Owning your Power and Presence
Being cooped up in the house recently due to COVID-19 has allowed me to reflect on how important it is to have power and presence in a room. Lately, it is a virtual room, and this makes it even more important to feel like you have a voice and that you are valued. It is the countless times that I think that I hold power in a room, but I believe I need to be silent. For me, this has to do with many factors personally, professionally, and holistically. When we have the power to harness our expertise, education, privilege, and then not be able to use that power, it feels crushing. Recently, I have been practicing intentional presence. Exercising the power of presence on and off for a few years has helped me grow in many areas of my life. Now I incorporate power and presence coaching within my coaching models. Let me give you an example of three ways you can do this:
Drink a tall glass of water and do a body scan on how you are feeling at that moment. (Our body holds anxiety, trauma, emotions)
Stand somewhere that makes sense for you before walking into that big meeting or conversation, take tall (mountain pose if you wish), open your arms tall or alongside your body, and take up space.
If you wish to in your mind or out loud, say a mantra that you create to hold power and presence at that moment.
Ground yourself and tell yourself that the situation you are entering, you understand, you have influence over, and you are essential.
Enter that space ready to listen, learn, and own your power.
Take up space; you deserve it.
After reading Amy Cuddy’s book called, presence, I strive to incorporate owning my presence and helping you own your presence. Also, I strive to help reframe how your brain comes into that presence in situations where we feel we should be in a position of power.
Recently, I have offered one activity with clients to help them achieve power and presence. Through this activity, the client highlights a time they felt powerless, powerful, and should have power but consistently feel they are unable to be present in their power.
Often through this exercise, we can work backward from the moment of having that power or not and retrace their frame of mind walking into the situation. Often, we are the ones that get in the way of our power and presence because our brains lie to us. Our brains say to us that we are not worthy, not good enough, not the highest-paid person in the room, and the list goes on and on. If we believe that we are the right person to own that power at that moment, but we talk ourselves out of it for all of those reasons, we feel silent and regretful that we couldn’t be the ones to shine at that moment. For me, it is better to help ourselves understand the power of presence, the power of our power, and to use it; than to be silent.
If you have been reading my blog posts, Instagram posts, etc., you will see there is a theme here. To be the person you want to be, you need to own your presence, your power, your authentic self, and work at it (almost) every day. It is hard, and you will have bad days and times you might have misread a room or a feeling, but for me, it is always more beneficial to take a misstep and apologize later than to feel silent and have regrets.
