In an ideal world, the title of this article would be 5 Ways to Feel Invulnerable. But the issue of vulnerability needs to be addressed first, because so many people feel powerless and anxious, and the social trends that drain personal power only seem to grow stronger. Whether you struggle due to finances, a controlling spouse, or the pressures at work, it’s crucial to find a way to feel secure in your day-to-day life.
Let’s first clarify what being secure isn't. It isn't egotism that you use like a weapon to selfishly get your own way. It isn't suppressing what you don't like about yourself and achieving a confident self-image that doesn't exist inside. It isn't something that can be created through money, status, possessions, or any other material surrogate. There are countless people sitting in the lap of luxury who feel even more insecure than the average person. This is because the source of invulnerability is all inside, where you relate to yourself.
Now we can address the five things that actually do create unbounded security as a personal quality in everyday life.
1. Stop Giving Away Your Power
Becoming insecure and powerless doesn't happen in a single dramatic stroke, like the barbarian hordes breaking down your door and burning your house. Rather, it's a process over time, and for most people, the process is so gradual that they don't notice it. They are more than happy, in fact, to give away their power by degrees. Why? Because being powerless seems like an easy way to be popular, accepted, and protected.
Thus you are giving away your power when you please others in order to fit in. Or when you follow the opinions of the crowd. Or when you decide that others matter more than you do. Or when you let someone who seems to have more power take charge of you.
It can often seem right—or proper—to sit modestly in the background, holding accepted opinions, living for your children, or letting a controlling spouse run roughshod over you in order to keep the peace. In small and large ways, however, these kind of decisions reduce your sense of self-worth and without self-worth, you cannot rid yourself of your powerlessness.
2. Examine Why It's "Good" to Be a Victim
Once you start chipping away at your self-worth, it's a short step to becoming a victim. I define being a victim as "selfless pain." In other words, by telling yourself that you don't really count, you can make the suffering you endure into a kind of virtue, as all martyrs do. It's "good" when you serve a higher spiritual purpose—or so some religions believe— but what if there is no higher purpose?
Most victims feel justified about worrying all the time, but worry makes you far more vulnerable to bad things in general, since worry is an all-consuming obsession about the future, not the present situation. So the mind isn't free and alert enough to tell real threats from imaginary ones. Worry feels like a protection when it is exactly the opposite.
Victims find lots of other "good" reasons for their plight. They excuse the actions of an abusive spouse, because forgiveness is considered spiritual. They are enabling an addict, because tolerance and acceptance of others is equally spiritual. But if you stand back, victims in such situations are deliberately bringing suffering upon themselves, which not only confirms their powerlessness, it encourages it to grow and grow. The victim is always being acted upon. There are enough abusers, addicts, rage-aholics, control freaks, and petty tyrants to drain the power from anyone who volunteers to play the role of victim.
Having given away too much of themselves, the first step for any victim is to realize that their role is voluntary. They are not trapped by fate, destiny, or the will of God. Their role is a personal choice, and they can choose differently.
3. Develop Your Core Self
Human beings are the only creatures who do not attain adulthood automatically. A baby chick has no choice but to turn into a chicken. But the world is full of people psychologically stuck in childhood and adolescence, no matter how old they happen to be. For us, to mature is a decision; adulthood is an achievement, one that requires—and results—in personal power.
This can take decades, but it starts with a vision of the "core self." This is the part of you that connects to reality, placing you at the center of experiences that you personally create. To have a core self is to be the author of your own story; it is the exact opposite of being a victim, who must live a life authored by others.
4. Align Yourself with the Flow of Evolution, or Personal Growth
Once you establish your core self as a goal, your path will unfold and you will evolve. This evolution is wobbly at first; everyone has at least some elements of ignorance and immaturity. But thanks to free will, you can help guide your own evolution. The simple fact is that we all desire more and better things for ourselves. If those more and better things are good for our growth, then we are guiding our own positive and powerful evolution.
In India they make a distinction between Dharma and Adharma. Dharma includes whatever naturally upholds life: happiness, truth, duty, virtue, beauty, wonder, reverence, appreciation, non-violence, understanding, love, and self-respect. On the other hand, Adharma are choices that do not support life naturally: anger, violence, fear, control, dogmatism, skepticism, unvirtuous acts, prejudice, addiction, intolerance, and unconsciousness in general.
For our purposes, Dharma is the ultimate power. It easily supports you, a single individual. What is asked of you is that you honestly look at your everyday life and the choices you are making. Ask yourself how to increase the dharmic choices and decrease the adharmic ones.
5. Trust in a Power that Transcends Everyday Reality
Nothing described so far will come true without a higher reality. For the moment, let's leave aside religion and any reference to God. Fortunately, to have even a speck of consciousness is to be connected to the finite consciousness that supports life, evolution, creativity, and intelligence. None of these things are accidental or a privilege handed out to the lucky few.
To use a metaphor, imagine that you are caught in a net. All nets have holes, so find one, and jump through it. I've known wives of abusive husbands who found a hole through learning to paint. For them, it was an escape route, and as they made their art, their thinking changed, from "I am trapped and can do nothing" to "I must be worth more than I imagined, because look at this beautiful thing I created." Escape routes exist along the qualities hidden in consciousness. They include:
- Creativity. Go beyond through discovery and exploration. This leads to insight. Your inner vision clears. You start to see glimmers of light through the fog of your situation. Something more beautiful starts to attract you, and you’ll want to go toward it.
- Intelligence. Let your mind lead the way. You start having newer, more exciting thoughts than the old habitual ones you've been following. Beliefs are challenged. New points of view attract you, so you move toward them. You’ll want to expand your mind in place of living behind defenses and boundaries.
- Love and compassion. Discover that you can forgive yourself and others. Fantasies of hurt and revenge are replaced with emotional softening. You’ll see that there is untapped love around you, so you move toward it. The fact that you desire to love and be loved starts to motivate you, without excuses about being unworthy.
- Quantum leaps. Notice—and learn—when you have an epiphany, a moment of dramatic awakening. These are the great "aha" experiences that peel away an entire layer of reality. We say that the heavens open, but really it's a new level of consciousness, one that brings more light.
- Devotion. Understand that life is full of awe and wonder. From this you see a reason to revere your own existence. You have been placed in a world where you can be devoted to something, and your worship gives you a sense of worth.
These escape routes all lead back to the person you really are, and that person knows that what really counts extends far beyond the individual: the glory of creation, the beauty of nature, the heart qualities of love and compassion, the mental power to discover new things, and those unexpected epiphanies that bring the presence of God—these universal aspects are your true source of power. They are you, and you are all of them. The path out of feeling vulnerable, reaching for the goal of invulnerability, is opened inside yourself.
