The Quest for Authentic Power: Getting Past Manipulation, Control, and Self Limiting Beliefs - Softcover

Lawford, G. Ross

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1576751473 ISBN 13: 9781576751473

Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2002

Synopsis

Authentic power-the power to consistently obtain what we truly desire-comes from within. Such power, the power to determine your own destiny, isn't achieved by imposing your will on others. In fact, Ross Lawford explains, power based on authority, control, strength, and status is not only ineffective, it is usually short-lived or more illusion than reality.
Drawing on psychology, theology, and business, Lawford outlines a new view of power based on authenticity and provides practical pointers for achieving your deepest desires without manipulation, coercion, or intimidation. He provides strategies for applying this new view of power in every aspect of your life-including your work, your family, and personal relationships.

About this title

About the Author

G. Ross Lawford brings to his writing his professional experience as a research scientist, university professor, business executive, wellness coach, facilitator, and consultant. Just as importantly, he incorporates into his writing reflections on his roles as son, parent, brother, spouse, friend, and volunteer leader in community organizations such as the Board of the local hospital.

Reviews

Initially, these titles seem dissimilar, but they actually bear a striking resemblance to each other in tone and approach, at times seeming interchangeable. Intuition's subtitle is telling: the book concerns unlocking one's inner guidance via yoga. Notes Walters (The Promise of Immortality: The True Teaching of the Bible and the Bhagavad Gita), "Intuition is the innate ability in everyone to perceive truth directly not by reason, logic or analysis, but by simply knowing from within." One taps intuition, which according to the author is deeper and purer than mere logic, by exploring the ill-defined "superconscious" mental state, which resembles a state between sleep and wakefulness. Purposeful writing encourages patience, persistence, and consistency; initiates should seek "calmness, clarity, and joy. Intuition is always based in a deep sense of calmness and detachment." As a biochemist (Univ. of Toronto), Lawford makes a strange proponent for mysticism, yet here he claims that we seek what he calls "authentic" power, a state in which each person is "in harmony with the deepest values of his or her soul." This liberates us from the conventional power of others. Despite Lawford's very personal, workmanlike approach, it feels as if he were rehashing how to redefine one's environment. Neither Lawford's nor Walters's book has broad appeal, and only very large libraries or those with specialized self-help collections should consider. Instead, try Pema Chodron's When Things Fall Apart, which advocates inner peace via meditation, or Douglas Bloch's helpful and more mainstream Listening to Your Inner Voice, which combines meditation and exercise.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

In our quest for power and what we imagine it will bring us, we actually end up allowing other things and other people to control our lives. This control takes several forms. It can be as subtle as a belief about how we should or ought to behave, and it can be as blatant as an all-consuming drive to achieve something. Even when it appears to be strictly our own agenda that we are following, the underlying beliefs that cause our behavior have come from someone else. Strategies based on these beliefs don't actually make us more powerful, although often we cling to that illusion. Instead these strategies cause us to become mere "oughtomatons," or robots, unwittingly buying into someone else's method of controlling our behavior. "Be perfect, work hard, be humble, be clean, be obedient, be a good student, be attractive, don't rock the boat, be strong, don't show your emotions," say the voices in our heads.

These strategies and the subconscious beliefs on which they are based make us harder workers, more compliant employees, citizens, spouses, or children; they also make us insatiable consumers of whatever other people suggest we should have. Because they are based on incorrect, rarely challenged assumptions, however, these strategies ultimately end in failure and frustration. The natural result of being addicted to the quest for this kind of power is actually an increasing feeling of powerlessness.

As in all complex systems with many interacting components, there are several points at which interventions may be made in order to change to a more effective or desirable outcome. In the matter of achieving a more authentic, and therefore more satisfying experience of personal power, as in most other matters, the obvious interventions tend to be the least effective. This is why the usual tactics - trying harder or changing partners, jobs, structures, etc. - rarely produce lasting gains of the type desired.

The main point of leverage for becoming more effective in translating intentions into reality in a way that is sustainable is to alter the beliefs and assumptions about power that are at the very heart of the systems within which we operate. In fact, so fundamental are our beliefs about power that to alter them is change virtually every aspect of our lives. Change our assumptions about power, and we will change how we educate, how we govern, how we deliver health care, how we administer justice, how we respond to authority, how we relate to the environment - indeed how we relate to everyone and how we respond to every circumstance and situation.

The secret to success in the quest for authentic power lies in realizing that your experience of powerlessness is largely a result of the beliefs and assumptions you hold and then abandoning those beliefs in favor of more empowering ones.

Edition details

• Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1576751473
• ISBN 13: 9781576751473
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 168