The thing about power is that most of us are not conscious of what power really is and how we use it.

Power, as a word and a concept, has an unfortunate reputation as something that you hold over someone else. This negative connotation keeps some of us away from power and, in that avoidance, we become powerless. The problem in our relationships is not that someone is too powerful; it is that too many of us are powerless.

Power is critical to the success and survival of our intimate relationships and our work relationships. Nothing happens without someone being powerful. Nothing. And yet, we are not fully conscious of how we use our power or how we deny it.

The recent abuses of male athletes abusing women are the more publicized incidents that are the reflection of a very old story: men wanting to control women and using their physical strength and sexual force to do it.

The need to control ultimately springs out of fear. The terrible story out of the University of Virginia seems to be a perfect example. A strong, physically imposing man, afraid of losing his woman, turns on her in rage and kills her. This is the way he chose, unconsciously, to use his power.

Violence, which is really the ultimate statement of powerlessness, is only one end to which any of us can use power. It is at the far and sad end of a spectrum of results of an innate urge to power that we all share.

Yes, we all are born with an urge to power, an urge to fully experience ourselves and find a satisfying expression of our experience. It is what fuels the creative act as well as the destructive one.

We can use our power to coerce or force, to manipulate, to compete, to nurture and/or to join with someone in a synergetic way. All these are results of one’s power. These are ends that we can be much more conscious of. Moreover, we can make a conscious choice to devote our power—devote ourselves—to more loving ends.

In my own life, when I woke up to these possibilities, I decided to devote myself to the two “higher” ends of power – nurturing and synergy. This is an ongoing act of will. I chose not to coerce anyone. I chose not to manipulate. I chose not to compete. I simply chose to collaborate with others, to nurture them and join them and I lost interest in the other ends to which I could use my power.

This is an ongoing part of my work, both my career and my personal work.

It is a choice all of us can make.

Please, understand how you are using your power. Understand that you are continually affecting the people around you everyday and so much of that is about power. What affect are you having on the people you love and who love you?

Stop the coercion, control, manipulation and competition. Decide to use your own power to love.

As it turns out, our lives depend on it.