Power Tool: Powerless to Powerful

Before we dive deeply into powerlessness, let us examine what is meant by power. Power is defined as 1) the ability to act or produce an effect, 2) possession of control, authority, or influence over others, one having such power, and 3) physical might, mental or moral efficacy, political control, or influence.¹ Viktor Frankl was a Jewish psychiatrist who spent three years during World War II living under unspeakable circumstances in several of the most notorious Nazi concentration camps. In his world-renowned 1946 book, “Man’s Search for Meaning,” he wrote, “A human being is a deciding being. Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” Thus, how you perceive power is your perception relative to an underlying belief that means something different to each of us.²

The act of feeling powerless is defined as both devoid of strength or resources and lacking the authority or capacity to act. In the purest sense, powerlessness is the sense of feeling or having “less power.”³ Often when someone is powerless, either indecision is at play or there is a misperception of power based on an underlying belief. The source of the indecision or perception of power may be a lack of confidence, courage to act, or judgment. What occurs often is we tend to overthink a situation in our head and capitulate upon it until it becomes our reality.

Powerlessness can often impair your ability to move forward and remain in a fixed mindset, coined by Dr. Carol Dweck in her best-selling book, “Mindset: The New Psychology of Success.” In her book, she posits that an individual with a fixed mindset comes with a predetermined, deep-seated, unchanging way of looking at situations in ones’ life.⁴ As described in the Farnum Street blog, “Dweck’s work shows the power of our most basic beliefs. Whether conscious or subconscious, they strongly ‘affect what we want and whether we succeed in getting it.’ Much of what we think we understand of our personality comes from our ‘mindset.’ This both propels us and prevents us from fulfilling our potential.”⁵

Therefore, powerlessness comes from having a fixed mindset and shows up in many aspects of our lives. This then becomes a perception of what we believe and know to be true. As a case study, let us explore Tanya who aspires to earn her Ph.D. in industrial engineering. She has completed her requirements and deliverables and is able to defend her thesis before a committee she selected. After multiple attempts at reaching out to her committee chair to schedule a time to review her work, she fell into a state of powerlessness. The source of this stemmed from a belief that she had no control or power over the situation. When we dove deeper into this belief, what she uncovered about herself was that she held herself back by overthinking the situation and making assumptions she believed to be true: no one wants to meet with me, they do not have time for me, they are ignoring my emails, they do not believe my work is valuable to them.

Using Byron Katie’s approach, I asked, “What is true about this situation?”⁶ What occurred was a realization that the control was within her reach. Tanya arrived at self-discovery that all she needed to do was simply take the reins of scheduling the meeting with her committee chair and subsequently the committee itself. By exploring what is true and exposing what you know versus what you think you know creates power. Thus, you move from a state of powerlessness to powerfulness.

To be clear, being powerful is not to be all-knowing, self-serving, and righteous. The definition of powerful is simply having great power or strength. Powerful is a state of being. It brings one a sense of self-worth, self-confidence, and clarity to act, think or decide. Above all it gives back your own self-control so that you can move forward and not be stuck in the past. Being powerful can be liberating which brings new possibility.⁷