The last post introduced the idea that the opposite of criticism is empowering the other one. But before mentioning some guidelines on how we can do that, I think it’s necessary to clarify what power and empowering the other ones means.

I will take this from a Human Design perspective, although this idea may be combined with any other techniques that are familiar to you, philosophical/ethical or even logical approaches. One of the first things I studied and understood about my chart was my Gate 34, as my Personality Sun, on line 5. Reading the explanation about it didn’t bring good feelings, I must admit. It is called The Gate of Annihilation, in the I-Ching Rave Line Companion book. This is said to be a gate of power, and especially for the 5th line, it brings to its owner the projection from the other ones that they have personal power, huge amounts of energy. People project on the carrier of this gate that they have all the necessary power for a specific task and also the power of total annihilation of resistance. And, from my point of view, up to some degree, it is true! First of all, I believe impossible doesn’t exist, and if I want to do something, there is a way, and I will get it done, no matter what. I was aware of this approach I had on life, I felt like this since I became aware of myself, as a child, I could never take a No for an answer. And I also didn’t like people who used to threaten me by saying “You’ll see how hard it gets”, “You’ll see that it is not as easy as you believe”, “Nobody has done this before, who do you think you are going to do it”, or my favorite “It is so hard and requires so much energy to do it, why do you even want to do it”?

Feeling that inner power, that inner potential to achieve anything and everything, had been my companion since I was a child. But it also made me move forward, break through and take on chances, when my mind was yelling desperately to not do it, because it didn’t know how to handle it. I was feeling that drive and fuel, the flames coming from my sacral center and the joy of taking on life. And I felt it until I… got my first job! That is when the fuel got dimmed down, norms and procedures and internal rules (that nobody really respected in that company) broke the drive and started getting me depleted. But at the same time, people started projecting on me their expectations: how I should walk, talk, sell, convince others of our services and so on. Nothing felt right for me anymore, and my inner power was gone, sitting now in the illusional hands of other people. The thing with this personal power is that people see it, feel drawn to it, and would like to take it and use it for themselves. Just like when your car tank is empty, but then you think you see an abandoned car on the side of the street, with a full tank, and you instantly have a thought that you could take that fuel for yourself. And this unequal exchange of energy happens, there are people that drain others, because they have lost their personal power, and there are people who allow themselves to be drained. But the power is personal, not selfish, but personal. Unless I feel like giving my power to something or someone, unless my power gets enhanced by my actions, I won’t do it. And I shouldn’t do it, because it would just leave me drained, and then I have to get back together, back to myself.

And this “back to myself”, this is what personal power means. It means discovering all the fuel, the drive, the inner compass, and the personal typical level of energy that someone has, alone, regardless of what or who is around them. Back to yourself means going back to the origin point in which you exist and express yourself, and how you feel on the inside, even if there is nobody around, when there is nothing to do or fix, nobody to interact with, nothing to distract you from your inner world. It is the foundation of who you are, and in today’s world, it means rediscovering it. This is what finding your personal power means: getting back to who you are when nothing else is. And once you get there, you find home within yourself, peace, stability, awareness. That is the start of your life, the main core, your life force. And from there onwards, you can start building up whatever you need, on top of that. This core power is also a good place to come back to after a busy day, or a turbulent period. It is the safety that you find in yourself, the only thing that you can count on while navigating through this life.

For me to find my personal power, and to finally understand what feeling empowered means, and the meaning of my gate 34, I had to crumble to pieces all my reality (I moved to another country), and to spend a lot of time with myself and just a few other people (lockdown happened). I already had an idea of how it works, how it feels like, but I wasn’t consistent in my feelings, and I didn’t always remember to get back to my core when my mind started wondering off. In general, it takes some shaking for the mind, to allow clear passage to your core power. Because this power can seem too much to handle, and if left out in the open without awareness, it can act like a loose cannon. Probably that is why a lot of people are afraid of their own power and avoid seeing their own greatness; because that power may seem hard to control (about controlling this power, I will come back in another post). But this power is the only one bringing joy, ease and flow to life. It is for personal use, not for others, and from a Human Design perspective it can reside in any gate you have as your Personality Sun.

Feeling empowered means acknowledging your own inner power. And when I say “power”, I don’t mean “force”(that belongs to the mind) and I don’t mean “strength” either (strength means endurance, resistance, which is not the case anymore when you feel in your power). When I say “power” it is that feeling of joy and wonder in front of life, that drive to take on with an open heart whatever comes your way, knowing that no matter what happens, you can make it through, you will get wherever you wish, you can make it happen. And above all, effortlessly!

Did you ever imagine that you could do anything, and feel fueled by it at the same time? Like you would have energy to carry on with whichever task you wish (not have to!), and at the same time you wouldn’t feel drained or tired for a second?

Let me know your thoughts about it, and I will come back with what I usually do to get myself empowered, and also inspire this in the other.

Aaah, criticism! Sweet, old, bitter criticism! The one we all grew up with, and the one that was never left out. The criticism that we thought was the only trigger to make us move mountains…and ourselves. We grew up with the idea that criticism improves, it is needed and it is the only thing making us go forward.

When I say “criticism” I talk about labeling, judging, comparing, blaming, shaming, guilting someone with the “high purpose” of improving them, or getting them to feel a need to improve themselves.

First of all, let’s take it logically. When everything around is chaos, or emotional blackmail, logic is the last resort. So, going on with logic, when I say someone should improve something, like their attitude, skills or actions, I am judging their current level based on my own views. If I criticize them now, is because according to my standards, they are not good enough. I judge, label and condemn at the same time; because my standards are mine, they are not universal, my views are also personal, and nobody should just adjust and submit to them by default. And of course, it also goes the other way around, meaning that when someone criticizes me, they do it based on their view, information, standards and expectations, which has nothing to do with me, in the end. This way, the first step when criticizing someone would be to evaluate them, according to MY perspective, and then draw the conclusion that I have no use of them like this, so they should change. Here we get to the second step: they are of no use to me like this! But why should someone be of use to me? Why just that specific someone? And why in a specific way? And most of all, who am I so that I expect them to serve me and be useful to my needs? As for the third step, this where the real action kicks in: I tell them, in any possible way, making use of any argument, emotional blackmail, bringing up tradition, culture, rules, laws, etc., maybe even throwing in there a bit of threatening, anything it takes, to make them change. And this is the third problem-step: I want to force someone to change. Force brings only counterreaction, which then evolves into a power struggle, and even if in the end I win, it will leave both of us, so me included, depleted.

One thing that I learned through my 28-38 channel (The Struggle Channel) is that if a battle that doesn’t fulfill you, regardless of the outcome, is not a battle worth fighting for. What use do I have of winning something, with the price of my own energy, that I can’t enjoy afterwards, because I am too drained, exhausted, depleted to enjoy it at all? And this is just a parenthesis about getting into power fights with another mind: they will always leave you drained, they will always cost you a lot of energy, so in my opinion, these battles are not worth fighting.

Coming back to criticism, I started studying it long time ago, when something didn’t feel right. Somehow, criticism never landed well with me. Maybe this comes from my 40th gate, my Design Sun, or from the 26th gate, my Design and Personality Uranus, or maybe I just don’t find it useful to be told what I am doing wrong. Being told what I could do better feels way more useful and saves more time!

How can any of the blaming/shaming/comparing methods give fuel to someone to take on a new task, or to improve something about themselves? I never felt motivated by these techniques, so I always avoided applying them on others. As a 5/1 profile myself, if a method that I tried doesn’t work, I just go looking for another one, there is no time to waste on feeling sorry that it didn’t work. So, why do people expect that with a negative input you could ever get back a positive outcome? In what world does this logic work? I am not connecting any of this methods to fear, I am going only by logic. Because, of course, if you add in fear… things change. But fear, especially the fear of other people, is a subject for some other time, so in here I will keep it only at criticism level.

Each time I told someone that was criticizing me that it’s not going to work, I won’t do it better if they continue telling me what I am doing wrong, I could see how their face froze in shock and they got lost. How come I didn’t react “well” in that scenario? Why? And, the most common question was “Then how can I make you do it?” And here we get to the main point, here is where the whole critical interaction between two people sits, in “How can I make you do this?”

Nobody can make anybody else do something. Nobody can make someone else change, decide, take action, learn, etc. We can’t force other people into something, we can’t make them do what we want them to do. This is not how life works. Of course we can force them, threaten them, use lots of tools, for our own fear that if they don’t do what we want, we will lose something, but as I said before, this is another story.

So, then, what can we do? What can we do if we really need the cooperation of someone else, and we can’t obligate them to do it? What would be the solution?

Encouraging someone could work, although encouraging someone is not the opposite of criticism. It is 100 times better, but it’s still not the Solution. Encouraging works mainly where people already have self awareness, some self esteem, and some courage. It works where people were already thinking about the same idea that you presented, and by being encouraged it can help them to finally make a decision or take the first step.

But what do you do with someone frozen in front of a situation? I tested it already, both on myself and other people, that encouraging a frozen person doesn’t help. The conclusion that I got to was that Empowering the other one is what works. And then, also from a Human Design perspective, I read a lot and tried a lot with this “empowerment” idea. How to do it? What is it? And, most importantly, how does it work?

I already found my way of empowering others, I noticed I do it intuitively, and for all those years that I have been trying to understand what it means, I had been doing it already!

I will come back in another post with what Empowering the other means to me, and how I noticed it happens, but until then, I would like to know if you are familiar with it, what it means to you, if you have ever felt empowered by someone else and how that fueled you.