People choose who has power over them.
When people have power over you, they often will choose for you when it comes to what you do with your time, money, and capacity.
Some allow people to have power over them because those people have money, political power, a desirable social life, or material wealth. When people allow others to choose for them, they become followers. In the worst situations, followers may give up their values, money, strengths simply to follow someone they deem valuable. In the best of situations, people choose to follow someone who truly empowers and improves their lives.
When are you a follower and when do you choose to lead yourself? What kind of people do you follow? Who do you allow to make decisions for you and why?
I thought about this today as I observed a group of women following one woman. One woman made a deliberate, minor turn with regard to her life choices and the other women followed. The woman they followed has always had leadership power in the community. In many ways she lived up to society's more-superficial popular attributes for leadership, and she also exhibited leadership qualities with positive depth too so it was unsurprising to see others follow her lead.
As I watched this, I thought about the people I follow and why. Typically I follow people with a proven, positive track record in particular areas. For a simple example, I may call a person with a long history of good cooking to get advice on food preparation. Similarly, when it comes to athletic endeavors, I'll often call my sister who is an avid outdoor enthusiast for advice--her advice is always thoughtful and well-directed in that arena. We look to the experts for advice and follow those experts with proven, positive track records in specific arenas of life.
Sometimes, we may find ourselves giving power to people for reasons that are superficial only. Perhaps they have more money, power, popularity, and prestige than us and we'd like a piece of that. That's rarely to never a good idea to give someone power over you since if you want power, popularity, and prestige you have to earn it yourself for it to be authentic and meaningful. To simply feed off another's power in that area can be harmful.
You may give people in close relationships power over you simply because it makes the relationship easier. For example, when it comes to good times with my sons, I'll often let them choose the venue since I know they do a good job with that and we always have a good time. I don't need to think a lot about that to make it work. In relationships, we often divvy up the power differential because it's more efficient and beneficial to all. That takes some collaboration to do well.
If we let people have power over us for good reasons, it's not a bad thing, but if we let people have that power over us for the wrong reasons, we need to understand why that's happening and then make a change. Onward.