The Direction of Intention

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Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Control is not power. Power is not control.

Power is misunderstood as control because most of our associations are with power-over-others. We are literally confusing Power with Control. As Peter Block writes, our businesses, schools and departments of government are structured on models control and compliance. He asks a relevant question: how can a people that so identified with democracy and freedom model all of their institutions on compliance and control? How can all of our leadership ideals be based in models of power-over? Beyond the rhetoric, cultures always betray their real values in the institutions they create.

True power is the release of control: it is focused action in service to the greater good.

As a friend recently said, “I’m afraid of becoming powerful because of what I might do to other people.” Her fears, our fears, have nothing to do with power. To hammer the point: power-over-others has nothing at all to do with Power and everything to do with Control. Her fears are not about what she will do to others; her fears are about what she will become if she ceases to control her power and unleashes her potential.

True power is ever present. It is amplified in relationship. It is not a possession or the dominion of a few. It is not something to be wielded like a sword by a single person. True power is a force that is intensified through a relationship of intention. A strong offer is power with a focus. True power cannot diminish or be exclusive; if anyone is diminished it is not power at work, it is control. If anyone is excluded it is not power at work, it is control.

Truly powerful people have no use of control over others because they are too engaged in the creation of power with other people.

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