 what determines who holds the power in a relationship? It's pretty simple and I'm going to try and explain it in this video. So we all know about sort of power struggles and power games in relationships and people feel that they've lost their power and it's very difficult thing to experience. So what is this problem with power that we experience this feeling of powerlessness? How is it that we lose our power? Well it's a very real experience but the good news about it is that you can't really lose your power. That sounds like a kind of lost my car keys or something. The truth is with power in relationships your power can only be given away and I mean that. This isn't like you're trying to be put a positive spin on things. It's literally you can only give it away and the reason is well what is power? How is power derived in relationship? What makes power? Where does it come from in a relationship? And here it is. Here's the simple sort of way to think about this. Who holds power in the relationship is the person who holds the frame in the relationship. So by frame we mean you know here's the frame and it's the thing through which I'm seeing you right now. I'm holding a frame. I might decide to look at this aspect of you or this aspect of you or this aspect of you but I'm in control of the frame. I'm framing how I perceive you. If I hold this frame in regards how you are being perceived I hold the power but you can only decide to take that seriously if you are not holding the frame for yourself in terms of how you see yourself. The story about who you feel you are or believe yourself to be is up to you to decide and if you let me hold the frame around that I'm holding all the power. So we see this in loads of different ways. You may have a manager at work for instance and you feel completely powerless around this person. Well you know the manager is assessing you and they have the frame. They are choosing to see you as meeting requirements or maybe not meeting requirements but it's up to them. We see this too in things like if you have a crush on somebody or limerence it might be a better word for adult relationships. Or an infatuation or somebody who is on a pedestal. We pedestalize people. We give them our power. It's not that they take the power they have the power. They are in control of how we are framed right. If they look at us if they give us attention if they enter into a relationship with us our self-worth goes up but if they withdraw that our self-worth goes down so they're completely in control of how we ourselves are perceiving ourselves. So essentially to make this short here how do you get your power back is you have to take back the frame for yourself specifically or most importantly regarding how you see yourself. So some questions to consider here are how do you see yourself? How do you feel about your value? Do you believe that you are good enough? Forget what your manager thinks of you. Forget with that person who has a crush. You have a crush on things of you. What do you believe about your value? Have you taken the time to reflect on how you see yourself? That's another really good question because if you haven't taken the time to reflect on how do I perceive myself? If I hold the frame up to myself how do I what's the narrative I have around that? And if you haven't done that in all likelihood you're not even aware of the importance of framing. And somebody else will take the frame. So this is an invitation to be more proactive in terms of how you're seeing yourself in terms of how you're framing yourself and to own it to take the frame for yourself because that's where your power is. And I mean it is really an infinite source of power because the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves influence how we feel emotionally and how we behave. So it's pretty important that we take that power back for ourselves if we have overlooked it or been passive around it or have given it away to somebody else. The good news is you can because nobody can take it away. It's more of we have to acquiesce and then it's taken away. But we can absolutely get it back. Guys I hope that's a useful video about frame and taking your power back and as always thank you for being with me today and I'll see you in the next video. Bye for now.