Well, it finally happened: After several repairs, the sewer pipe in my 1950s house gave up the ghost. Luckily, I didn’t have a shooting geyser in the front yard, but let’s say I’ve done plenty of thinking this week about leaks!
Leaks occur with more than plumbing—they can also happen with relationships. But you can get ahead of the drip, drip, drip that may be ruining your relationship with a little awareness.
Let me tell you how a friend used his internal wisdom to reclaim his personal power.
“I took one look at the update mail and got so mad that I immediately closed it!” Jack told me, rolling his eyes.
“I don’t get it—I thought that deal was on track,” I said. “Didn’t the deal team claim they could get it done before the weekend?!”
“That’s what I thought, too. But the draft is a mess. There are major counter-offers on almost every page,” Jack sighed. “I told the team to put conversations on hold while we take a second look and decide our strategy. If we start at Section 1 and negotiate every change they’ve asked for, it will be death by a thousand cuts. Enough contract nibbling!”
In the February series, Reset Relationship Norms, we’re talking about how you can repair troubled relationships by redefining your norms. Recognizing when you’re losing personal power can be complicated and even confusing—that’s what happened to Jack’s deal team. You might think, Of course, I want to be nice, fun, and accommodating, whether I’m with my spouse and children, getting to know my new manager, or trying to appease my cranky neighbor. Fair enough.
However, sometimes the first step of rebalancing a power dynamic is to take the uncomfortable step to advocate for yourself. That’s a truth Jack saw that the negotiators didn’t: No one gives themselves away all at once—it happens one drip, drip, drip at a time (or in Jack’s case, one section at a time!).
Your instincts are telling you the situation is off-kilter when you have recurring thoughts like:
* I always feel nervous about voicing my concerns
* I don’t think I can give constructive feedback. I want to praise my partner’s good intentions, but I also want to re-route them to a better idea
* It doesn’t seem like we share a common vision about the future
You can plug relationship power leaks by using soft skills, like making the smart choice to pause, take stock, and recalibrate. Great partnerships happen when both sides operate as their full self, not half of who they could be. Tina Turner had an insight about romantic relationships, but it can be applied more broadly. She said, “True love doesn’t require the dimming of my light.”
Here are three ways for you to reset your relationship norm for personal power:
Blindly going along to get along or always minimizing your thoughts and feelings isn’t normal. So, revitalize your personal power from a slow trickle to a strong, steady flow, and make mutual support and respect your norm for every relationship.