Chapter 4

In the masculine system of power, we celebrate independence. In fact, there’s a certain stigma about needing support or asking for help, as if it signifies weakness or insufficiency.

Think about it:

When you don’t know how to do something or don’t have the answer, how do you feel about yourself? Do you beat yourself up? Do you try to hide your lack of knowledge? Do you torture yourself trying to figure out it out for yourself before you would dream of asking for support or help?

When you’re trying to create in the domain of the feminine, that tactic doesn’t work. You actually can’t do it by yourself. If you want to self-actualize, you need support.

So the third Power Center has to do with unlocking the power of support so that you can play your biggest game.

Think about the biggest thing you want to create in your life. How many people are holding that desire with you and are challenging you to grow in ways that are consistent with your vision, mirroring back to you a sense of possibility that you can do it, or are giving you the resources that you’re missing?

If the answer is no one, or even very few people, you have a support-deficit. And it’s not possible to manifest something in this higher order unless you can generate and activate the power of support around you.

Now, you may have good friends or be part of some kind of community, but if you feel like you’re holding this big thing you want to create all by yourself, you haven’t yet unlocked Power Center Three.

It’s worth noting here that friends are wonderful; we all need them. But the thing about women and friends is that we tend to relate to one another in ways that don’t necessarily support us reaching our higher goals and possibilities. Either we’re covertly competitive or (often within the same relationship) we end up affirming and colluding with the weakest parts of one another, by being overly kind instead of challenging one another to step into our biggest vision for our lives. So even when we have close relationships, we don’t necessarily have the kind of support we need to unlock this power center.

When you get that kind of support, your ability to create becomes exponential. It’s like you get into the fast lane; everything begins to accelerate. It’s been proven. When geese fly in formation, they go 75 percent further and faster. When people in a group set an intention together, they’re six times more powerful than an individual doing it alone.

What we need are Power Partners. These are people who are as passionate about actualizing their higher possibilities as we are. Together you enter into a new kind of shared agreement to support each other’s vision of who you’re becoming instead of who you’ve been.

Power Partners relate to you and mirror back to you the truth of who you are, not your old stories. They hold you accountable for showing up in ways that are consistent with the future you’re committed to creating.

Like Tanya and her new friends. They saw the creator, the designer, and mirrored that person back to her. Like Jean Houston seeing my potential, and offering vast support to help me.

Here’s the thing:

To truly play your biggest game, you don’t need a meditation practice, even as great as meditation is. You don’t need affirmations or a vision board. You need a Power Partner who is going to be up with you at midnight to help you finish your book proposal. And who’s then going to hold you accountable to put that proposal in the mail when you start to waver.

This is the kind of support that begins to catalyze and activate a deeper possibility for who you are.

And that’s the force of Power Center Three. It teaches us how to make requests and generate the support we need to play our biggest game.

When geese fly in formation, they go 75 percent further and faster.

Most of us don’t really know how to ask for this kind of support. It’s actually a kind of double bind in the culture of women: To be worthy of support, we have to not need it. We’re steeped in this old belief that receiving somehow means going into debt or that it shows weakness. But think about how much you want to support others in your life. How good it makes you feel to help. Others feel the same way, but they can’t offer support if you don’t make your needs and desires visible.

Going back to the big thing you’re wanting to create, What’s been your story about receiving support in this area? Where are you not reaching out for support? What would it mean for you to be supported in this area?

I had to learn everything I’m sharing here myself. I wasn’t used to asking for support. As I noted earlier, I wasn’t drawn to the feminine and I wasn’t a group kind of person.

But when I discovered this key truth, that we don’t become ourselves by ourselves, I knew I needed to change that. So I created a Power Statement:

The more support I receive, the more powerful I become.

I still use it whenever I get stuck because I don’t know the answer or don’t know how to do something. Instead of feeling weak or stupid or insufficient, I say this. It prompts me to ask myself, “Who do I know who could help me with this?” And then I reach out and ask for help.

Here’s another one:

The women in my life are more powerful, successful and capable than me in ways that catalyze my greatness in contribution, just as I catalyze theirs.

For years I was always helping everybody else. That’s just how it was: I had the knowledge and resources to help, but there was nobody who was more powerful or able to contribute to me—at least that’s the story I told myself. (See how this goes?)

By uncovering that old story, I realized that I had a whole issue around what it means to give and receive support.

You can begin to work with this yourself.

First, think of someone you can reach out towho might be a good Power Partner. Someone who is up for the calling, who will stand for the biggest vision you have for yourself. It might be someone in your social circle, or it could be someone you may not know personally yet but who shares your interest in self-actualization.

Next, share your vision for who you sense you could be. Ask them to hold you accountable for the way you’re showing up that’s consistent with that vision, and offer to do that for them, as well. And if you don’t have other women in your life who are up for this kind of work, the Feminine Power community is a rich resource.

These are the first big steps to unlocking Power Center Three.

Take a moment to think about your life right now, the yearnings you have, the knowing you have in your clearest moments about what might be possible for your life.

Now imagine a year from now, having unlocked these Power Centers and awakened your Feminine Power. What’s possible? Who might you be?

In your clearest moments, the woman you sense you can be, and what’s possible for you, is bigger than you can imagine. I know it. I’ve seen it thousands of times. I’ve experienced it myself, and still do. And I know it’s true for every single woman who is willing to unlock her power.

What about you? Are you ready to get your wings and soar?

Chapter 4

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