POWER OF YOU:
Reaching within the self and rediscovering restraint

For over two years, I’ve been walking a winding path—a journey that has taken shape to be the seed for “Attitude Makeover” as we know it. It sounded fancy, even to me, as I took the plunge. But it has been anything but easy. 

It has moments of messy, scary, and sometimes daunting existential crisis. But it is also incredibly freeing.

It’s never been about finding the perfect version of myself. It’s always about breaking free from all that held me back for years. I had to strip away all the ideas about who I "should" be and uncover the real me – the parts I'd hidden, ignored, or even feared. 

Most importantly, I had to learn what true power really is. Now, over the second half of last year, I have gotten closer to this than ever before. 

That brings us to where I am today: redefining what it means to be powerful—not in the way we’re told power works, but in the way it actually does. Not control or dominance, but something much deeper, more personal.

This is NOT a step-by-step guide, but an uncovering of the realisation that the power we're looking for is already inside each one of us. All we have to do is dare to look within.

In a world increasingly driven by conflict and instant validation, the idea of power conjures up a certain, set visual. It’s loud. It commands attention. It makes moves, takes charge, and wins.

That’s how we end up misunderstanding power as simply acting tough or getting what we want. Along this journey so far, I learned something that not just shifts mindsets but expands worldview: 

Power ≠ Control

Power = Capacity

Power isn’t about controlling situations or people. It’s about capacity. It’s about how much space you’re willing to give yourself to grow, how far you’re willing to stretch your boundaries, and how much resilience you can hold when things get tough.

Real power (within) lies in self-mastery. It's about winning the battles within yourself, between your desires and your reason. 

Imagine this: You are steering a ship. The currents and winds (like other people's expectations and your own emotions) try to push you off course, but it's your skill at the helm – your self-control – that determines where you go. 

Here, the ship itself is symbolic of society where individuals and groups constantly negotiate, resist, and reproduce power structures. Then, deconstructing power and society, and our position between all the chaos, involves questioning these seemingly natural or inevitable arrangements.

I started, admittedly, by asking myself:

1. If I'm achieving my goals, why do I still feel agitated, almost powerless? What essential part of myself am I neglecting in this pursuit?
2. What unique qualities and passions have I suppressed because they didn't conform to societal expectations? How can I rediscover and embrace these hidden aspects of myself?
3. How can I cultivate the courage to be completely vulnerable and authentic? What would it feel like to truly embrace and express my “whole” self without fear of judgment?

The answers weren’t immediate.

The conventional understanding of power makes it about outward displays and optics. But beyond this, there’s more that’s at work under the surface. There’s another layer that potentially changes the whole game: the landscape of power that exists within us. 

An introspection of this landscape led me to answers which came in fragments, through moments of discomfort. But they always led me to the same realisation: the power I was chasing outside of me already existed inside—I just hadn’t let it breathe.

At one juncture of this growth story, I was part of a couple of leadership-centric immersive workshops that took me and a bunch of diverse individuals into environments very alien to us, to understand the ground realities of what shapes the politics of our future.

While observation, empathy and analysis led the path, every time I leaned into that discomfort, I found pieces of myself I didn’t know existed. Strength, courage, empathy. Things I had dismissed or buried because they didn’t fit into what I thought I was “supposed to be.”

I was compelled to look within and eventually understood what makes us able to survive and thrive.  I didn’t seek it, but reached for it within: Restraint is one of the most underrated forms of power. 

And no, I don’t mean the kind of restraint that silences you or keeps you small—I’m talking about the restraint we choose to exercise.

Here, the strategic use of restraint is not as weakness, but as a potent form of power – a power that shapes character, influences outcomes, and ultimately determines the trajectory of where we take ourselves next.   

What it means: Real power lies in pausing. In choosing to breathe, to understand, to hold space for a moment before deciding how to act.

For me, this has been a revelation. 

FOR YOU to start off: What are your trigger points? How much of that can you handle? What are some things that are non-negotiable and how would you deal with conflict related to them? 

When you start discovering answers to this, come from a place of knowing that restraint isn’t about staying silent—it’s about clarity. It’s the ability to conserve your energy for the battles that matter and to walk away from what doesn’t serve you. It is the radical choice to focus on what truly matters.

The caveats

The politics of self-restraint is not about being passive. Most of us wouldn’t stand a chance to win on that front now, would we? 

Point in focus: Not every slight demands a response, not every disagreement warrants a confrontation. 

Again, it's about more than just saying "no". With the workshops taking me to remote, unfamiliar locations with a diverse set of strangers, I could reflect on the ways my body and mind can push themselves within the boundaries/principles that I live by.

 Every minute and the action that followed, I chose to pause, think, choose how I want to move forward. And the rest is what we know best of the butterfly effect.

Healthy restraint and suppression are two very different entities. It takes one who has lived under the influence of both to know that the distinction is crucial.

Say you are taking care of a child:

• Suppression would be like telling a child to "stop crying" or "don't be angry." It disregards their feelings and demands immediate curb of emotional expression.
  
  
• Restraint would be like guiding the child through their emotions. It involves acknowledging their feelings ("I see you're feeling angry right now"), helping them understand their emotions ("It's okay to feel angry when you feel frustrated"), and providing healthy ways to express those emotions ("Let's take some deep breaths" or "Tell me words to express how you're feeling").

Now, when HEALTHY restraint becomes a practice, it comes down to cultivating increased awareness of the self. It's about recognising what aligns to your body, mind, values, and then consciously choosing how to respond.

Take relationships, for instance. How many times have you felt the urge to lash out or defend yourself when something triggered you? I’ve been there more times than I can count. But you remember what truly matters to you – your values, your relationships, your peace of mind. It takes courage then to resist that urge to take off, to choose to respond intentionally over and above reacting for the sake of it.

It's about knowing yourself well enough to understand what fuels your anger and choosing a different path, even when it feels hard. You're not suppressing your emotions here, you're taking a step towards mastering them.

And when you master this, you unlock a powerful tool: good judgment. You start to see situations clearly, understand why people behave the way they do, and figure out what really matters. You learn to let go of the small stuff and focus on what truly deserves your attention.

Then you notice magic: YOUR INNER POWER taking flight. The skill (And equal parts, the art) of navigating the world with grace and intention, instead of reacting on autopilot.

Here’s what I tell myself: Courage is the first step. Good judgment is your armor.

At the heart of everything I’ve shared is one simple truth: the REAL power you’re searching for is already yours. It’s not about becoming someone else or proving anything to the world. It’s about peeling back the layers and reclaiming the parts of you that are already yours, that are awaiting to be discovered, nourished and cherished.

None of us have it all figured out, clearly. So, it’s about showing up, every day, as our whole self—the strong, the vulnerable, the messy, and the resilient. And also now, one with intentional restraint. When we do, the rest will not merely fall into place, but will FIND its space.

The power of you isn’t a destination—it’s a process. And every step we take brings us closer to the version of our own selves that’s waiting to come to life.