CENTERS' PIECE: Reinforce your personal power
If you want to create an art project, you need an idea and some art materials. If you want to stick up for yourself, you need to have personal power and positive self esteem. You cannot stick up for yourself if you don’t possess personal pride.
It’s hard to stick up for yourself if you don’t know yourself. Naming and owning your feelings is a great way to get to know yourself. As a baby, you used some of the same words to mean different things and your mother sometimes had to guess what you wanted. And as you grew and learned to use more words the more likely you got what you wanted.
Words have special meanings and the more feeling words you know and use the more you begin to understand yourself and the better you can interact with other people. With this knowledge the better you can stick up for yourself. Knowing the name for a feeling helps to learn about the feeling and make choices about the situation. Putting names to feelings adds to your personal power. Feelings aren’t wrong or right, feelings just are feelings. No one can take your feelings away from you unless you let them. State your feelings because they belong to you.
We use the word “need” a lot. We talk about needing a faster computer or needing new shoes. These are “wants” not “needs.” Needs and wants are not the same. Needs aren’t wrong or right. Needs just are. The more you understand your needs the more personal power you have to state and to get your needs fulfilled. We all need to feel worthwhile and valued. As a baby, we counted on others to help us feel valued but as we grow older we start to notice our own talents and abilities. Learning ways to express ourselves help us to get our needs and wants met.
Sometimes it is difficult to tell what feeling you have. You may have more than one feeling at a time or you may have many feelings in a row that come on so fast, the feelings get mixed together. You can feel different ways about the same thing and these feelings can be successive; for example, you might be proud when you got the lead part in the play but worried that you won’t remember your lines.
Sometimes friendships are not equal relationships. Your friend may make promises they do not keep or may threaten to leave if you do not do what they want you to do. They are taking all of the power in the relationship. You cannot change your friend’s behavior but you can use your personal power to tell your friend what you will do and you and they will have the choice to keep the friendship on more equal terms.
With this personal power to state what you feel and the choices you will make, you are in charge of your own life. Building personal pride will help you to stick up for yourself. Start today.
Centers for Children and Families is a nonprofit agency dedicated to building strong, healthy families in the Permian Basin.
