Why ALL Human Beings Go Through Power Plays

You can watch the video or read the transcript of Making Power Plays Positive below…

Welcome to another edition of the Bridges Bulletin. Let’s get started.

Hello, this is Dyann Bridges.I’m the creator of The Relaters Manual and coach for men.

Today, I want to talk about power play. What is it and why is it essential to us as human beings?

Now, part of how power plays work is trying to get one up on other people. Which means some people like to put other people down.

That has everything to do with power, and power is energy.

I believe power play is inherent to the human condition, and we all have experienced it.

If power can be expressed as energy, at its most basic form, then the more energy we have, the more powerful we can be.

We need energy to move through the world and to think and to follow through on goals and work and all that good stuff.

So, power has a lot to do with how much energy you have. Everyone has the experience of some type of power play because everyone starts off as a tiny little human being with other adults around them.

So, even as babies, we figure out how do you get power. You’re hungry or you’re tired, or you start to fuss and you start to cry, someone will come over and pay attention to you.

Or if you laugh and giggle again, somebody comes over and pays attention to you, gives you something, gives you their attention and their time and their energy.

If energy is power, that’s what all human beings are looking for and need.

And when we’re young, we need a lot of help from outside to generate our own power.

We need someone else to feed us. We need someone else to take care of us and protect us until we’re old enough and strong enough to do that for ourselves.

And so little kids learn that certain behaviors will get certain types of attention, which is a certain kind of power.

Now, as adults, we need to replenish our energy and our power mostly on our own.

Now, when the ways that we try and replenish that energy can be harmful to others or the environment or ultimately to us, then it becomes a destructive pattern.

That’s why some people put down others to try and build themselves up. That becomes a pattern, but even drugs and alcohol can be an attempt to somehow alter our energy, give ourselves power somehow.

Of course, these are deficient means, but ultimately that’s what human beings are trying to do.

If we haven’t found a way to replenish our own energy and we end up feeling powerless. If we can, if we know how to replenish our energy, we start to feel powerful.

So paying attention to that, knowing what types of activities give you enthusiasm. The things that get you excited and make you feel better after you’re doing them, concentrate on that.

Or the types of people that you like to hang around with who gives you energy. The people who make you laugh and make you happier are the people you want to spend more time with.

These are ways of having more energy and therefore more power, and that moves us forward to a bigger and stronger and more powerful life.

Probably one of the biggest ways that human beings feel either powerless or powerful is how they interpret the successes and the failures in their lives.

Everybody, every day has some type of success or failure, and how we think about that on a daily basis, on a regular basis will determine to a large extent, how much more powerful we will become.

And you can see this as people move forward in their lives and they get older, they wear their failures like some type of cloak or shawl. Now even the smallest things start to weigh them down more and more.

Whereas other people, they learn to absorb a feeling of accomplishment and a sense of being powerful and successful and competent, and they carry that with them and that perpetuates itself.

Energy attracts energy, and so the more successful you feel, the more power you have, the more energy you have. And the opposite is true.

Of course, I’m over-simplifying this. And it’s not necessarily easy, but broken down into the most basic of terms, this is what it means to be powerful or powerless. Which is why life puts us in situations where we have power plays. It’s those power plays that teach us a tremendous amount about ourselves and the world.

So I hope this has been food for thought. If you have any ideas on being powerful or powerless yourself… I’d love to hear it.