Know Your Power As A Man

Create The Courage To Change

The better you know yourself the more likely you are to do what matters. Study your strengths, know your weaknesses, identify your values, define your success, learn the things that excite and those that terrify you.

It is easy to focus on our weaknesses, or what we perceive as our weaknesses. Do we do enough to focus on our strengths, what we are good at? Do you really know who you are or do you have a picture in your mind of who you think you should be?

The Courage To Change

When we first met you were crazy about her. You couldn't stop talking about her. You wanted so much to be with her, all the time, but you couldn't make it work. You needed her to show you the way. It fell apart...

I wonder, What do you want in life? She was passionate and experienced and she blew your world apart. I knew then you couldn't cope. You wanted so much to be with her, all the time, but you couldn't make it work. You never found the courage to change.

But that was early on. You had led a sheltered life where women were concerned, you were inexperienced. You needed her to show you the way. That was OK, she was willing to help, she saw the future.

But it never happened, it fell apart.

What went wrong? Where was your energy? Where were you as a man? Why did you not find the courage to love?

You hung around her, desperate for her love. You sat and waited, letting your life drift away. I talked to you and got you to see that you needed to detach from her, be yourself, be strong. You needed take risks, you needed to allow the relationship not to happen. You needed to show what you were and let her choose.

She needed to come to you, to your strength and courage. But you were too scared she wouldn't, too scared you weren't enough. You couldn't see that as long as you thought that you wouldn't be enough you would never find her love, never find the courage to change.

She wanted you out of her life and didn't believe it. She couldn't bear the pain of you betraying yourself, of you not being what you could be. You kept calling and she cut you off. She pushed you away. Did you get the message? I don't think so.

So what do you want. You want to feel love. You want to feel important. You want to find your strength and courage. You want her to come to you.

Too late she will never do that now. She is with another, she is with a man, a man who worships her, who gives her the strength she always sought. She is with a man who pushed her into her feminine, made her a woman.

What Went Wrong

What is next for you? What will you do? How will you face life? Will you have the courage to change?

Start by no longer seeing any of it as being someone else's fault. Take responsibility and own who you are. Then just walk away, away from the the past, away from the pain. You know how to do it, you know what is involved. You just need to make that switch in your head, you need to make the decision.

Make your life your own. Find your focus and get on with your life. Understand who you are and understand that you need no-one else to make you whole. You don't need the relationship to complete you. You need nothing more than you are. Perhaps you don't need your shift after all?

Once you are there it will start to happen for you. But you need to touch the courage in your heart first.

The Imaginary Person

It is important that you let go of the imaginary person in your head. It is important that you let the mask drop so that you can see yourself, naked to the world.

A human being has so many skins inside, covering the depths of the heart. We know so many things, but we don't know ourselves! Why, thirty or forty skins or hides, as thick and hard as an ox's or bear's, cover the soul. Go into your own ground and learn to know yourself there.

My Talents

My wife takes great care to tell me what I am good at. She emphasises what my talents are and what I succeed at. She ensures that I stop and celebrate our successes. She knows that it is important to know yourself.

She does this to make me feel good about myself, but she also does this because I tend to focus on what went wrong or what did not work. I do this because I want to improve and be better next time, that is good but not enough. It is important that I see what does work and my wife reminds me to do this. I am grateful to her for this because without it I would move on and forget.

To Know Yourself

To know yourself there are three key elements that you need to keep in mind.

1. Strengths

You must start with your strengths, what you are good at. One useful way of doing this is to look at everything through an 'appreciative eye' rather than a 'critical eye'. A 'critical eye' looks to what can be corrected or changed while an 'appreciative eye' looks at what is working, what is great. When looking for improvements it is best to start here.

Improve what you are good at, focus on what people approve of.

As an exercise write down everything that has worked or gone well over the past year. Include everything you can think of. Think of the times when people have praised you or complimented you on something specific. Think of when people have responded to what you were doing. Think of the times you felt good about what you were doing, times you felt on a role.

Look at your list and identify common threads. Tease out the three strengths that you see there. Focus on these strengths and look at how to improve them, make them stronger.

2. Weaknesses

Only after you have worked with the 'appreciative eye' can you let loose the 'critical eye'. You may find that with frequent improvement of your strengths your weaknesses fade away. Focusing on the positive will dramatically change how you view yourself.

It is important that you know your weaknesses and whether you need to do anything about them. It may be that you can let them be part of you, that you can just let them fade away. It is crucial that you do not suppress them.

I have known for many years that my greatest weakness is anger. I struggled for years trying to control it, trying to suppress it, but without success.

I found that I had to accept it into my life and realise that it would always be part of me. When I did this it ceased to have any control over me and faded into the background. I remains one of my weaknesses but now I accept it as that it is no longer in charge.

3.Values

Our values are what drive us. Our values are the bedrock of our personal code of ethics. To fully understand your life you need to understand the values that guide your life.

Focus on identifying four key values. Start with random lists of values. Google this and add what you find onto one big list, the more the better. Then do a rough pass and delete any that are not you, these should be obvious. Get down to a list of 10 to 15.

Now you start at the top with the first value. You check it against each of the others in turn and decide which is more important to you one or the other. You either leave it above the ones it is more important than or move one that is more important above it. Go through the list this way until you are happy with the order they are in.

Cut the list down to 6 and re-confirm the order, then cut it out down to your 4 top values.

Check this list against what makes you feel excited or worthwhile and add anything in that occurs to you and repeat the above process. Eventually you will have your top four values. Remember them and cherish them.