As we notice the actions of “leaders” around the world and admire or fear those we see as powerful, most of us don’t celebrate or acknowledge how our actions affect our entire reality.

The main thing to remember is that in a human experience, we are the creator of our own story. Once we pass on, and we cease to exist in human form, we then stop creating our story, that is where our story ends. Until then, we are the creator of our own reality.

You are the creator of your own reality. You affect your world.

Does that feel like a lot of responsibility?

It really is. And that’s why so many of us tend to blame an invisible entity called “they”.

For example, your appliance stops working after 5 years and you say, “They don’t make things to last these days.” We hear someone say, “They just keep raising the prices on everything.” Who is this “they”?

The truth is that there is no “they”. What if we can’t find a “they” to blame?

We then start to absorb the big truth that we are in control of the life we are experiencing and that is the only thing in this reality that we are in control of. We are not always in control of the circumstances that unfold for us to experience, and we are always in control of how we react, behave and decide to do through all kinds of different situations.

This accountability is huge. For some people it is scary. If we can blame an outside source for our perceived troubles, we do this as a bad human habit. It’s culturally acceptable to complain about our first world problems and to blame a “they”. This is why we don’t see and own our own power.

Cultural and societal conditioning has played the biggest part in our tendency not to own our own individual power. We are little individual creators sharing a reality. We feel like there’s an authority over us. We let other people, who are equal to us as humans, be our bosses, our judges. We literally have judges in place as a powerful societal figures as a part of our system, the judicial branch, of governing.

It’s a mindset to believe that others have so much control and power over us. We can just as easily change that mindset to own our own power and to start taking control of creating our own life. This is how we can create the life of our wildest dreams. We get in the driver’s seat of our own lives and realize that we are the boss of us.

Why is it so hard to change our mindset so that we see and own our own power?

It can be hard to believe that we are a huge influence on everything and everyone around us. Especially if we look to stay humble and we take pride in being a law abiding citizen who is community minded and has respect for authority. This has always been a characteristic that is an example of integrity in our society.

It can feel like a contradiction to suddenly believe that there is no actual authority. But, there is no actual contradiction in being a law abiding citizen who owns their own power. Both ideologies are aligned and coexist beautifully.

When we are children, we don’t have to understand the three branches of government and how laws are made and enforced to know that stealing is wrong. As adults, we are law abiding citizens for the most part because we naturally want to be good people, not because we would steal from our friend or neighbor if there were no laws and consequences to breaking laws.

This is also why people who do commit crimes against others, or people who are harmful and abusive toward others, have the power to cause destruction, anger and grief. Outlaws and organized crime bosses have a level of power over their communities that is like the power and authority given to police officers.

We can change our mindset so that we don’t give our power away. We can use our own creative power and the power of our decisions to create a better world for ourselves. We can confidently write our own story and have the life of our dreams once we realize that we are in control of ourselves and we are our own boss no matter what.

If we are so much bigger than we know, why do we feel so small?

The truth is that we already know that one terrible decision can lead to a life long regret and a consequence that destroys our ability to create the life of our dreams. We already fully know that we are in control of not making that terrible decision. That’s why we don’t go through our day to day life making bad decisions that lead us into our own bad results.

We have a lot of power to also make good, life-changing decisions that can lead to outcomes we never even dreamed possible. This is where it gets exhilarating. It can be very exciting. At the same time, there’s a fine line between how fear feels and how excitement feels.

In our culture, striking out on your own to do the impossible is largely supported after the big win. The small wins and losses on the way there will be your own to either celebrate or lament. We may not feel like we have much power at all, especially when we struggle.

We can end up feeling alone and lonely when writing our own story. We are getting used to affecting our own world, and when we want to control it and create our own reality we often see that people and situations don’t revolve around us. Others don’t contribute, or maybe they don’t notice, and yet they affect us.

Somehow, we want to impress others and when they are busy creating their own story and not noticing us, we then feel very small. For example, you’re so excited about a new project you’re starting and you want your friend to be excited for you, but the friend is going through a tough time with a family member being ill and they just can’t tune into your excitement. It can be deflating.

It is essential to remember we have no power or control over others.

We have to keep reminding ourselves that we have a lot of power over our own reality, our own life, our own way of existing, of being. Other people are other characters in our story, and where it can get tricky is that we certainly do affect everyone around us, even if we can’t control them.

If you’re working in a group and you’re grumpy, some in the group will become grumpy and most will notice the tense energy. When you’re in a great mood, people feel and notice it and it can be uplifting to some and maybe even annoying to others.

If we are looking to create a reality where other people are at ease around us and work well with us to support completing a project that everyone feels good about, we have to understand how we really do affect everyone around us. We need to know how to be in control over our own power.

If I want to buy flooring for my home project and I need a sales associate to give me information and complete my order and payment, I am not going to make this easy on myself or them if I don’t know what I want, how much of the flooring I need, and I act angry and indigent that the sales associate doesn’t know what to sell me.

I have the power to buy flooring and I also have the power to frustrate myself and others by not being aware and in control over communicating what exactly I am going to be ordering and paying for. If I order the wrong thing, it’s not “their” fault. Complaining to them or about them has a negative effect on them and on whomever you might be complaining to.

Again, we are used to complaining and complaining is a way to leak our power because we spend our energy on the mishap instead of spending our energy on our own goals and projects. What we focus on will manifest. Others are not responsible for manifesting our outcomes, we are.

There are a few ways to find and use our own personal power.

We have to get used to what our power looks and feels like in us and to us. If we are not used to being empowered, this can actually feel awkward. When we start to experiment with what our personal power is, and is not, we can risk trying too hard – and that’s unnatural and ineffective.

Here are a few tips to get you started on honing in on your personal power:

First, start by finding alone time and by bringing something to write on into a quiet space. Not everyone is big into writing. Find what works for you, it can be a little or a lot. Write down some areas in your life that you would like to increase your self confidence and areas that you want to improve. Write this down as if no one will ever see this list.

Second, make it a practice to think about the list throughout your day and week and wherever you decide you want to make some changes, do. Start to focus more on what you have now that you can use to get to another goal or to make a small change in your world. Find something small every day that you do intentionally to improve your own world.

Third, keep your practice a secret. Forth, take your time. These two tips are combined because one of the distractions that can derail us from becoming empowered is the tendency to want support and acceleration so that reaching our empowered state happens easily, quickly and can be largely unchallenged. Yet, this takes personal dedication, consistency and time. Again, we are only in control of ourselves, and others can affect us and throw us off if we have expectations that they’ll contribute to our manifestation.

Remember, you are the sole author of your story, and writing that book takes time. The character, you, has to develop.

Fifth, drop all expectations and let life unfold for you. Have your vision in place, take the steps you can take with what you have today, keep the energy of the vision with you, and then let a process unfold before you. As events unfold, you will then decide which forks in the road to take. Life is a series of experiences. Some of those will bring you to your vision and some will be experiences to pass through and leave behind.

The most important thing to remember is that you are making the decisions and there isn’t anyone else in control. If you’re ever feeling like you have lost control of your life, remember that you can only control your actions, thoughts, behaviors, ideas and plans for the future. You can change your mind at any time.

Embrace change.

When you start to really become empowered, things in your life will change. Some people don’t like change, but owning your power will give you the ability to make changes for the better and it will bring you into alignment with your dreams. If there’s an obstacle in your way, you have to figure out how to get past this to proceed. That’s life.

We can’t stay the same and hide away from the stress of change. All change is stressful, even when it is good change. We must reevaluate. Being stressed while we are navigating changes doesn’t mean we are not making progress – it means we are making progress. Learning how to wield our own power leads to positive results, and the journey is still going to have all the same ups and downs.

We shouldn’t expect that owning our power will lead to an easier human existence. Being human is hard! It’s difficult whether we are a leader in our world or a follower. In fact, being a leader is probably more challenging and stressful than simply following the herd. It does’t have to be, as long as we know not everyone in the herd will follow and we are still going to go through the same kinds of disappointments in life. Within our empowerment, we will handle the challenges more gracefully, with more wisdom and with more acceptance.

Finding your power and using it to be in the driver’s seat of your own life takes commitment. Consistency, self-awareness and self-care are ingredients for success. Enjoying your life and making the most of it is up yo you. When you start to feel alignment and momentum in your reality, the flow of energy and esteem helps you build more faith in yourself. Confidence will build, and so will the instinct to make choices that benefit you and those around you. You’ll start to enjoy the beneficial outcomes of good decisions, and that provides even more inspiration for creating the reality you want for yourself.

We all have the power to decide which way we view our reality, which means we have the power to be the author of our own story and we can start a new chapter whenever we want to. We can be the change we seek in our own world. We have to power to create and recreate ourselves as many times as we want to in this life. We are so much bigger than we know.