I keep noticing something in my work, in my friendships, even in myself: so many people are starving for permission.
Permission to rest. To stop performing all the time. To tell the truth.
Permission to become stranger, more tender, more sweet. Permission to become more fully themselves.
So many of us learned that belonging required us to perform. We perform competence, pleasantness, productivity… We learned to shape-shift and contort ourselves to survive systems that could not fully hold us. And after a while, it’s hard to remember who we really are underneath all that adaptation.
The conversations I’ve had this season have each, in their own way, done what singer-songwriter Sara Bareilles calls “widening the road.” My guests’ stories make room on the road for different ways of being powerful.
So today, I want to revisit some of those conversations, not just to reflect on what these guests learned about power, but to help you see yourself in their stories too.
Because maybe what you need most right now isn’t more advice. Maybe you need a little more permission.
Listen to the full episode to hear:
- The common thread of truth about power that all of my guests have discovered
- Why stepping into our real power requires us to name and claim our unique powers
- How power calls us to pause and truly witness and honor others and our environments in ways only we can
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What is Becoming Power?
What is power? Well, that's complicated. We've learned to associate power with money, influence, position, fame, politics, and even certain bodies. Becoming Power is a podcast about a different perspective on power. Host Valerie Black highlights how true power emerges from the practices that help us transform and evolve as humans and serve as a foundation for our work in the world. She talks with leaders, executives, athletes, and activists about how they nurture their own inner power. Valerie analyzes their insights and turns them into meditations, visualizations, and bite-sized experiments for you to integrate into your own life. Whether you're looking for a greater sense of power at work, a deeper relationship with yourself, or ideas for developing your own powerful practices, Becoming Power is for you.