Powertake: Get What You Want Without Hurting Others

By Dr. Jack Rosenfeld

Success and the personal freedom that it brings have nothing to do with good luck. It involves taking control of and using the power you already have in order to get much of what you want from life; and doing this in a manner that doesnt hurt others. Successful people have developed special skills in dealing with the people they work for as well as with their coworkers and others they encounter in their everyday lives. And now you can learn these skills too.
Dr. Jack Rosenfelds new book, Powertake, is a condensed, easy-to-follow course that explains how to tap your incredible personal power. You dont need aggression, intimidation, or manipulation to get what you need from others. Dr. Rosenfeld shows you how to do it step by step, in a series of easy-to-follow exercises. Your only investment is a little time every day learning and practicing the powertake skills. Before you know it, youll be amazed at the results. People will see the change in you, and respond to you differently than before. If youve been looking for a way to improve your life and your relationships, Powertake is for you.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: May 25, 2010
• ISBN: 9781450218665

Dr. Jack Rosenfeld

Dr. Jack Rosenfeld is a renowned psychologist who has condensed fifty years of experience working with people into a self-improvement program called Powertake. He has a B.A. and M.A. from Temple University and a Ph.D. from The Ohio State University. He and his wife, Marguerite, live in North Las Vegas, Nevada.

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Powertake©

Get What You Want Without Hurting Others

Dr. Jack Rosenfeld

iUniverse, Inc.

New York Bloomington

Powertake©

Get What You Want Without Hurting Others

Copyright © 2010 Dr. Jack Rosenfeld

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This publication contains the ideas, concepts, opinions, and experiences of the author. It is intended to provide informative, helpful, and authoritative material with respect to the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that the author and publisher are not engaged in providing medical, psychological, psychiatric, or other professional services. If the reader needs medical, psychological, psychiatric, or other services, advice or assistance, the services of a competent professional should be obtained.

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ISBN: 978-1-4502-1865-8 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-1-4502-1867-2 (cloth)

ISBN: 978-1-4502-1866-5 (ebook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2010904225

Powertake©

Taking control of and using the power you already have in order to get much of what you want from life, and doing this in ways that don’t hurt others.

The Good Doctor’s Dictionary

Everyone thinks of changing the world,

but no one thinks of changing himself.

Leo Tolstoy

Life is difficult.

M. Scott Peck

To

Marguerite,

better than your average bear

The ultimate Powertake© of

natural rights,

moral responsibility, and

free choice.

Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

About the Author

Bibliography

Credits

Thanks to

• My intrepid readers, who reviewed all or part of the manuscript: Jerry Bradley, Vice President of Human Resources at Pioneer Americas, LLC; Gerry Leary, President of Koike Aronson, Inc.; Holmes Morrison, former CEO of One Valley Bancorp (BBT); Frank Nowak, Vice President of Human Resources at ABARTA; and Kevin Sullivan, Vice President of Chemicals at PPG Industries, Inc.

• Jim Busse of Blue Line America for the book concept, editing, proofreading, and counsel. Without him, I’d still be slogging through what often seemed to be hip-deep mud.

• Cindy Hinnebusch and Marilyn Lindstrom, owners of C&M Desktop Services, for repeated keyboarding. It’s finally over, guys. Honest, it is.

• Judith E. Rosenfeld, daughter, writer, and owner of Pineapple Dreams Wearable Paradise (www.pineappledreams.com), for positive emotion and general uplift.

• Mark John Rosenfeld, son, for help with the book concept, brainstorming book titles, and positive emotion.

• Peter Bruce Wilder, nephew, Owner/President of Ergo Communications (www.dbaergo.com), for help in brainstorming book titles, help with Web sites, and much encouragement.

Introduction

What This Book Is All About

So just what does this Powertake© stuff really mean?

Freedom is living your life

as you want to live it.

Harry Browne

My Formula: Powertake© + Skills + Practice = Personal Freedom and Success

Ho hum, yet another book on self-improvement. Yes, this is another self-improvement book. However, its purpose is not to make you rich and famous, cure your neuroses (if you have any), solve all of your problems, or make you happy forever. And it is not a book about winning by aggression, intimidation, manipulating others, or acting like a general all-around rat.

However, it is a book about being successful, no matter how you might define success. Becoming successful always involves you creating more personal freedom for yourself. A proven path to freedom and success involves three things:

• Powertake©

• Learning Powertake© skills

• Practicing these skills.

What the heck is Powertake©?

Go back and review the definition of Powertake©: Taking control of and using the power you already have in order to get much of what you want from life, and doing this in ways that don’t hurt others.

Important: Powertake© already is there. It’s built into everyone. (Yes, that includes you.) It’s not some harebrained or mystical concept. It’s not wishful thinking (yours or mine). It’s the inner power and strength that we all have, whether or not we’ve ever used it.

It’s what happens when someone reaches deep down inside and draws upon his or her unexpressed personal power. It’s what happens when someone tries to improve his lot in life by changing some things about himself. It’s what happens when someone says to herself, I’m better than this; I know I am. I can be more successful than I’ve been. It’s when someone says to himself, I’ve had a lot of disadvantages, but I won’t act like a victim anymore. It’s what happens when someone says, I don’t care anymore about how nonsupportive and unhelpful you are. I know I can be successful. And I’ll find someone who’ll support me and help me. It’s about hopes and dreams. But, just as important, it’s about how you make hope blossom and dreams come true.

But what does it really mean to Powertake©?

Powertake© really means:

• Taking responsibility for yourself and your life

• Having more control over the consequences of what you say and do

• Being able to stand up for yourself and assert your legitimate rights

• Being able to communicate effectively with people

• Not being oversensitive to what others say about you

• Realizing that you’re really entitled to few things in life, and that entitlement is a negative force in your life

• Knowing how to manage your money.

These are the seven practical skills that make Powertake© real. When you learn and practice these skills, you’ll experience real personal freedom and real success. And you’ll get these things without hurting people.

And personal freedom means?

True personal freedom is:

• A sense that you have some say about how you live your life;

• Knowing that, in some areas of your life, you’re completely in charge. That is, you’re really the boss; and

• The realization that you have complete freedom to think your own thoughts, have your own feelings, have your own beliefs, and to decide what is important to you and what is unimportant to you.

Success

You decide what success means. No one else can do it for you. No one else should do it for you. If someone else is deciding what success is for you, then you really need this book. Some people define success this way:

• Holding an important job

• Making a lot of money

• Setting and achieving difficult goals

• Learning more and more about valuable topics

• Being recognized as an expert

• Working with people in a wide range of situations

• Helping less fortunate people

• Owning your own business.

The list is nearly endless, but maybe you see success as:

• Working more effectively with others

• Becoming a more confident person

• Coping with nasty people

• Becoming more independent and self-directed

• Becoming more of a risk-taker

• Handling stress more constructively

• Learning to manage change effectively.

Again, it’s a nearly endless list. It doesn’t make any difference how you define success, as long as you do it for yourself. Powertake© is the royal road to success.

Without Hurting Others

Life does not have to be some kind of destructive game in which someone must lose so that you can win. Life does not have to be a collision sport in which you must run over others to achieve success. Call me naïve (some people have), but I believe you can gain the success you want without destroying or hurting people. I’ve done it—so can you. You can gain your personal freedom and success in a positive and constructive way. It’ll make your freedom and your success even sweeter.

A Lack of Personal Freedom, a Lack of Success

The following statements and questions came from clients, friends, acquaintances, and even complete strangers. Do any of these ring a bell?

• People take advantage of me all the time.

• I feel like everyone else is controlling my life—everyone but me.

• Why do others have things and I don’t? It doesn’t seem fair to me.

• People hurt my feelings all the time. Why do they do it?

• Nobody seems to understand what I want. Why don’t they understand?

• I keep making the same mistakes over and over again. It’s driving me crazy.

• I made more than a million bucks in twenty years. Where is it now? I don’t have enough money.

• If it weren’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all.

• I have no control over my life. It’s as though everything is falling apart all at once. I’m lost.

• People misunderstand me all the time. I can’t get my ideas across. No one understands what I want and what I need.

• I keep doing dumb things that come back to hurt me. Why do I keep doing these things?

• People at work keep bugging me. Why can’t they stop?

If you can relate to even one of these statements or questions, this book can help you. They are typical of people who do not have enough personal freedom and success—people who did not Powertake©. They do not have enough control over their lives, in one way or another. They have not achieved the success and freedom in their lives that they need and want. Have you?

Are you ready to Powertake©? Your Readiness Profile

This five-item profile will tell you how ready you are for Powertake©. Read each item and check yes if you agree with it, or check no if you disagree with it.

Answers to the Profile

Come on, you know the answers. Easy, wasn’t it? You Powertake©? To save your life? Maybe Powertake© will do just that for you. A baby’s life? You never know; it might happen. Money? Maybe you’ll make your cool million. Save 10,000 people? Perhaps Powertake© skills will help you save one person from starvation. A Messenger of God asking you to Powertake© in order to help yourself and others? Listen carefully. You never can tell what you might hear.

Have you told yourself that you couldn’t change—that you couldn’t be personally powerful, free of others’ influences, and more successful? Arnold Lazarus and Allen Fay inspired the profile. Let them tell you (from I Can if I Want to): People often say, ‘I must or have to do something,’ when they actually mean, ‘I choose to do it.’

Will you act?

Most people have more power of choice than they know … or want to know. What do you choose to do? Think about it. Think about it long and hard. Think about what it would be like to enjoy more personal freedom. Think about what it would be like to be more successful in your life—whatever you mean by success. Think about doing all this in a moral, ethical, and nonexploitive way. I hope you choose to Powertake©, and I hope you let me help you. And I hope you read the next chapter, which explains the seven steps to Powertake©.

It doesn’t matter when you start,

as long as you start now.

W. Edwards Deming

Chapter 1

Seven Steps to Powertake©, Freedom, and Success

Before I start talking, I’d like to say something.

First say to yourself what you would be;

and then do what you have to do.

Epictetus

What are the seven steps?

Glad you asked. There are seven key steps to Powertake©. Each step involves your learning, using, and practicing a specific skill. As you learn and use these skills in your everyday life, you will have more control over your life, create more freedom for yourself, and become more successful. These are the steps:

Internal Direction. One of the two critical Powertake© skills—how to take control of your life and how to actively direct and manage your life. This means freeing yourself from depending on others or on your luck; learning to always ask, What can I do about it?; and realizing that, for most of us, our worst enemy can be found by looking in the mirror. Avoid becoming a victim.

Evaluation of Consequences. This is the second critical Powertake© skill. Internal direction helps you take control of your life and help yourself. Evaluation of consequences makes you aware of the effect of what you say and do on yourself and others. Learn always to ask, What will be the consequences of what I’m about to say or do? By learning how to anticipate the consequences of what you say and do, you can avoid impulsive thinking and decision-making; and become more objective, more rational, and more mature. And you can prevent a lot of problems from happening in the first place.

Assertiveness. By learning how to stand up for yourself, and knowing your legitimate rights while remembering the rights of others, you can keep control of most situations. This means knowing the practical differences between passivity, aggressiveness, and assertiveness, and not allowing others to bully you or browbeat you into doing things you don’t want to do. You’ll learn how to handle criticism and put-downs.

Clear Communications. This means learning to communicate clearly and understanding communications from others. You take 100 percent responsibility for clear communications, even though you know that things can get in the way of sending clear messages and receiving messages clearly. You’ll learn how to say things, and explain things, so that people really understand what you mean, what you want, and what you need.

Nonsensitivity. By understanding the real power of words and the real powerlessness of words, you will know how to fix it so that the words of other people can’t hurt you. By developing a pretty thick skin, you will prevent oversensitivity from limiting your success and personal freedom. Nonsensitivity increases your personal freedom and success.

Nonentitlement. You have to find out what you’re really entitled to—and what you’re really not entitled to—so that you can depend on yourself rather than on what you think you’re entitled to. By breaking down the arrogance and ego that are part of the entitlement approach, you will see that nonentitlement gives you power, while entitlement makes you dependent on the whims and kindnesses of others.

Money Management. Through learning about the power of money and understanding the basic laws of money, as well as the basic principles of money management, you will be able to save money without becoming a skinflint. You’ll use and control your money rather than letting it use and control you. This includes understanding how your personality can keep you from effectively managing your money.

Well, there they are—the seven steps to Powertake©. I found out how important these skills are through fifty-plus years as a psychologist and a management consultant. During that time, I worked with lots of people on many problems and projects. One of the key things I did was in-depth psychological assessments of more than 2,400 people. This involved comprehensive testing and interviewing sessions lasting a full day. I gave individual feedback on the results to most of these people. I also interpreted about 1,200 Activity Vector Analysis (AVA) behavioral profiles, and gave individual feedback on the results to more than 200 people. These were, again and again, the important skills I saw in people who were really free and really successful. These were the key skills they used to survive and prosper in a complex, often tough, and sometimes downright nasty world. So what are your Powertake© skills?

Excuses, Excuses …

Some people won’t ever begin a self-improvement program, even though they believe they should. There are lots of excuses out there. Each block has a typical excuse, followed by my response to that excuse.

… See some more of their excuses.

Some people do begin a self-improvement program, but often stop after a period of time. See their excuses.

Excuses—Part of the Problem

Overcoming excuses is a big part of any self-improvement program. The excuses are part of the problem. Chapters 3 and 4 cover two critical skills—internal direction and the evaluation of consequences—that can reduce or eliminate the excuses that people have. Why not look these chapters over?

What This Book Will Do for You

This is a how-to-do-it guidebook for creating more personal freedom and success in your life. It’s full of tips, methods, and techniques to help you get the personal freedom and success you want. It’s not just a theory of how to do it.

I hope you’ll use this book to fill in your own version of my formula: Powertake© + skills + practice = personal freedom and success. There’s nothing quite like Powertake©. Accept no substitutes—there aren’t any.

To create more personal freedom and success in your life, you learn and apply the seven Powertake© skills. This book:

Helps you develop your awareness of what the Powertake© skills are;

• Develops your understanding of the place of these skills in creating personal freedom and success for yourself; and,

• Helps you learn and apply the Powertake© skills in your everyday life.

If you work at it, it will happen. But you have to choose to work at it. Once you do that, you will get more of what you really want from life, and have a little more fun out of a sometimes crazy world. And more important, you’ll do all these things while respecting others’ rights and not taking advantage of them.

How This Book Is Organized

It’s simple. Chapter 2 tells you how to get the most out of the book. Chapters 3 through 9 cover the seven key Powertake© skills. Chapter 10, the concluding chapter, gives an overall framework for learning the skills and putting it all together.

Each skill chapter has the same format. First, there’s a profile for you to complete and score. This will tell you how strong or weak you are in that skill. Next, there’s a description of the Powertake© skill. This is followed by a description of the flip side of the skill—sort of a non-Powertake© skill. Next, there’s a guide to help you interpret what your profile score means. Then there’s an important list of the payoffs you’ll get from learning and using that skill. This helps answer that most important of all questions—What’s in it for me?

Then comes the heart of the chapter. There are a number of thought aids. Thought aids are designed to help you change the way you think about things. They are your guides to attitude adjustment. These are followed by skill-builders. The skill-builders are methods and techniques that will help you behave as a free and successful person.

Powertake© involves both thinking and acting. Each thought aid and skill-builder is a specific and practical way to improve the way you think and act. Every time you work through a thought aid or a skill-builder, you learn a little more about Powertake©. And always remember: Powertake© skills are learned.

Chapters 3 through 9 each close with a section called Danger Sign or Danger Signs. Here I mention one or two things that can go wrong when you’re learning and applying your Powertake© skills.

You have probably noticed that the world was not designed specifically for you.

Philip B. Crosby

Chapter 2

How to Get the Most Out of This Book

When in doubt, follow the directions.

Only you can be your liberator.

Wilhelm Reich

I suggest you follow the ten-step approach to using this book. It’s a reasonable, systematic way to do it. Try it and see how it works.

If you have a better way to use this book, go ahead. Just be sure you’ve got a better way. If you’re really not sure, why not try it my way? When in doubt, follow the directions.

Ten Steps to Getting the Most Out of This Book

Step One: Survey

Reread the What are the seven steps? section of Chapter 1. Read slowly, for understanding. As you do this, jot down any feelings or ideas that come to mind. Write in the book or use a small notebook. Don’t censor what you write. Just get it down on paper. Let it all out—even if it seems strange, odd, or not worthy of you. These are your notes. No one else has to see them. Refer to them as you work your way through the book.

Remember the Short Pencil Principle: A short pencil is better than a long memory. Memory is the great deceiver: It fades fast and is easily knocked out of kilter by the passage of time, by our wishes, and by our fears. Memory is very fragile. Write it down.

Step Two: Personalize

Personalize your book. Write down what comes to mind as you read. Underline key words. Note any connections with your own experiences. Use different colored pens or pencils, if that helps. Remember, do what you need to do to help yourself. If you like to underline things with a red pen, get a red pen.

Also, as you go through the book underlining, writing words down, and so forth, you may hear the voice of your first-grade teacher saying, Don’t mark up your books! Trash that thought. File it in the Ancient History Bin (that’s where dead ideas go).

Step Three: Concentrate on Internal Direction

Chapter 3 is one of the two critical chapters in the book. Internal direction is one of the two ultimate Powertake© skills. Complete the profile at the beginning of the chapter to get a sense of how internally directed you are. Read the chapter. Think while you read. Take notes. Reflect on your experiences. Read for understanding—slowly and carefully.

Study the thought aids and the skill-builders in the chapter. Then, do the skill-builders. Do at least one every day. Do more if you can. Do them when you really don’t want to, when you’re blue, and even when you think the world is picking on you.

Use the Skill-builders Action Form to help plan and follow through on your tasks. Fill out the form—it’s not hard to do. Or set up your own form.