3 Highly Effective Ways to Reclaim Your Power

Fifty percent of people across industries are burned out, uninterested (engagement levels are very low at 34 percent, according to Gallup), overwhelmed, and down. Something feels like it’s missing. Something is not quite right. But we can’t quite put our finger on what it is. We're stuck. We feel small, overwhelmed, and lost. Especially in this news cycle—this constant barrage of information, entertainment, media, and stress.

But here's the good news: It doesn't have to be this way. You can reclaim your psychological sovereignty.

Sovereignty is powerful. It's the internal freedom and a relationship with yourself so profoundly life-supportive and energizing that you access your fullest potential. The fullest potential you were born for.

Trust me, you’ve felt it. You’ve felt the sovereignty fire, kindled, in the pit of your stomach at different times in your life.

It’s the inner flame that lifted you up from rock bottom and kept you walking through the darkest of nights. It’s the roar of defiance that helped you back to your feet every time you were knocked down—a declaration of your fight and right to live as you, no matter what. It is what has kept you alive despite everything.

Regardless of what race, nationality, religion, gender, or social status we are, at our core, we’re the same: sovereign. We all have the same desire to live in the fullest expression of ourselves.

Sovereignty allows us to reclaim the treasure trove of possibility that exists within all of us, if we allow it.

Sovereignty is your birthright

And somewhere deep down, you know it.

Take the example of Maya, who was born into a working-class family riddled with addiction in rural Indiana. She grew up in a trailer and suffered abuse as a child. She felt pride in herself for the first time in her life when she joined the Indiana National Guard. She identified with the values of service, commitment, and camaraderie, and began to feel hope for her life. That is, until she deployed to Iraq. She was in combat operations during the day—with all the hellishness that entails—and at night, her very own commander, a member of her community in Indiana, sexually assaulted her at gunpoint. If she ever said anything, her commander threatened, she would not live to see the baby she had left back home in the United States. A modern-day experience of enslavement at the tender age of 22.

Maya, a participant in one of the studies my colleagues and I ran, is a woman I will never forget. She stunned me because—despite it all—she was sovereign. She said that our research intervention helped with her posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and that she would otherwise likely have become an alcoholic, but she also had the powerful flame coursing through her veins that you could see in the gleam of her beautiful eyes: sovereignty. Despite everything she had been through, she was determined to show up as a mother for her son—with all the extra care and love needed for a child on the autism spectrum—and a kind and compassionate leader in her community. She went on to beat all odds as a high-level leader at one of the country’s top tech companies.

Another example is Nasreen Sheikh. Born into poverty and undocumented in India in the early '90s, she was forced to labor in sweatshops under abusive conditions in Kathmandu at age 10. Yet at 16, Nasreen defied all odds by becoming a renowned human rights activist and successful social entrepreneur to help other women who had suffered the way she had. From a slave to a leader: If she can do it despite 100 percent of the odds against her, then so can you.

Extraordinary people like Maya and Nasreen, who lived through hell yet thrive, through their existence, show us what we ourselves are capable of—despite anything we might have experienced.

There are many historical examples of sovereignty, like the enslaved Africans of South Carolina who—after the famous 1739 Stono Rebellion—had their instruments taken away from them yet still kept singing, dancing, and celebrating using their feet and hands, originating step and tap dancing.

These examples and so many others awaken in us a distant memory: the knowledge that the human spirit is a force to be reckoned with.

Because you can shackle someone and take the instruments away from them, but you can never take the song out of their soul.

To quote Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:

There is a song deep inside you. You are born to sing a song and you are preparing. You are on stage holding a mic but you are forgetting to sing, you are keeping silent. ‘Til that time you will be restless, until you can sing that song which you have come on the stage to sing. It doesn't matter if you feel a little out of tune for a minute or two. Go ahead! Sing!

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You can’t restrain the human spirit. The human spirit is indomitable. It is sovereign.

I dedicated my book Sovereign to you, that you may sing your song.

Here are three ways you can begin to cultivate sovereignty today:

1. Meditate. Don't roll your eyes; there's so much data showing that meditation increases emotional intelligence, willpower, self-awareness, decision-making, memory, attention, focus, and creativity that it's worth at least considering. You're sitting on a gold mine; you just have to dig. Find the shoe that fits. Use a free meditation app. If you don't unplug, you'll never get out of the matrix of your mind, let alone of the world.
2. Spend time with yourself. Our world is frenetic, high-stimulation, high-speed, and mostly virtual. We're assailed by technology, information, news, advertisements, and entertainment. Spend at least two hours a day thinking for yourself rather than being fed with others' ideas.
3. Breathe. Our research shows that breathing practices like SKY Breath Meditation can rapidly heal post-traumatic stress (as in Maya's example above) and anxiety. Once you have calmed your mind, freed and healed yourself from past trauma, and cultivated inner well-being, you'll be able to show up at your highest potential. (Resources below.)

Isn't that what the world needs right now? Everyone at their highest potential?

That, my friend, is my dangerously powerful invitation to you: You were born for this. You were born to be sovereign.