The Mountain Is You

BE WILLING TO BE DISLIKED
Powerful people are not the ones who are most universally liked.
They are also not the ones vying for others’ approval, and that’s the key.
To be a truly powerful person, you must be willing to be disliked. This is
not to say that you behave in any way that’s malicious, but it is to say that
no matter what you do, others are going to judge you. Powerful people
know
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this. There is no path in life that you can take that will be free of resistance
from others, and so it is important that you not only become okay with
being disliked, but you anticipate it and act anyway.

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ACT ON PURPOSE
Powerful and purposeful are one in the same.
To be a truly powerful person, you need to have complete, unwavering
conviction about what you want to create. To do this, you have to shift from
a “live for the moment” to a “live for the legacy” mindset.
Your purpose is a dynamic, evolving thing. Most of the time, it is at the
intersection of what you are interested in, what you are good at, and what
the world needs. Having a clear vision of what you want to create and
accomplish is essential to finding your inner power. You will not feel
strongly about a dream that is not part of who you most essentially are.

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DO YOUR INNER WORK
This is perhaps the most important and yet most commonly overlooked,
because it is the least comfortable.
To do your inner work means to evaluate why something triggered you,
why something is upsetting you, what your life is trying to show you, and
the ways you could grow
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from these experiences. Truly powerful people absorb what has happened to
them and sort of metabolize it.
They use it as an opportunity to learn, to develop themselves. This type of
inner mental and emotional work is non-negotiable if you want to be truly
powerful.
Powerful people are not the most aggressive; aggression is usually a self-
defense mechanism. Powerful people are the ones most unfazed by small
disturbances and most willing to fully process and work through the big
ones.
Of course, this is the foundational stuff. Next, you have to work on
simplifying your life, talking less about your ambitions, and showing more
of your accomplishments once they are completed. Gradually make health
improvements. Assume that everyone, and everything, has something to
teach you. Become comfortable with vulnerability, as vulnerability precedes
almost every significant part of your life, and intentionally design your
daily routine.

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Through everything, you must be thinking as your most powerful self
would. If you learn to see the world and your life through that lens, you can
create a life that reflects the intentions of that side of you. It already exists;
you just need to know how to tap into it.
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L E A R N I N G T O VA L I D AT E
Y O U R F E E L I N G S
If we want to be effective in therapy, in politics, in relationships, in teaching
kids, in talking someone down from the edge, in keeping peace, making
friends, fostering connection, and making progress, there’s one technique
we have to employ first.
It’s a little secret, and it’s one that requires very little effort. But it disarms
people. It opens them, makes them receptive, willing to listen and adapt. It
is healing, it is mind-altering, but most importantly, it is the first step to
progress. It is emotional validation.
Validating someone’s feelings doesn’t mean you agree with them. It doesn’t
mean you concede that they are correct.
It doesn’t mean that those feelings are the healthiest; it doesn’t mean they
are informed by logic. Validating feelings does not mean you make them
more true; it means you remind someone that it is human to feel things they
don’t always understand.
How often do we just need a partner to stop trying to strategize and just say,
that must really suck?

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How much of a weight is lifted off our shoulders when we think: Yes, I
really am stressed right now, and I deserve to be?
How light do we feel when we see another person’s story
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splayed out across a screen, one that we can relate to, and understand, no
matter how devastating it is?
How much better do we feel when we simply allow ourselves to be
aggrieved and pissed-off and irrationally mad?
When we let ourselves have it—the feeling, that is—
something incredible happens. We no longer have to take it out on other
people, because we are no longer relying on their validation to get us
through it.
We can be aggrieved and pissed and mad and do our own processing
without hurting anyone else.
When people are crying out or acting out in their lives, they aren’t just
asking for help. They are most often just asking for someone to affirm that
it is okay to feel the way that they do. And if they have to inflate and
exaggerate circumstances for you to truly feel the weight and impact that
they do? They’ll do it. They’ll do whatever it takes to get someone else to
say: I am so sorry for what you are going through. This is not because they
are incompetent or dumb. It is because in a world that does not teach us
how to adequately process our own feelings, we must often rely solely on
our maladaptive coping mechanisms.

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When we cannot validate our own feelings, we go on a never-ending quest
to try to force others to do it for us, but it never works. We never really get
what we need.
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This looks like needing attention, affirmation, compli-ments. But it also
looks like being dramatic, negative, and focusing disproportionately on
what’s wrong in our lives.
When someone is complaining about something simple—
and they seem to be doing it more than the given situation would call for—
they aren’t trying to get your help about a small issue. They are trying to
have their feelings validated.
This is also a common root of self-sabotaging behaviors.
Sometimes, when we have deep wells of grief within us, we absolutely
cannot allow ourselves to relax and enjoy our lives and relationships. We
cannot just “have fun,” because doing so feels like a betrayal. It feels
offensive. We need to feel validated, but we don’t even know why.