other people to your own detriment.
• You kind of feel worthless, lacking confidence, and incompetent.
• You’re easily hurt, discouraged and often succumb to the fear of rejection, judgment, and criticism.
• You don’t feel comfortable around conflict and will go out of your way to avoid it.
• You have a very pessimistic nature — always paranoid and thinking that you’ve been wronged by others.
• You carry a lot of guilt, anger, frustration, and resentment inside.
• You often become a martyr in a psychological sense who makes great sacrifices for others to your own detriment.

Let’s now twist this around in the opposite direction. Let’s reverse these telltale signs to get a sense of what it means to live with personal power, or to win back your personal power.

Below are several telltale signs that indicate that you are tuned into your personal power:

• You are decisive and deliberate in your actions and follow your own gut feelings and intuition.
• You take full responsibility for your life, problems, and circumstances and do what you can to improve the situation.
• You trust yourself to make the right decision at the right time. But if by chance you don’t, then you trust yourself to correct any mistakes you make.
• You are extremely independent in thought and action. Yes, you take other people’s opinions into consideration, but the decisions you make are ultimately your own.
• You feel confident in social situations and in your ability to influence the opinions, perception, and behavior of other people.
• You feel confident in your ability to get the very best out of yourself in every situation.
• When things don’t pan out as expected, you’re not easily discouraged. You instead dig deep and use setbacks and adversity as motivation to help push you forward.
• Circumstances that lead to conflict bring out the best in you. You thrive as a mediator and negotiator in situations where there is a difference in opinion.
• You have a very optimistic nature that’s grounded in reality. You view circumstances rationally and then take appropriate action to make the best of your predicament.
• You’re emotionally intelligent and understand that value of maintaining your composure in emotionally charged situations.
• You wholeheartedly give of yourself, of your time and energy to others, but you’re also very vigilant to look after your own needs.