Have you ever noticed that when you’re a little bit too eager to get a result, that result eludes you?
You need to have the desire for an outcome to put in the effort to try to achieve it, but if you force the situation too much, you won’t get what you want.
Or you will get it, but you’ll pay too high of a price in the process.
We all have our version of what we’d call a good life and we all aim for some level of self-actualization. In our lives, we have different motivations for our actions.
There’s no perfect answer for reaching that point nor are the motivations behind your actions right or wrong, but they do tend to produce certain results.
You mostly operate from two sources – power or force. Let’s take a deeper look at the concept and talk about the motivations that guide your behavior.
Understanding the Levels of Consciousness
In the book Power Vs. Force by David Hawkins, he discusses different levels of consciousness. Each level has a different set of beliefs and behaviors.
He often talks about these levels literally. For me, the levels just serve as a useful guide to understanding human behavior. Understanding each level can teach you why you do the things you do. You want to move from a place of operating through force and instead use power.
Each level has a name, score, emotion, and view. Read through them and you’ll see they make sense on an intuitive level.
If you look at the process from bottom to top, it looks like someone rising up to achieve all their goals only to come to a higher level of understanding, love for others, and ultimately total non-attachment to anything — oneness.
I’ve always made the argument that going through the process of rising is easier and better than trying to mediate your way to bliss. Especially when it comes to rising above the lower rungs.
Most people spend their lives at those low levels. What do you see on the news? Fear, outrage, anger. Look in the eyes of many people driving down the freeway to work and you’ll see apathy. Why do we live in a materialistic world? Because we need to fill a void.
Few people ever rise above these low levels at all. But you can.
Let’s talk about how.
Force: How to Rise Above to Power
If you’ve read my writing for any length of time, you know I have a tendency to poke at you. Some people call my writing blunt or aggressive. I use this style because it seems to be the best way to inspire the right actions.
It is a forceful style. You can skip this process altogether and jump up to the levels of power. But that’s not the way I did it, and that’s probably not that way many can do it.
I watched this video once and the person talked about this process people go through when they’re trying to be successful. He said they enter a ‘dark cave’ where they grind and put themselves through pain to make something of themselves.
Many enter the cave because they need to. They need to because they feel the weight of being low. I entered the cave because I felt low. My life sucked and I wanted to change it. I started to change it by forcing myself to improve.
I went through some of the different levels on this path:
- Anger – I was pissed off that I’d let my life reach such a low point, so I decided to change. Anger can be a useful emotion if it agitates you out of an apathetic state. If you’re not where you want to be, odds are you’re not going to just suddenly feel blissfully inspired. Use anger if need be.
- Desire – I wanted the numbers, the money the status, etc. As much as we say we hate clickbait and gimmicky advertisements, they draw us in because we’re ruled by desire. That’s okay. Again, you can use desire as a springboard.
- Pride – At least with pride, though forceful, you’re sticking your chest up and facing the world. It’s the last level of force before you begin to move into power.
You don’t want to entirely rely on force to get what you want, but it is important to understand the nature of it. As you grow and learn, you can contrast this way of being and instead become powerful.
Some of the common characteristics of force are:
- Manipulation – Again, this is why some people are wary of success. You have an aversion to feeling like you need to deceive and fool people to get ahead.
- Coercion – Similar to manipulation, when you’re trying too hard to get what you want, you compromise some part of yourself in the process. Society itself is the largest example of this forceful and coercive behavior.
- Neediness – There’s a subtle difference between wanting something to happen and needing it to happen. The minute you get needy for a result, it eludes you even more.
- Insecurity – If you were secure in who you were as a person, then you wouldn’t care about the results either way. If you’re trying to force something to happen, you’re telling yourself you need the result to give you something you don’t already have.
- Taking – These all overlap a little bit, but forcefulness comes from the attitude that you’re trying to ‘take what’s yours’ instead of getting great outcomes through reciprocation.
I’m not advocating for force. I’m explaining how it works. Force has a counter-reaction to it. You can get what you want through force, but you’ll have scars because of it. I certainly have some.
Looking backward, I realized I could’ve achieved what I wanted without the extra emotions attached to it. Take from that what you will. Just try to understand the motivations behind your actions as you’re acting them out.
Power: How to Attract What You Want Without Forcing the Situation
It doesn’t take forever to reach a more powerful place in your life. In fact, it happened to me early on. Honestly, my motivations were a mix of forceful and powerful motivations. They always have been. The same will happen for you too if and when you decide to go on your own little pilgrimage.
I wanted a better life. Maybe in the beginning I wanted it for selfish reasons. Part of me still wants things for selfish reasons. But as I dove into the process of learning how to improve my life and communicate my thoughts, my energy changed.
For the first time in a long time, I was curious and more importantly, ready. I was having new realizations and aha moments every day from reading books, watching videos, listening to podcasts, etc. And by sharing my thoughts, I learned to have a better understanding of the world.
You’ll go through these levels if you take a pilgrimage, too:
- Courage – That’s the initial spark. You put your foot down and tell yourself you’re ready. It happened for me one day when I randomly yelled in my room one day telling myself that this time was different. It was. And it worked.
- Neutrality – At this point, you’re settled in and you understand that it’s on you. If you trust yourself, you can make things happen.
- Willingness – This is the phase where you make a real c0mmitment to your own personal growth and self-improvement. I read about 75 books in the first year of ‘my path.’ I wanted answers so I went looking for them.
You reach a state of power when you get want you want because of who you are. And power isn’t just about getting what you want. It’s about being powerful in general, which is a state of openness where you face the world in a way that makes everyone better off.
Some of the common characteristics of force are:
- Internal locus of control – You put your effort into managing your own behavior, growth, and decision making instead of blaming circumstances for your results.
- Security – As you improve different areas of your life, your mindset and confidence improve, which makes you more attractive. You develop an air about you that comes from knowing you’re competent.
- Attraction – When you’re confident and don’t care about the results, the results come to you. When I first started writing I’d pitch different publications hoping they’d accept me. Years later, when I was confident in my skills and had my own platform, those same publications reached out to me.
- Presentation – Instead of trying to convince others to your cause, you simply put yourself out there knowing some will take it and some will leave it.
- Giving – You realize that getting what you want comes from the process of helping other people get what they want.
I grew more powerful because I did things that fascinated me first and foremost.
I love to learn. I love to share my thoughts. If people think I’m ‘authentic’ it’s probably because I’m doing my best simply to share the truth as I see it, nothing more. I can’t force you to read my writing. I can only put my best work out there and see what happens.
That’s what power teaches you.
We spend so much time in our heads — afraid, angry, ruled by desires, filled with guilt and shame. If each individual in society just focused on their own self-actualization, all of our problems would melt away.
Since that won’t happen, the next best thing you can do is go on your path.
Learn Yourself
Definitely read the book.
Then, when you’re trying to navigate your life, try to stay conscious of where your motivations are coming from and whether or not you’re coming from a place of power or force to get there.
The point isn’t to take these ideas of ‘consciousness levels’ literally. Instead, understand where you’re operating from and do what you have to do to reach the point where you’re coming from the right place more often.
You’re a whole human being, which means you have a combination of motivations. Force isn’t ‘bad,’ per se, it’s just a paradigm people operate from. Sometimes you’ll need to use it. Oftentimes you won’t learn useful lessons unless you use it.
The ultimate goal is power, but then you come to realize that you achieve power by not seeking it in the first place. You just move up the levels with more of a sense of ease.
There are contradictions and paradoxes riddled throughout this post and riddled throughout the teachings altogether. But life is full of such contradictions and paradoxes, too.
I can be certain when I say you’re better off going on the journey instead of doing nothing. See for yourself. See if you can become powerful.