Guess who’s power hungry?
The answer: everyone.

Everyone is power hungry, including you and me.

⏸ // I invite you to pause and notice your reaction before we keep going.
Does this cause any confusion, objection, agreement, curiosity, etc. or a weird mix of feelings?

The phrase “power hungry” is often
invoked as a BAD thing.

A very bad, reprehensible, selfish, amoral, disgusting, corrupt thing.
Or at best, just a questionable motive.

Example: take a moment and notice who comes to mind when you think of the phrase “power hungry”? How do you feel about that person? Do you aspire to work with or for leaders who are "power hungry"?

In fact, you may have even heard or read the phrase “power hungry” in the past days or weeks in a political opinion piece with the recent U.S. elections to describe someone who the author is very much not advocating for.

It’s often invoked with the implication that to have a desire to experience power is utterly counter to feeling purpose, serving the greater good, or any other ethically-inspired aim that benefits the collective.

Wrong-o!

Here’s why — and this connects to why we’re witnessing a massive Shadow Power explosion on all fronts in the U.S. at the moment and why so many people are struggling to have conversations with folks who don’t agree with themselves.

If you’ve been around here for a while,
you know that power isn’t a dirty word.

And that power literacy practice asks us detangle the knots in our beliefs and embodiment related to power.

Reminder of how we define power here: power is the capacity to move energy through systems.

But for the most part, power is wildly misunderstood in collective consciousness to be what I call Shadow Power Over. The type of Shadow Power that sees itself as separate and better than other people or living beings.

From this frame, to be Power Hungry is to have the desire to dominate and exert one’s will, opinion, or way over others with no regard for their desires or the impacts of their choices.

For a heart-centered leader this frame of being power hungry is counter to your identity.

BUT at the same time, you can feel spiritually, morally, or intellectually better than others for not holding your own views and devalue, disrespect, or dehumanize them — or cast them as your adversaries (*see Illuminating the Adversary Impulse for more on that).

Welcome to some of the subconscious, vibrational, emotional dynamics happening UNDERNEATH the content of many political conversations right now that are making the collective field feel so explosive.

(*Btw it’s all MUCH more complex than this, and I’m personally focusing on and interested in addressing the many types of electrical power charges surging through our bodies, rather than the content. Because that's where my Mastery Power is best utilized.

As I see it, until we have more collective power literacy, we’ll fixate on ideas, scenarios, people, and rhetoric in conversations while we cast each other as enemies. In my belief, this is not going to get us to the regenerative, inclusive futures we’re all dreaming of.)

So here’s a different take on being Power Hungry.

I brought this up in my recent podcast conversation with my dear friend, professional colleague, and fellow soul-led Founder/CEO, Abbi Miller — Founder of Workwomb and Host of The Workwomb Podcast.

Btw, this is easily one the funniest, most raw, heartfelt podcast convos I’ve had and I have links for you to listen below.

Abbi and I talk about how we ALL long to become more.
To experience and conduct our greater capacity.

Whether we’re doing that from our Shadow Power or Power that Serves the Whole, or more often, an unconscious mix of the 2) is the question.

In our conversation, we talked about how important Sensing Power and aliveness are as signposts to our power expansion.

How Sensing Power literally saved both of our lives from near-disaster (*Abbi generously shares her personal story that will move you to your core) and how we must rehab our trust in our Sensing to expand into our greater embodiment of Power that Serves the Whole.

Here’s an excerpt from our conversation 🎙

Abbi || “My focus was always supporting people to feel alive in their bodies and connected to their truth… Anything we seek, whether it’s 6-figures or a title or whatever the thing is — a published book, NY Times bestseller, we’re always chasing a feeling…”

Larissa || "Aliveness there is such a core metric for me too because of my near-death contact.

The stigma of being ‘power hungry’— I just want to deconstruct as an ending.

Because when we start stigmatizing feeling more enlivened, that’s not benefiting anyone. Then we perpetuate cultures of numbing, cultures of depletion as an overcorrection to try to get away from cultures of extraction.

The thirst to feel as alive the autumn trees and crystal blue sky and clouds that I can see out of my window is a fundamental, ancient impulse not just in humans but in every living being. To be all the way alive until— in this humbling, finite, mysteriously time-determined sojourn that we get here in these bodies — we just wish to burn bright, and burn true and have that be of service as well. Not just but also inclusive as well of our own fun and prospering.

Finding these ways of, what if I don’t have to be a martyr?
What if I don’t have to be a dominator?
What if me being in my power is not just beneficial (which is already a mind-blow to all of our codes) it’s together. It’s us together. It’s prosperous. It’s healing.”

If you want to water your soul, ground more deeply in your center, and maybe spit your coffee out from laughing, this one’s for you.

Power literacy is more impotant
now than ever.

Stay tuned for my mega November Gratitude Sale to help you power up in 2025