Personal competence can be loosely described as our ability to understand, successfully perform in, and master our world. Understand. Perform. Master. If I have confidence that I can do those three things when facing life’s challenges and opportunities, then I tend to feel competent. I feel as though I can sufficiently use my know-how and skills to manage and succeed at the tasks in front of me.
Our rapidly changing world requires that we push ourselves to keep up and continue learning and adding value. Thus, the learners will inherit the new world. With so much on the line, how can we activate our drive for competence in a healthy and energizing way? What moves the needle the most in developing competence? Here are the three most powerful activators.
Broadly speaking, what we all are after is a sense of control over our inner and outer worlds. We want to have control over our conscious experiences, our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors; we want to control the results we get and the relationships we have in the outside world. This desire to regulate and influence our overall life experience is what the human drive for control is all about.
There are three specific activators that light up our drive for control in a way that makes us feel particularly energized, engaged, and enthusiastic. No matter how much or how little control you prefer, if you’re going to control something in life, then the following three areas are what you should direct your attention to.
9 Declarations to Claim Your Personal Power Brendon Burchard
20141028
The Declaration of Personal Power
It is the main motivation of humankind to be free, to express our true selves and pursue our dreams without restriction–to experience what may be called Personal Freedom.
To secure these Rights and this Personal Freedom, men and women of conscience must not consent to be controlled by fear, convention, or the will of the masses. We must govern our own lives, and when our thoughts and actions become destructive it is our responsibility to alter or abolish them and to institute new habits as the foundations for a freer, happier life.
Our reasons for tapping into freedom or fear are often called our motivation. We can feel motivated to more forward or to halt, to grow or to shrink, to settle or to chase greatness. The actions we take in life are often based on whether our internal logic and impulses lean toward fear or freedom. If we lack compelling reasons to take action, or if our impulses are fearful or protective, then we tend to stay put. But if we have a strong list of reasons to move forward and we’ve conditioned our impulses to support freedom, we are more likely to consistently advance our lives.
The first virtue of the great among us is a remarkable level of sustained motivation. Success and fulfillment in life rests on the unflagging ability to get up, to be ourselves, to chase our dreams with fire each day, to keep willing ourselves to the next level of presence and performance and potential.
Fear is the human motive of aversion. Fear doesn’t help us commit to higher aims. It doesn’t help us imagine greatness. Its sole aim is immediate release from threat, strain, or pain.
Almost all the fear we experience today has nothing to do with physical threat. We have taken this impulse for safety and bastardized it into ego-driven desires to feel more emotionally comfortable.
Personal Freedom is liberty from the restrictions of social oppression and the tragic self-oppression that is fear. Freed from these things, we have the ability to express who we truly are and pursue what we deeply desire without restrictions set by others or ourselves.
When experiencing Personal Freedom, we have a heightened sense of genuineness and joy in our being. We feel unbounded, independent, and self-reliant. There is a palpable authenticity and aliveness in how we relate to others and contribute to the world.
Life is meant to be a vibrant, deeply felt, growing mosaic of meaningful moments. It is to be a grand, fully engaged, and unconditionally committed love affair with our daily experience. We are supposed to feel this and sense this, to engage with whatever appears in front of us with awareness and enthusiasm, joyfully unwrapping the gifts that fate has chosen to bring.
We can experience so much more of life. It takes very little focus and effort to increase our awareness of the gift of each day, to insert more depth and feeling and meaning in life again. Let us make that our aim. We must shift our focus away from the chaos and back to the true order of the universe, which gives us unrestricted freedom and peace in this moment. We must breathe once more. We must drink in our surroundings and let our bodies feel again. We must connect our heart to our life, putting hope and passion and love back into the efforts of the hour. This requires only a new deployment of our attention, time, and energy, a different intention and pace to life. We must slow it all down so that we can feel it once more, enjoy it once more, live it perhaps for the first time. This is the moment to finally begin to enjoy life’s blessings. Let us declare: We Share Slow Time.
Each of us serves as a living example to others. Our character and conduct can cast either the bright glow of greatness and service to the far corners of our influence, or a shadow of smallness and selfishness to the unfortunate few nearest us. Our striving for a better life and a better world can leave others inspired if it comes from a genuine place of service, or diminished if it comes from a place of greed.
We must have the courage to ask, “In this confused era, am I seeking to be a role model on a daily basis for all of those I love and serve? Am I lifting up those around me? Am I in some way elevating humanity by leading others to see and activate their potential? Am I living a truly great life?”
