Be Your Own Judge of Power

It’s the season of making merry— cooking elaborate meals, exchanging presents, going to parties, and lots of eating and drinking.

And in the back of our minds, we’re preparing ourselves for the slump that awaits us. It’ll be a grim Monday morning when we get back to our daily grind, and back to the problems and challenges we’ve temporarily put aside.

That back-to-reality slump is made even worse because of how fleeting those merry-making activities were.

As humans, we consistently mispredict what will make us happy. Laurie Santos, cognitive scientist and host of the Happiness Lab podcast, shows in her research that extrinsic sources of happiness, such as material goods, external achievements, and tangible pleasures are what we think will make us happy. But they don’t. Or, rather, they do so only fleetingly. What truly improves our happiness are internal things, things like gratitude, personal growth, health, engaging in meaningful activities, improving at something we care about, and spending time with loved ones.

There is a clear parallel here to power.

Like the search for happiness, the quest for power is often extrinsic. We pursue wealth, followers on Instagram, promotions, achievement and recognition. There’s nothing wrong with that, but they’re the fast food of power. We’re sated for a minute and then hungry again. We need more wealth, the next promotion, more readers, more influence.

This never-enough cycle of power is a universal human phenomenon. It’s the workaholic CEO who pushes his team to extreme measures to beat the competition. It’s the controlling parent, determining every choice for their child. It’s the politician who games the system to stay in power. It’s Gollum trading his humanity for his ‘precious.’

Extrinsic power is never enough precisely because it’s extrinsic. Our sense of power depends on things outside our control: people’s admiration or compliance, the boss’s decision to give us a raise or promotion, how many people view our post, or whether we get an invitation to the party. The power we seek weakens us through dependence, keeping us forever grasping for more power.

But a true, robust sense of power, one that lasts, like happiness, comes from intrinsic sources, self-sustaining qualities and practices not reliant on external validation or circumstances. Our sense of power grows when the promotion feels well-deserved; we feel pride and satisfaction from having worked hard and reached our goals. We derive a sense of power from having created something of value, from having built a supportive network of friends, from being able to positively impact situations and people around us through our unique traits and abilities.

Intrinsic sources of power

How do we get there? How do get off the cycle of dependency, of needing our power to be ratified by others? How do we cultivate our internal sources of power? There are so many things that we can do to grow our inner sense of power, but I see these four things are essential:

Stop trying to fit in

We all harbor secret feelings of shame against our peculiarities, those traits and qualities that make us feel odd, that we think are “bad” or “wrong,” and that for sure, others would judge or dislike.

To grow our power, we absolutely need to embrace our full selves. It doesn’t mean everything about us is wonderful. Some things really do need some polish. Nor does it mean if we embrace ourselves, others well, too. It means that trying to fit in and be “cool” weakens us. Whenever we try to fit in or hide things about ourselves, acting out the persona we think others want to see, we open ourselves up to judgement. It’s another dependency: trying to be what we think others will like. We’re putting our self-esteem into another’s hands, letting our barometer of self-worth rise and fall with their opinions.

But when you when embrace your quirks and make your unique personality an asset, you have nothing to lose. People can criticize you, but your best defense is to not have to defend or hide. The better we are at appreciating the hand we’re dealt, our special personality with all its eccentricities and foibles, the easier it is to utilize it as a power.

Make yourself the hero

The best leaders are storytellers. Stories create coherence. They bring people together to work for a common cause. They help people navigate change and make sense of confusion.

We tell ourselves stories all the time. We’re continually narrating what happens inside of us and in the outside world to make sense of it.

There are essentially two stories you can tell yourself: one in which you are an agent with choice or one in which you are a victim of circumstance. Our sense of power depends on which story we tell ourselves. The story in which we’re an agent with choice creates coherence; it organizes our thoughts, feelings, and experiences such that we can make choices and take actions that align us with our deepest purpose and truest principles.

When we tell ourselves stories that make us the victim of others, the hapless target of a cruel and unjust world, it puts our focus on what others are doing, furthering our sense of powerlessness and lack of agency. We end up feeling demotivated, insecure, and jealous, leading us to seek outer validation and external rewards, driving us further from our own sense of power.

Growing intrinsic power starts with telling yourself a story that helps you find purpose and meaning in what’s happening, one that bolsters your abilities, and directs your energy and actions towards a meaningful goal.

Ask yourself, “Who do I want to be?”

External power is based on succeeding at things that are determined by others. And that’s fine. We want to achieve mastery, become successful, and gain recognition for our efforts.

But, if we measure our worth and success only by benchmarks set by others, we stay on the never-enough cycle. When aiming for a goal, ask yourself not just, “Am I good enough,” ask yourself, “Who do I want to be?” What are my benchmarks for success? How will I know when I’ve done well? What will make me feel satisfied with myself?

Cultivating an intrinsic sense of power means weaning yourself off the opinions of others. Feedback is important, but you also need your own benchmarks for success as well as failure. Work towards the goals, praise, and outcomes that you set for yourself, that are meaningful to you, and agreed with by you. If you don’t explicate your criterion for success, you’re orienting yourself to values that may not be yours.

Embrace the lows with the highs

The paradox of growing an intrinsic sense of power is that to feel powerful, you have to be ok with feeling powerless at times.

Regardless of our social status, position at work, wealth, popularity, expertise, we all have low-rank moments. We get attacked in public. We decide to learn something new and struggle as a beginner. We need help from others. We lose a friend or loved one. We change jobs and struggle in our new role. Feelings of low rank are an indispensable aspect of the human equation, and if we hate it in ourselves, we put our authority in jeopardy.

Embracing low-rank is a source of power because nothing makes you weaker than the inability to be vulnerable. If you cannot fail, cannot be wrong, cannot make a mistake, cannot be a learner, you are a sitting duck. Strength comes from your willingness to have nothing to lose. If you can’t lose an argument, walk away from a disagreement, ask for help, or apologize for a mistake, you have placed your feelings of worth in the hands of another and are completely open to manipulation.

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Back to happiness. Researchers found that no matter what we do to boost our happiness, we eventually revert to baseline, leading us to crave even more, to pursue the next thing in search of lasting happiness. They call it the hedonic treadmill.

There’s a power treadmill, too. When our power is extrinsically based, we need more and more of it, because our dependency on outer world makes us feel less and less power.

Externally sourced power is not bad or wrong. It’s important. Success, promotions, raises, and being part of the in-crowd is good, but it needs to be complemented by an intrinsic sense of power, one that remains resilient and enduring, irrespective of external changes.