- Gain power over your emotions through breathing exercises and thinking positively about your situation.
- Command power in a room by speaking in a confident, low tone and standing or sitting up straight.
- Connect to your inner wisdom and intuitive power by practicing mindfulness and meditation.
Stress-Busting Power
Practice breathing exercises to take power over your emotions. Your body and mind affect how the other feels, so if you calm your body, you can calm your mind. Slow down your heart rate and keep cool in tough situations by practicing breathing exercises, like the Wim Hof method. Get into a relaxed meditation position, then focus on your breathing. Take thirty to forty deep breaths, letting your stomach expand first, then your chest, then exhale without using any energy. Inhale as deeply as you can on the last breath and hold it for 15 seconds, then exhale. Repeat 3-4 more times, as needed.
The Power of Positivity
Boost your mood by using positive affirmation. Negativity saps your energy, so push those vibes out of your life by swapping phrases like “I can’t...” and “I’m afraid to...” with positive affirmations. By taking negative phrases out of your vocabulary, you reframe your thinking and open yourself up to new opportunities. Keep your affirmations realistic, to give yourself achievable goals. Instead of replacing “I can’t do this” with “I can definitely do this," try “I will do my best.”
Super Friends!
Develop your power through meaningful collaboration. By surrounding yourself with people who have similar goals (but not necessarily similar approaches) you’re more likely to achieve success and gain power in your life. Get together a personal Justice League of people whose opinions you trust. These groups are great for creative collaboration as well as accountability. Many things that are difficult to do alone can be accomplished with teamwork. Some people to consider for your group are friends you can rely on for support, mentors you look to for advice, leaders you have enjoyed working with, and people who already have networks you can tap into.
Absorbing Powers
Surround yourself with powerful people to pick up their traits. Think about the habits you want to have and surround yourself with people who already have them. Doing something as simple as sitting next to a hard worker helps boost your productivity. Spend time with people who are kind, work hard, and make positive life choices. This is called the “spillover effect”, and it goes both ways. The attitudes and habits of the people around you influence you, good or bad.
The Power of (Your) Life
Use self-awareness to take control over your life experience. Want to take power over your train of thought? Keep a “thought journal” by writing down whatever pops into your head. Don’t try to interpret your thoughts, just notice them—the raw material is a message straight from your body. Practicing meditation and mindfulness are other great ways to develop powers of self-reflection. Ask questions like: “What are my weaknesses?” “What are my strengths?” and “What do I need to learn right now?”
Instincts You Can Trust
Build instinctual power by listening to your body. Your body is always giving you advice the only way it can—by making you feel a certain way. Before making a decision, check in with your body and write down how you feel. Keep a record of the outcomes of your decisions to recognize your intuitive powers. Your conscious mind can’t access everything you know, but your intuition can! If you’ve ever felt like you knew what was going to happen before it did, or even just had a “gut feeling,” your intuition was at work. If you’re about to accept a job offer but every time you think about it you get a stomach ache, your intuition might be sending you a message. Practice listening to your intuition further by writing down your predictions, like what the next song on the radio will be. Keep a record of your hunches and check them after everything’s said and done. Use your intuition to know when to say yes or no. If you can’t decide what to do, imagine you already said no. If you feel relieved, say no in real life. Ask yourself which answer will most positively affect your long-term goals.
Projecting Power
Use a relaxed, lower voice to signal social power. If you’re confident and self-assured, people are more likely to view you as powerful. How do you project that? By lowering your voice as much as you comfortably can. Support your voice by breathing deeply into your stomach (not your chest) when you speak. Don’t force your voice to go lower—you don’t have to pretend to be someone else. Just let your vocal cords relax when you speak. Evidence shows that presidential candidates that make deeper, more dominant sounds are more likely to win their elections.
Powerful Posture
Use good posture to take a powerful position. Posture is a huge part of a first impression, so taking a strong stance instantly boosts your power in other people’s eyes. To project confidence and broaden your image, stand with your shoulders back, chest high, and back straight. Using good posture makes you take up more physical space and improves your breathing, which keeps you cool and confident while filling out a room. Other ways to display power are by using large gestures, making eye contact, and leaning forward.
Mind Control
Model behavior and communicate kindly to change people’s minds. You can control people’s minds by improving your relationships and treating people with kindness. Seriously! Gain power over people’s minds by making eye contact when you speak, smiling, and practicing active listening. Pay attention to the way someone communicates: Do they use a lot of body language? Talk a lot or a little? Speak simply or use more complex language? Take what you can observe from them and incorporate it into your own method of speaking. If you start an interaction with kindness and openness, the person you’re talking to is likely to do the same.
Power Over Your Own Mind
Reframe your outlook to change your own mind. By approaching situations differently, you can change the way they make you feel and how you think of them in the future. Set positive goals that focus on what you want and question how you can change the things you don’t. Ask positive questions like “Why do I want to change?” and “What will my life look like when I change?” instead of “Why do I feel bad?” or “Why don’t I like myself?” When you tell yourself something negative, like “I’ll never be successful,” change the voice in your head to something silly, like a cartoon character’s voice, to diminish the authority it has over you.
Power Enhancer
Use confidence to boost all of your powers. When you’re confident in your worth and abilities, your power gets even more powerful! Gain confidence by practicing what you’re already good at, seeing failure as a way to learn, and not comparing yourself to others. Find a song that makes you feel you, and start every day by listening to it. This works best with invigorating, upbeat songs that make you want to dance. By putting your life to music, you’ll make yourself feel more energized and ready for what life has to offer. Do a social media overhaul. What you interact with affects you deeply, so to keep yourself in the most positive, confident mindset, go through your accounts and unfollow anyone who makes you feel negative. Exercise the ability to say no. It’s hard to let people down, but you’ve got your own stuff going on! Build confidence by saying you don’t want to do things when you don’t want to, instead of saying you can’t for an external reason. Boost your confidence by keeping a record of your successes. Most people have a resume, but you probably have a lot more things you’re proud of. Think about what you’ve accomplished, big or small, and write it down in a file. That way there’s a concentrated confidence boost always at your fingertips.
Super Strong Habits
Build good habits by setting small, achievable goals. There’s a lot you want to do, but sometimes it can be hard to get started. To build good, strong habits, branch off of routines you already have. Once you start building the habit, give yourself a little reward! Do you brush your teeth every morning and want to start working out? Do squats in front of the sink. Want to start running and already walk the dog every day? Choose a short area to sprint. If you’re trying to be on your phone less, make plans to see a friend in person and don’t bring your phone. Seeing your friend acts as a reward, and not having your phone removes the temptation to be on it.
Brain Building
Improve your learning ability by acting like an expert. It turns out pretending you have to teach something helps you understand it better. Form a plan with specific goals, think about questions “students” would have, and create visualizations for the information you’re taking in. Start by specifically deciding what you want to learn. Are you trying to read a book, understand an equation, or gain a new skill? Write down goals like “Read 50 pages a day” or “Work on two math problems” and stick to them. Consider the things you understand that others may not. If you’re learning about pendulums and already know a thing or two about mass, think about how you could answer questions using that knowledge. This deepens your understanding of how what you know interacts with learning. Use visualization to make what you’re learning tangible. If you think about energy in a circuit as a train running on a track, follow that metaphor as far as you can to create your own unique understanding.
The Power to Change Time
Keep to a specific schedule with achievable goals to unlock your full potential. Ease yourself into a productivity mindset by breaking your day into chunks and assigning specific tasks to each period. This helps you stay focused, plus it gives opportunities for small rewards and breaks. Different people work best at different times. By dedicating your most productive part of the day to your most difficult tasks, your work will be more efficient and less stressful. Use the 5-minute rule—choosing one task to work on for five minutes—to jumpstart your motivation, then carry that momentum into a set work schedule for the day. It’s easier to achieve a smaller goal, so break down large projects into short steps. Not only does this make your work less overwhelming, but checking off each step acts as a reward in itself!
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