If you think you can or you can’t,
you’re always right.
—Henry Ford I
Earlier, I defined power as the capacity or ability to get things done … to exercise control over people, events, situations, oneself. As such, it isn’t good or bad. It isn’t moral or immoral. It isn’t ethical or unethical. It’s neutral.
Power is a way of getting from one place to another. Let’s say you’re currently at position A (your present situation or predicament). You want to go to position B (your objective, goal, or destination). Power enables you to go from A to B. It enables you to change your reality to achieve that goal.
“Power” is a concept with ugly connotations. Why? Because it implies a master-slave relationship, with one side dominating the other. This blanket indictment is out of touch with life’s realities. When knowledgeable people complain about power, it is for one of two reasons:
Other than in these two instances, I see no objection to the use of power. Power should never be a goal in and of itself. It should be transport to a destination. If we split power from its many possible goals, the goals may be delightfully “good” or a abominably “bad,” but the power to implement the goals is a neutral force like electricity or wind. Now, you and I know that electricity isn’t all bad because occasionally someone gets a shock from it. Air, in the form of wind, isn’t bad simply because it occasionally twirls into tornadoes. Most of the time, air simply slides in and out of our lungs. We need it; without it, our bodies would self-destruct. We also need power to protect ourselves and to ensure that we have a sense of mastery over our lives.
You have plenty of power. Use it to sensibly implement objectives that are important to you. You owe it to yourself not to live by what someone else thinks you ought to do.
If you’re aware of an injustice—to yourself or someone else—you have the power to act. If you turn away because you believe you are helpless (“What can one person do?”), you’ll no doubt feel frustrated and wretched.
When people in our society believe they can’t, as individuals, make a difference, it’s bad for all of us. “Powerless” people become apathetic and toss in the towel, which means others have to carry them on their backs, or they become hostile and try to tear down a system they can’t understand and don’t believe they can control. This attitude pervades our world. Some of its symptoms are declining productivity and senseless violence.
Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme was one of those who became hostile. She attempted to gun down President Gerald Ford. After her arrest, she explained, “When people around you treat you like a child and pay no attention to the things you say, you have to do something!”
The “something” Squeaky did was psychopathic and self-destructive. Her self-perception was miles off base. She didn’t realize that she had other alternatives that were socially acceptable and legal. She didn’t realize that a criminal act, regardless of its goal, is almost always an abuse of power.
In essence, power is neutral. It’s a means, not an end. It’s indispensable for mental health and nonaggressive survival—and is based upon perception.
Let me illustrate what I mean when I say you have power if you perceive that you have it. Imagine a prisoner in solitary confinement. The authorities have removed his shoe laces and his belt, because they don’t want him to hurt himself. (They are saving him for them for later on.) The wretch slouches back and forth in his cell, holding up his pants with his left hand, not only because he’s minus a belt, but because he’s minus fifteen pounds. The food they shove under the steel door is slop, and he refuses to eat it. But now, as he runs his fingertips over his ribs, his nostrils pick up the scent of a Marlboro cigarette, his favorite brand.
Through a tiny porthole in the door, he watches as the lone guard in the corridor sucks in a lungful, then exhales blissfully. Desperate for a cigarette, the prisoner respectfully taps on the door with the knuckles of his right hand.
The guard ambles over and contemptuously grunts, “Whaddya want?”
The prisoner replies, “I’d like a cigarette, please … the kind you’re smoking: a Marlboro.”
The guard mistakenly perceives the prisoner as powerless, so he snorts derisively and turns his back.
The prisoner perceives his situation differently. He’s aware of his options; he’s willing to test his assumptions and take risks. So he taps again on the door with the knuckles of his right hand, this time commandingly.
The guard, exhaling a cloud of smoke, irritatedly turns his head. “Now whatddya want?”
The prisoner responds, “Please, I would like one of your cigarettes within the next thirty seconds. If I don’t get it, I’m going to bang my head against the concrete wall till I’m a bloody mess and unconscious. When the prison officials pick me off the floor and revive me, I’ll swear you did it.
“Now, they’ll never believe me, but think of all the hearings you’ll have to attend and the commissions you’ll be testifying before. Think of the reports you’ll have to fill out in triplicate. Think of the administrivia you’ll be tangled in—all that as opposed to giving me one crummy Marlboro! Just one cigarette, and I promise not to bother you again.”
Does the guard slip him a cigarette through the tiny port-hole? Yes. Does he light it for him? Yes. Why? Because the guard has done a fast cost-benefit analysis of the situation.
Whatever your circumstances, chances are that you’re in a better position than that prisoner tugging up his pants with his left hand. He wanted a Marlboro, and he got it. Within reason, you can get whatever you want if you’re aware of your options, if you test your assumptions, if you take shrewdly calculated risks based on solid information, and if you believe you have power.
The formula is almost laughably simple. Believe firmly that you have power, and you’ll convey that self-confident perception to others. It is you who determine how they see, believe, and react to you.
Succinctly stated, power is their perception that you can, and just might, bring about intended effects that they believe might help them or hurt them. Although power, like beauty, is strictly in the eye of the beholder … it begins with you!
Speaking of power being in the eye of the beholder, remember the motion picture The Wizard of Oz? There’s an individual who exercises a lot of power in that film: the Great, Mighty, Powerful Wizard. He has Dorothy and her friends spending much of their time doing very dangerous things as they attempt to steal the broomstick belonging to the Wicked Witch of the West. They obediently risk their lives in pursuit of this goal because they think the Wizard has power.
At the end of the film, when Toto, the dog, yanks the curtain back, who does the Wizard turn out to be? Just a bumbling old codger with a smoke machine and a noisemaker. In reality the old geezer had no power, but he exercised a great deal of power because everyone was convinced he had it. Up to the unmasking, everyone else’s perception was based on the Wizard’s self-perception.
Unlike the Wizard, you needn’t fake your power. You have more power sources at your fingertips than you realize!