Believing in Your Power to Transform

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When you need to change but are unsure where to begin, gaining perspective can help you see alternatives.

In life, the opportunity to gain perspective is often delivered to us through a sudden turn of events: a divorce, a death, a layoff, a natural disaster, an illness, etc. These are unexpected and unplanned and shock the system into recalibrating (albeit after the shock subsides in most cases).

My therapist told me about a model that is no longer used in her field but one that is nevertheless helpful to consider. The model is a binary classification of one of two axes (there are more but one and two differentiate outlook, which is important to this discussion).

• Axis One contains those who believe the problems in their lives mainly originate from themselves and their choices.

• Axis Two is the opposite lens, containing those who think others are the issue and that their lives unfold by the actions of people outside themselves.

I may be challenging the definition of a no-longer-used diagnostic tool (I am not a mental health professional, simply a card-carrying owner of a 1980s-era-model brain.

The binary approach to understanding our circumstances is empowering because it underscores the power of choice in our lives.

Don't get me wrong, I do not believe we choose to have mental health battles or disability, and this is where I would like us to part ways with diagnostic tools and divide the perspective we have on our life situation as one of agency or victimhood.

Starting with agency, do you allow yourself to see a path out when confronted with a situation or feeling that you want to change? If so, you are coming from a place of agency. If not, you may be stuck in a more challenging situation and feel another person's role is to help you.

If you are an adult, no one else can fix your problems. Say it with me now: You have the agency to change the course of your own life.

Every decision you make, from the breakfast you eat or don't eat to the workout you make or skip to how you treat your mind and the stories you tell yourself comprises your life's matrix.

Your perspective is the camera lens through which you view the world. The great news is that we are really nice cameras, and the lens options by which we see the world are infinitely dynamic.

Changing your perspective begins with self-knowledge. This is a profound journey of enlightenment that can transform how you see the world.

To know thyself is an ancient quest that has brought our collective knowing to the present day.

Thankfully, in the present day, information about how to deepen our awareness of the infinite internal abounds across almost any medium by which you prefer to intake knowledge.

However you like to learn and do the work; hiding behind every painful realization, you will find keys to unlock the doors to your self-knowledge.

Everyone walks a different path in life, so there is no one-size-fits-all solution, but the exercise is to improve the only thing you can change in this whole universe: you.

Recognizing your agency means you have the tools and awareness to make the changes you need to alter your course. You are not a victim and don't need someone to do it for you or give you permission. You are in control.

If you start from the agency perspective, the choice is yours. This is not the same as avoidance or nihilism, which can be easily summarized by looking at our modern world's popular and political landscapes.

Agency is the necessary self-stability we must have to cultivate interdependence.

Interdependence is that sweet spot of acknowledging we cannot do life all alone.

When we know how to help and be helped by others in an upfront manner, with no passive-aggressive contract-making or shirking responsibility because it compromises self-interest, we are operating from the place of interdependence.

Interdependence is the shining star of relationship health.

Interdependence in relationships can only occur if you work through the relationship baggage you may never have assessed.

Read part one of this two-part article on attachment styles to get the background info on how to begin. 🧠👇🏻📖🪄

Parsing your attachment baggage and making choices from a place of agency, particularly in relationships, is a daring and necessary move on the path to self-knowledge.

Agency is at the top of my mind as I build my startup and all that entails. My kids are getting to the age where I want to ensure they are empowered to be agents of change in their lives. The world we live in today will happily encourage you to hand over your agency in exchange for a few hours of melting your eyeballs in front of a scrolling screen of social media comparison culture.

Agency takes guts. If you can't blame someone else for your problems, only you remain, and that can be a scary and lonely place. Realizing your agency is also the realization of your power. You have in you a power no one and no thing can separate.

Your power has been within you since you arrived. Many events and words have happened and been said to you, which may have diminished or distorted your sense of power and agency, but the truth of your existence as a human being is that you are a free agent, no matter your circumstance.

You remain inseparably human and bound to your power through life. No one and no thing changes the truth of your power but for many of us, it is our blindness that limits our lives and diminishes our agency.

This Thursday is Thanksgiving in the United States. If there is one aspect of this holiday that I don't find problematic, giving thanks is the clincher. No one really loves dried bird meat that makes you nap, overly sugared melted sweet potatoes, or a day spent slaving in the kitchen because you forgot to install a Y chromosome (right?).

This is the truth in many households, and that is before we get to the problematic underpinning of the day, which is the annihilation of native peoples and betrayal of treaties to those same people, all of which is worth at least acknowledging despite the backlash of rage anyone who tries will be met with.

Giving thanks is a way I can get on board with this holiday. Coming together as honest brokers to acknowledge the shared hardship and joy collectively felt by all livers of life on this grand adventure is a reason to pause and toast our glasses.

My thank you this year is to my Self, though she may have felt lost, so broken as to be beyond repair and not useful for much at times. My Self has been the most patient observer, and she is here with me, waiting for me to collect the embers of the past and toss the ashes into the kiln for tomorrow's firing of clay.

Each year, she gains perspective; in each moment of unbearable pain, she sees how to be anew and believe in her power.

I am grateful for the power that is within me despite my failure to acknowledge it at times.

I am grateful for my capacity to love, which functions despite being wounded and terrifying at times.

To love and to allow yourself to be loved fully is the most artful form of letting go there is.

I am enough, and so are you. I am grateful for the wisdom to find my truth, and I hope you may, too.

I am grateful to you, my reader, with whom I am honored to share my thoughts and ideas.

Stay informed and connected. Please support this female-founded business and share this article. Upgrade to premium for only ten dollars/month and support my work directly; it does matter.

That is it for this week, my friends; please stay safe and be kind to yourself and someone else, too. We all need the encouragement right now.

Until next week — Your faithful writer, Sonia a.k.a. SuperSonic

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