Video Summary:

Happy January! We're in the north on the Medicine Wheel which is winter time and post holidays. This represents a time of introspection where we have the opportunity to look at, reevaluate and, understand ourselves at a deeper level.

This year I've been noticing how we as human beings leak our personal power. This is important because if we notice how we leak our personal power, we get the choice to not do that anymore. When we're not aware of how we leak our personal power, it just leaks away without us even realizing it.

Whenever we look outside of ourselves for something that we ought to be providing for ourselves, we are leaking our personal power. Think of it energetically. As I look outside of myself for something that I ought to be providing myself, my personal power follows my attention to outside myself.

Emotional security is one of the things we ought to provide for ourselves, but tend to look for outside. It's feeling secure in ourselves and feeling safe. It’s feeling confident I can handle whatever comes along even when life gets challenging. This gets tested when things aren't going our way and have setbacks.

When things are not going our way, there's a tendency to feel like things outside of ourselves are messing with our lives. So we can say to ourselves, “Okay, things outside of me aren't going the way I hoped, but how can I bring my power back to myself and find a way to be secure with what is?”

Maybe it's a timing thing and the conditions aren't right at this time to do what we wanted to do. So we can stay in my power and gather some strength. Then as the conditions turn around, we can start moving with those things again without leaking our personal power.

Other things we ought to provide for ourselves include happiness and joy. These emotional states are designed to be an inside-out type phenomenon. If I can feel my own joy within, then I can experience it without and share it with other people.

But when I look outside of myself for happiness and I'm not feeling it inside, the energy and power are leaking. I'm looking outside of myself for happiness or looking to have joyful experiences to experience joy. You could say it's conditional happiness or joy. I'm happy when the conditions are right.

Rather we can hold out for unconditional happiness. It’s finding the joy of being alive and connecting with life, even when things aren't going our way. If we get setbacks and challenges, but can still go inside to find joy and happiness. Then we're not leaking our personal power. We're not leaking our joy.

A third group of things we ought to provide for ourselves include acceptance and validation. Acceptance is another one of those inside jobs. If I can accept and love myself, then I'm already whole and complete in my dealings with other people. So I don't need anything from them.

In other words, I don't need them to like me. I feel good about myself and I just want to share myself with you. And then I'm not leaking my power. On the contrary, if I am not able to accept and validate myself, then I'm going to inevitably be looking to other people to accept and validate me.

It tends to present as neediness. Sometimes it's referred to as codependency or people-pleasing. We're trying to impress people in subtle ways and get them to like us and tell us that we’re okay (validate us).

Perhaps we’re going about it backward. Rather than liking myself and sharing my whole self with someone, the errant thought is if I can get him or her to accept me, then maybe I can accept myself. It doesn't work because now I've leaked my power to that other person and become dependent on them.

If that person doesn't like me in that moment, I'm screwed because now that she doesn't accept me, my ability to accept myself has gone away. That's how we leak our love instead of providing it for ourselves.

Say, I'm whole and accept myself and want to connect with someone. I say, “I would like to go out with you or be your friend.” If she says, “No thank you,” It might be disappointing, but it doesn't trigger me to feel unlovable, because I can feel my own love. I'm whole already. I just want to share my love with her.