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Claiming our power means claiming our life and our dreams. When we claim our lives, we take matters into our own hands. This means that we make our own decisions, create our path, take action and take responsibility for our lives.
In other words, claiming your power means expanding your own abilities in life. You increase your power, and therefore you also expand your borders. You don't make yourself small; instead, you accept and use your power for people's greater good.
Sometimes, there are people who intend to interrupt us for different reasons. They don't let us claim our power, since they are interested in having power over us. Their goal is to keep control over our lives to increase their power.
An example of this could be a husband who wants his wife to do everything that he tells her. Another example would be a supervisor in the corporate world who tries to suppress his employees.
Different ways of claiming your power
Never forget that what someone says about you says more truth about himself or herself than about you. Never forget that there might be people who try to get power over us. Again, it is not about us, but about them.
What different ways of claiming our power can we think of? The different ways can be derived from a Martial Arts fight. Some are described in Sun Tzu's book "The Art of War."
· Remind the opponent to be respectful.
· We can ask someone for support who helps us defend our borders.
· We look out for the opponents' weaknesses, use them against the person strategically, and transform them into our own strengths.
· We ask ourselves why the other person is an opponent. Even though there can be very different reasons for this, I would like to give you some common examples: Is it because of my gender? Do they feel threatened by my power? Are they afraid that they might be replaced? Are they envious because they haven't done what I did, but they would have liked to?
· Choose your battles wisely. Reserve your power for those cases that are important to you.
· Withdraw yourself from the battle as long as you are inferior in strength. Then grow strong, and join the battle again when the conditions are better.
· Attack when you have good chances to win.
· Surround the opponent and attack from different sides at the same time. In life, you could follow different paths at the same time.
· Show yourself as weak even though you are strong in order to irritate the opponent.
What about the inner opponent? The inner opponent is worse than outer opponents, because he is hidden and he is always where we are. We claim our power against the inner opponent the same way that we claim our power against outer opponents.
How to protect your power
When you protect your power, you determine your borders and you defend them. But how do you do this? Basically, you determine your borders according to who you are and to how things are. You affirm how things are.
Communication plays an important role in protecting your power. It is essential to let other people know who you are and how things are. When others don't know about you and your point of view, then it might happen easily that they violate your borders without even realizing it. In return, listen to the other people's points of view to make sure that you understand them correctly and that they understood you correctly, too.
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