It’s difficult to be an agent of change, especially if you feel more accustomed to failure than success. As you move forward, certainly there will be roadblocks, setbacks, and times when you need to change course. But there’s a difference between a setback and a power puller; setbacks are moments where you need to take a different tack, whereas power pullers attempt to sabotage you on your journey. Whether they come from outside or within, you must be on the lookout for them.
Power pullers are insidious yet hard to spot. Here are a few I have personally dealt with, and I hope that exposing them will help you avoid their sabotage.
Fear of failure
Why is it so easy to preach to children that the only way to learn something is to fail at it, but when it comes to failing in adulthood, we can’t see how it’s integral to our continual growth? Being afraid of failure myself, I hate being a hypocrite, but it seems in this area that is what I am—with a capital H, cheerleading my son with “If you don’t succeed . . . ” as he pretends to gag.
It’s difficult to be an agent of change, especially if you feel more accustomed to failure than success. As you move forward, certainly there will be roadblocks, setbacks, and times when you need to change course. But there’s a difference between a setback and a power puller; setbacks are moments where you need to take a different tack, whereas power pullers attempt to sabotage you on your journey. Whether they come from outside or within, you must be on the lookout for them.
We gain so much from our failure—experience, perspective, and the knowledge of how to succeed next time. It also shows that what doesn’t kill us really does make us stronger. When my father bought me my first bike, the first thing I thought wasn’t What if I fall and scrape my knee? Instead, I nearly flattened him as I raced to get my hands on the thing. The possibility of failure simply didn’t occur to me—and it certainly didn’t stop me from getting back on the bike when I inevitably did tip over.
At some point, our motivation to save face causes us to become self- limiting. But it is time to make friends with failure. Doing so means we are building resilience, being persistent, bolstering self-confidence, and keeping our power. Contract a serious case of the “screw-its.” Deal with any failure after the fact, and don’t let it stop you from pursuing your goals.
Cup mind
Cup mind refers to perception and how you relate to your fear. How you perceive yourself, and how you choose to tell your story to others, and whether you own the story as yours depend on how open- or close-minded you are to your pain. In his book Wisdom 2.0: Ancient Secrets for the Creative and Constantly Connected, Soren Gordhamer sheds light on our inevitable negative thoughts and emotions by saying we need not deny them but “make space for our experience” with them. I love an analogy he created to expand on this idea of space making. It goes like this:
“If you put a couple drops of blue dye in a cup of water, what happens? The water turns blue. However, if you drop that same blue dye in the ocean, what happens? Not much. It has almost no visual impact. The same dye is put in, but the difference is in the amount of space or volume. The volume of the ocean is so great that the impact is almost unnoticeable.”
In this case, the blue dye represents our fear-based challenge; when we keep our minds small and give in to our fear, our perceptions are profoundly colored by that fear. The emotion can completely consume us. Gordhamer calls this cup mind. Cup mind is a small space in which mental energy is quickly and easily threatened by the emotion. The smaller the space, the more controlled we are.
In contrast, we can possess a mind full of expansive space so that whatever happens can be felt emotionally while not defining us or dictating the rest of our days, weeks, or years. We can feel the emotion, sit with it, then release it. This is what Gordhamer describes as having an ocean mind. It is a mind that has enough space to be able to see ourselves in the larger context of the storm so that the same amount of fear barely changes us.
We are all born with ocean minds. We are gifted with the ability to have limitless thoughts. But as we grow older, we become more limited by outside forces. It’s why children believe they can fly and aren’t afraid of strangers; their expectations and abilities and beliefs are as vast as oceans. When we feel we are pouring ourselves into a cup, we need to remember that it is against our own natures to be too self-limiting. If going from cup to ocean is too big a shift to make in one step, at least aim for a Big Gulp and see where that leads you.
Saying yes when you really mean no
The saying goes, “Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is the definition of insanity.” Nothing represents this better than our incessant need to people please.
A positive no can be saying yes to your health by saying no to a cigarette; yes to your career by saying no to your boss’s come-ons; yes to your granddaughter by saying no to alcohol. Again, it’s all about perception. For all my fellow yes addicts, you have permission to say yes as many times as you want, as long as you are mindful to whom you are saying it and the way in which it is framed.
The comparison trap
Another power puller is comparing ourselves to others. We all spend way too much time playing the game of How Am I Inferior at This Very Moment. Just as we try to pull ourselves out of this mind-set, there goes another skinny blonde, a smarter executive, a better broadcaster, a more mindful mother, a more selfless soul, a more doting wife, a better athlete, a more successful person… Stop the madness!
We must avoid this trap. We must retrain ourselves. If we stop focusing on how others are stronger, faster, smarter, whatever, we can strive to leverage our own power. Like a marathon runner intent on beating his best time, the only person worth beating as a measure of excellence is yourself. Just by considering the ways you might compete or compare yourself to others and by imagining opportunities to break the habit, you are more improved than before, which means you have already regained some control over your goals.
Hanging around with haters and shamers
These are the bitches and sons-of-bitches in our lives. We know who they are, and even though their very presence pulls our power, we keep them around.
There’s something to be said about the few precious hours you have to yourself as an adult and whom you choose to spend them with. You can recognize the vampires by the way they talk to you—always in a passive-aggressive way that passes judgment disguised as inquisitiveness.
Whenever it feels as if someone is trying to shame you, make you feel less than, or lay down guilt, be loud and clear that the shame game is no longer working. It’s important to let the shamers in your life know you are no longer vulnerable to their judgments. They’ll keep at it for a while, testing your fortitude, commenting on even the most insignificant things you do or say. But when they realize you don’t need nor do you seek their approval or validation, they will find some other victim to toy with. Talk about taking back your power. It’s an awesome feeling! You’ll enjoy your ice cream even more!
Imposter syndrome
The syndrome isn’t listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, but it plagues many of us and totally kills confidence. In fact, Amy Cuddy, PhD, writes in her book, Presence: Bringing Your Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges, that her teary-eyed admission of her own imposter syndrome during her famous TED talk was unplanned. In my opinion, her spontaneity in that moment is when viewers, including me, fell in love with her—Dr. Cuddy’s vulnerability spoke to us all. Here was a brilliant, beautiful, accomplished, influential Harvard professor who at one time believed she was a phony, an inferior, an imposter in her domain. We too have felt like “we’re not supposed to be here.” If we haven’t, then exactly who are the millions of people who have watched Dr. Cuddy’s TED talk more than twenty-seven million times, making it the second most-watched talk in TED history?
When you are standing outside the locked door of an elite, clandestine society and don’t know the secret knock, what do you do? Keep knocking until they let you in. Some have interpreted this as “Fake it ’til you make it”; Dr. Cuddy says to take it further: “Fake it ’til you become it.” It’s all in how you visualize your power.
