The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any.
— Alice Walker
The Quality of Self-Sovereignty
Your test results suggest that right now you need to exercise your talents and feel your own power and autonomy. Self-sovereignty is a special kind of power that is not power-over-another, but is inner-directed as a kind of self-discipline and focused ambition.
This can be a dynamic time of your life, especially at work, but you need to make sure that you’re in a work environment that will respect and value what you want to bring. When you exercise self-sovereignty you feel a desire to be more in control of the projects you take on -and the ones you are free to reject; the team your work with -and the people you can say no to; and the manner and place of doing your work.
Does your work help or hinder you in living out the Quality of Self-Sovereignty?
Self-Sovereignty In the Workplace
To seek the Qualities of self-sovereignty at work is to use one’s job as a field for exploring capacities, talents, challenges to the self. You may or may not want to “buy in” to the larger mission of the organization because your interest is more personal and almost any venue that gives scope for your experimentation will do.
If you think of the great swaths of gig workers who are technological nomads, roaming the world with their laptops in search of new mountains to climb - literally and metaphorically - you are looking at players in the realm of self-sovereignty. The pure joy of achieving competency and expanding talents is a sign of this value, and from the worker’s point of view it is the freedom to do one’s work in the best way possible which is fulfilling.
Anything that interferes with the smooth movement of activity will be experienced as oppressive.
Many of the symptoms of Burnout can be traced back to this aspect of the human experience, for this is where energy can be twisted, blocked, co-opted, repressed and otherwise interfered with. Rules that mandate working too many hours without respite, or inconsistent hours that change frequently, or hours that are not in alignment with an individual’s own biorhythms - can all wreak havoc with fulfilling the Qualities of Self-Sovereignty.
When the Quality of Self-Sovereignty is missing . . .
When you have no self-sovereignty at work it is all too easy to slip into feeling like a serf at the mercy of an unfeeling feudal lord! “Yours is not to questions why; yours is but to do or die” - as the dreary poem phrased it. The lack of autonomy and the lack of respect that almost always accompanies it are major factors in burnout.
The corporate model that we still labor under was introduced at the onset of the industrial age when factory owners were the de facto feudal lords ruling over the lowly assembly line workers. In spite of the truly astonishing rise in education, literacy and social mobility, there is still an attitude of this ancient hierarchy in the way workers are treated. Companies who want to stem the tide of resignations should start with this quality of self-sovereignty - or the lack of it - in their workplace.
When this quality is out of balance you can be left feeling that you have no autonomy, that work is just being dumped on you and that everyone is acting as your boss. On the other hand, you may be given tremendous amounts of autonomy but no real authority. That is, you are given sovereignty in word only but no real power to accomplish the tasks you take on. You’re always the one left alone in the office when everyone else has gone, still trying to finish the work no one else will do.
Why Name these Qualities as Colors?
There are many developmental theories that look at human needs, motivations and fulfillment and arrive at a schema with seven stages or levels. The fact that there is so much overlap in these theories suggests is that there is something there which all these observant human beings have noticed. For this deep assessment I offer my own synthesis of these developmental theories, using seven simple colored blocks to designate the seven key challenges to human beings - those needs or yearnings that require our mastery in order to thrive and live into our full humanity.
In adopting the metaphor of the seven colors, I am following in the footsteps of author Christopher Hill who felt that the rainbow colors - as defined by Isaac Newton: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet - aided in an intuitive understanding of the 7-level Chakra system. It has become so adopted by the West that I use it for convenience - and for aesthetic purposes.
There are other metaphors which may feel more natural to you than the color spectrum, and I encourage you to find your own analogy. What I am describing as Qualities are purely abstract and can be associated with any color, texture, sound, flavor, and image.
Read About the Other Qualities in the Color Wheel
The Seven Qualities in Work and Life
There are seven Qualities that align with multiple inventories of human values, motivations, and needs: Maslow’s Hierarchy, the Barrett Value System, Erik Erickson’s Model of Development, Ken Wilbur’s Spiral Matrix, the Chakra System, and others. The three courses I offer engage the participants in a much more detailed exploration of how these seven Qualities inform your experience of work and leisure, and how you can bring greater balance, health, creativity and joy to your work by integrating them in your daily life.