My Journey to Power
Hello guys,
a new phase deserves a new journal. In the past year or so I learned the importance of Power. I cannot believe how obvious how I was to it. I could improve my social intelligence, social skills, assertiveness, power-awareness and self-defence. So I now feel that I have enough of a grasp of the basics to focus on Power.
That being said, foundations are key (right? 😉 ), so here is my plan regarding learning power this year:
- Frame control: listen to books, study the part in PU
- Social skills: finish to listen to the books from TPM's list
- Defense against social climbing: from PU and this forum: so common and such damaging to one's social status
- Defense against tasking: from PU
So this journal is going to focus on analyzing interactions where I felt disempowered (rightly or wrongly so) and to find a better outcome.
The goal will be to learn from my failures and I wish that you will learn from them as well.
An important change in mindset inspired from my current colleagues and supervisors: I choose to work a lot. I now understand that what I want in life will only come from effort. Before I knew it but I was reluctant to accept it. I had a cognitive dissonance with it. I wanted success but I was not willing to pay the price for it. It was unconscious but it is what it is. People could tell me: "but you already worked so much.". Yes I did but I can see now that it's not the time to stop nor to lower the bar. I can always steer my life in another direction: more free time, a romantic relationship, more hobbies. But I will only be able to do that from a place of power. And power come from skills and skills come from deliberate and continuous effort. There is no way around it.
Awesome, cool to see this new chapter John!
Thanks, Lucio!
Other key concepts for Power in my mind are:
- The Judge Role
- Not taking things personnally
- Make friends not enemies
I was quite dissatisfied with my workplace (poor training, bad organization, power games) so I was spending a lot of time researching other countries to move to. I realized it was depressing me so now I focus on the Here and Now and the Process. Basically: what I can control now (I cannot change countries at a whim). So I changed my mindset to :
I am on a Quest to my Ideal Life
So it's alright not to be right now where I want to be in Life. I'm getting there. That's the key mindset: I'm on the path to getting there. It's about the Journey not the destination because the Journey is the only variable we control.
Feminism
After a conversation with a female colleague, I decided not to talk about feminism or men/women dynamics with women anymore. The reason is that you never know who's a (covert) feminist. It can blow back and I could be labeled as "macho" or "sexist" even though I'm not. Critical thinkers and ideologists are naturally unaligned. You can never know in advance what ideology people align with.
I also rarely talk about politics now. If it's a close male friend open to exchanging ideas, different story. The transitory disagreement can help to build a deeper understanding for both and respectful disagreements can strengthen the friendship when we overcome it.
Hello guys,
I'm sharing here a few new mindsets I'm practicing
Focus: it's a meta-skill that helps us to acquire knowledge and skills. The opposite is distraction. Focus helps us to do one thing at a time and therefore to start and finish it. Simple and key.
Process: The only thing we can control are our current behaviour and thoughts. So by focussing on the Process we are more effective
Effort: We do not control the outcome of our actions. However, we control how much effort we put into it. There is no guarantee of success. However, there is no success without concentrated effort over a long period of time.
The Past
When we have negative thoughts about past events, we can think: "This is the past". 90% of the time it's not helpful to think about pas negative events. So we can either forgive, forget or move on. The Now is the only moment we actually have. We can reflect and improve. Once this reflection has occurred, thinking more about the past event is self-defeating.
As stated in the other post this should go in my journal:
Since doing PU, working on these power aspects and exchanging on the forum, I grew in Power of course. So now it reflects in my interactions.
Basically, everyone (even people in the bus) is respecting me more. People excuse themselves to me even though they have done nothing wrong. I don't even have to talk. It's a lot in the nonverbal. I am not even aware of what I'm doing differently. It's how I am inside of me that changed. I'm more detached and feel more powerful, more in control. However, it does cost some emotions. I feel less than I used to feel. I used to feel more emotions.
I was at a party recently, with people I haven't seen in 10 years. Some have thrived and others have fallen. Some have grown, others stayed the same. It was quite enlightening. So this is what we actually control: our own mindset, our own habits. Because it is so hard to change, that is why it makes a big difference in our lives.
This is not a philosopher's frame. It's a reminder. Let's leave them in the dust.
I actually have a lot of work to do myself, so I'm humble towards that. I've so many challenges in front of me, there is no way I'm being contemptuous with other people. I failed too much and have been too presumptuous in the past to do these mistakes again. I'm observing though.
Thank you for sharing, John, and glad to read about what sounds like a huge overall progress.
Interesting part about the "less emotion", I'd be curious to hear if that's also been the experience of other folks.
Thanks. It does feel like a huge progress as I'm more independent emotionally from other people. The best part is that I feel less anxiety, guilt, shame and fear as well.
I'm also curious about other's experience in their journey to Power.
I also have seen a "diminution of emotions" in my life.
The thing is, I used to be extremely susceptible to emotional manipulation. Guilt was a big one. Also anger. And too much indiscriminate empathy.
I think this trend towards less emotion is normal and healthy: emotions finally become what they should have always beeen, signals to protect us. Guilt returns to its original purpose of allowing us to change when we have not been our best; anger returns to its purpose of allowing us to protect ourselves when someone is trying to harm us; and so on.
And less emotions toward manipulators and bad people is a very healthy change, even if those manipulators were once close people.
Yeah, I also tend to see the "less emotional" side as a positive.
I think you can still have as many ups though, it's just that they won't be nearly as driven by other people's approval or by the smaller stuff. And that's because, as you progress, your sights are also onto bigger things.
Last shift at the emergency pediatric room I had a situation.
As I was in the vincinity, the nurse said about me and going to see the patient: “he is going to see the patient”.
Then other nurses said multiples times ”he” like I was not around. The frame was “when is he going to see the patient?”.
I answered “he’s going to see the patient now. But you can talk to me as I’m here” in a calm voice, addressing the whole group.
A silence issued. As in: “who does he think he is?”
Context: as we (doctors) are working all the time, they (nurses) have plenty of time to chatter and laugh. Which they do. They are overstaffed and we as doctors are understaffed. So they chat and laugh while we work. As you might also know there is a lot of power players among them.
I then stood up to go to the nurse and asked her about the case and went to see the patient.
Later on in the pause room, several of them left after a few minutes I was there. As in disapproval.
I am getting tired of being disrespected and I internalized the belief of “I deserve respect”.
I noticed that since I increased in power and skills some nurses respect me more while others are being more standoffish.
Do you think I went overboard in my reaction?
I am aware that I must increase warmth with the nurses. This is a challenge as I think many of them are dicks. I understand that by not being warm enough I am taking a risk of being perceived as an asshole.
I’m aware I have to improve my relationship with them in a 1-to-1 basis.
However, witnessing the disrespect they have (among each others as well: the new one is being given the worst tasks and must show deference to “older” nurses, they have a bullying culture, they think they are doctors themselves) it is challenging for me.
I know they are going out together sometimes for drinks with some doctors and I’m not invited. However I would not like to go so I’m fine with it. I think they are low quality people.