Personal sovereignty.
Have you heard this term before?
It’s okay if you haven’t. It’s not a term that often comes up in casual conversation. And it can be a hard concept to immediately understand, even though its benefits are massive when one has it.
“If I just make it to ____, I’ll be in control of my life.”
“I don’t feel like I have any choices.”
“I’ve been working so hard for everyone else, that I feel like the person I am inside is lost.”
“I don’t even know who I am anymore.”
If any of the following sounds like you, don’t worry. We’ve all been there, falling down a rabbit hole of expectations and self-doubt. You’re not any less wonderful and valuable for having these types of thoughts.
In fact, it’s at these points where working toward a solid sense of independence and self-ownership can be life-changing. Having true personal mastery can be the best thing you ever do for yourself.
What is personal sovereignty?
To understand this, we first need to break it down. The word “sovereign” means “the supreme authority.” Kings and queens, for example, have this power. A sovereign nation is one completely independent of others.
A person who has sovereignty is the ultimate overseer and decision maker, having the highest power above all others.
Now, take that term and apply it to yourself, on a personal level. Think of your choices, your feelings. Are you the one calling the shots?
Are you the highest decision maker in your own life?
To be sovereign over yourself is to be free of the control or coercion of others – to truly direct your own life.
How the Cycle of Approval Starts
When we are growing, we have a lot of external measures of how to succeed. As children, our parents, teachers and community teach us what is right and wrong. They tell us what to do, where to go, and how to behave.
We have people in our life constantly checking in on our progress. Are you on schedule? Are you advancing in your studies?
So we then start to live by these goalposts, and the reward is approval.
As we age, we become able to choose these things for ourselves. The constraints are lifted, and we strike out on our own to make our way in the world. We become free to question what we’ve been told. Choices come up for careers, the relationships we choose, and the things we do in our free time.
Up to that point, your life had been ruled by the approval of others. But now, it can get tricky.
Perhaps your dream job isn’t what your family wants for you, or is located far away. Taking up a new hobby or passion might take time away from your friends. You might love something that others consider a waste of time. What do you choose?
Your choices may make you happy, but there is a chance that it may make others unhappy.
So you must ask yourself: are the choices you make driven by your own wants and needs, or the ones that satisfy the opinions of others?
Approval is such a happy, warm feeling. It’s an external indicator that you’re doing things right. It can feel like being welcomed and accepted into society. And as human beings, it’s in our nature to want to belong.
But if we’re not careful, we can stay chained to approval as the blueprint for how we should live.
Lacking Personal Sovereignty
The danger here is that when we base our decisions around the approval of others, not having it can leave you feeling like a failure, even if you’re stable and happy. Life without these boundaries can feel confusing and difficult to adjust to on your own.
Years can go by, and it may turn out that the things other people wanted for you are not the things that give you satisfaction and fulfillment. You’ve lost control of your life and given it to them.
Often Sensitive Heroes like ourselves can feel walked on, and dragged around trying to please everyone, only to discover you’ve pleased no one. And the hardest part is, through all this, you haven’t pleased yourself.
It can be so easy to allow yourself to be directed by the desires of others. Once this habit has been formed, it can be incredibly difficult to break it.
What Personal Sovereignty Does for You
Personal sovereignty is taking ownership of your own actions and feelings. It is saying, “I know who I am and what I’m about.” If you can learn to stand up in your own power, you can be capable of so much more.
- You have greater balance in your relationships with others.
With self-ownership, it is much easier to find balance in your ties with friends, family, and everyone else. Gone is that dependence on what they think, which can add pressure to one side of that relationship.
If you decide to love yourself first, that is a quality people can admire and respect. There is power in this. The focus here is shifting power from others over you to you over yourself. And it’s an amazing journey to watch it happen.
- You will feel more comfortable in your own skin.
The experiences of feeling complete, worthy, and belonging are feelings that must come from within ourselves. We understand that we are a unique and amazing part of the richness of life. You will no longer have to wonder, “Am I doing this right? This part that someone else told me is the right thing to do?” Instead it will be your decisions guiding you, and your internal light showing you the way.
- There’s a great release from societal pressure.
We are free from the cycle of power. We are responsible for our own beliefs, our words, our own emotions, and our own actions. These create the world around us. So personal sovereignty is taking back our power, and extracting ourselves from that cycle. We place ourselves on the throne, and at the wheel of our own lives.
- You feel in control of your own story.
Personal sovereignty naturally gives you the feelings of being centered, calm, and sturdy. This is a place of true, authentic, self-generated power. We create our reality through the things we choose to keep our focus upon. Ultimately, it is each of us that chooses what our reality is going to be.
Things are not happening to you–you are rising up to meet the world. YOU happen.
We are the authors of this life of ours. What are you choosing to write?
How Do I Gain Personal Sovereignty?
There are many ways to open yourself up to your own light and find the power hidden inside. Your deep inner strength is there, just waiting to come out.
- Break away from approval and recognize the incredible value you have.
The main key in breaking the cycle of approval is to find value in yourself. Trust yourself.
It’s important to not rely on external sources. Situations change, jobs change, and people change. So even if you are pleased through others’ approval now, it will be a constant quest to maintain that through the years. You are the sole constant throughout your life.
“If I do these things, I’ll receive attention and praise. Everyone will love me. I will be seen and valued.”
This is a common and completely understandable way of thinking. Everyone wants to be loved.
It’s easy to think that approval is empowerment, where those outside of you will tell you your value and worth because they will see it and will reflect it back.
But if you allow yourself to be ruled by others’ opinions, you will never truly have ownership of your own life.
Letting go of striving for others’ approval is not breaking away from your love for them. In fact, it is the opposite of lonely. Being sovereign does not mean separating yourself from the web of interconnectedness in your life. We are reliant on this planet and on each other.
The trick is to be able to hold both at the same time. Have a healthy sense of self, but also find comfort and joy in the fact that in our existence here on this earth, we are all one.
As it turns out, we can relax and flow fully into the collective only when we have a strong sense of self. We’re not afraid of being demolished, disappeared, or devoured by group think or the needs of others if and when we know ourselves, have healthy boundaries, and feel safe to ask for what we need. We can give more when we give from solid ground.
- Break free from fear.
Fear keeps the power cycle turning. If one is afraid of making their own decisions, it’s easier to give that power to someone else. If anything goes wrong, you were only following orders!
But that same fear keeps us vulnerable, controlling and manipulating our choices into easier ones, simpler ones. It leaves little room for things like love when you’re too busy minimizing risk.
Personal sovereignty can be hard, because if one takes control of their own actions, then the responsibility lies only with them if something fails. It takes courage to rise up and say, “Enough!”
There are many little things you can do to take away that fear. Don’t engage it if you notice it creeping up in your mind. Instead, simply acknowledge it, thank it for trying to protect you, and then let it go on its way.
Taking time away from your stressors is also highly encouraged. If breaking free from fear means turning off the news for a while, cutting off negativity, that’s perfectly okay.
- Reframe your situations.
Personal sovereignty doesn’t mean you stop taking hard tasks in your professional life or other areas! But there is a great way of reframing these situations to put the power back in your hands when faced with something uncomfortable.
What you’ll do is decide for yourself what actions to take, and reactions to have in any situation. You’ll decide for yourself whether you are choosing to do these things on your own or are having choices taken from you.
For example, if you work for a boss and are given an unpleasant order, it can feel like your free will is not present there. But you can quit, and are choosing not to. Sure, there are consequences to those decisions, but there are also consequences to not quitting. The point is, both of those choices are yours.
You can also decide that rather than working for your boss, you are providing a service in return for funds. So you can decide to do the task because you choose to, not because you are ordered.
You can always choose your actions and reactions.
- Practice expressing your needs and desires.
Expressing yourself when you are so used to accommodating others’ needs can be such a hard transition, and I truly empathize. We spend so long taking care of others that when it comes time to take care of ourselves, we can have trouble even identifying what it is we need.
This can be a lifelong practice to master. Check in with yourself from time to time. Are my needs being met in my life? Big or small, take time to sift through each of them.
Expressing those needs to others may take practice. Sometimes that means setting boundaries and taking time for yourself. Please don’t feel like setting aside time for self care is unimportant. These steps aren’t easy if we feel unsafe or unworthy, especially if that feeling has carried on for some time. If we’re not in touch with our inner knowing, or have been told through subtle (or not-so-subtle) means that our needs aren’t valid, this may seem insurmountable. But you can. I promise you, you can.
It’s like putting on your own oxygen mask on a plane before helping others. If you are not in a good, loving, kind place yourself, how can you assist them?
Conclusion
There are periods of our lives where it may seem like we have no choice in how our situations play out. But often in these times, finding another solution can be as simple as shifting perspective. The Soul Life Treasure Hunt board can be a great help with this, as it helps uncover new possibilities and ways of looking at your situation.
When we are in alignment with our inner selves and strong in our self-value, we are truly sovereign. If every person in the world chose to embrace their own personal sovereignty, society would transform as we know it. People would act more from love than fear. Self-ownership and responsibility would take the place of blame and anger.
We can’t change everyone, but we can discover and nurture the love and light inside of us.
And through that light, we’ll find that our best life will be the one that we choose for ourselves.
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If you would like a warm, loving group to help support you on this journey toward personal sovereignty, I invite you over to our S/Hero Facebook group. It is all about supporting the Sensitive Heroes inside of us all, who feel vibrations and energies and take too much to heart from responses back and people/events outside of themselves.
To see that beauty in who you really are is a challenge that we all face.
So I want to give a special invite to you to continue the discussion there!