How to Increase your Personal Power

A Great Idea, but How?

"Have you read it?" Richard asked enthusiastically. "No, never heard of it!" I replied.

He was so passionate! He was reading Eckhart Tolle's first book, The Power of Now, which had just appeared on the scene, and found it inspirational. He knew that meditation to quieten the incessant noise of the mind was a subject that interested me, so he recommended I read it immediately.

This sounded like a good idea, I am very open-minded and enjoy trying new things. So next time I was in Exclusive Books, I enquired about The Power of Now and was pleased to find it in stock.

It had a lot of very interesting viewpoints, yet since I both understood and completely agreed with most of what it said, it didn't change my life.

A Few Weeks Later

A few weeks later, while talking with Richard, we were discussing some point or another, I don't even remember now what it was, but actually that's an unimportant detail in the story!

"That's not what you said a few weeks ago," said Richard.

"That's true," I smiled. "The insight I got from The Power of Now has more personal power. I used to think what I said before. Yet as soon as I found a more valid perspective, I immediately changed my mind. Why would you want to hang on to something less effective when there's a more powerful way of looking at it."

Walk your Talk

Since Life Strategies recommends that our clients use this secret of success, I was glad he had noticed my willingness to update my context. It's crucial to walk your talk, in the wonderful phrase I recall Anthony Robbins often using, which I'm told he may have got from Jim Rohn.

Yet many don't see the importance of personal power. I recall the controversy around a previously well-known figure from the FIA, the regulating body of the Formula One motor races. Interviewed by Lucy Kellaway of the British Financial Times, he was finding his retirement by no means living up to his expectations. see:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/8af2ef8a-2e70-11e0-8733-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2C5q2QuwY

What's Wrong with Being a Hypocrite?

He's spending his time attempting to change his life by defending his reputation. He doesn't appreciate that people in the public eye are role models and therefore need to behave with integrity. He's gullible, he believes his thoughts and so replied to Lucy his interviewer:

“If someone is a role model and they’re doing something they shouldn’t do, the last thing you want to do is expose that. You have to ask, does what this person say achieve the objective of persuading people to behave better? Whether he’s actually doing it or not is beside the point as long as it doesn’t come out.”

"Isn’t that a bit hypocritical?" asked Lucy.

“In the end people are hypocritical. What’s so wrong with hypocrisy?” he retorted.

Yet he's not enjoying his retirement. His lack of integrity, his evident unconcern about being a hypocrite, his self sabotage has drastically decreased his personal power. He doesn't see that Nazi Dictator Adolf Hitler had exactly the same policy, which had exactly the same effect. When you deceive yourself by thinking that the end justifies the means, then the deception, the untruth involved has zero inner power.

How can deception give you anything real? Although he doesn't understand why he suffers, what other result can your hypocrisy give you but to diminish your personal power?

Food for Thought

"Every violation of truth is not only a sort of suicide in the liar,
but is a stab at the health of human society."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 – 1882) American author, lecturer, poet, champion of freedom

© Copyright worldwide Cris Baker, www.LifeStrategies.net. All rights reserved. Republishing welcomed under Creative Commons noncommercial no derivatives license preserving all links intact,
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