How often do we decide we can't do something before we've even tried? We tell ourselves we have no say, no influence, no real choice, and so we stay quiet, stay put, and let things happen to us. The author and activist Alice Walker put her finger on this exactly. The most common way people give up their power, she wrote, is by thinking they don't have any. It's a sharp little observation that turns the usual story on its head. We tend to imagine that powerlessness is something done to us, a circumstance we're simply stuck in. Walker suggests it's often something we do to ourselves, quietly, just by believing it. The belief comes first. Convince yourself you have no power, and you'll act exactly as if that were true, which is precisely how the power slips away.
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