5 Tips to Help You Develop Your Personal Authority and Achieve Your Dreams

20 فبراير 2025

Your ability to build good relationships with others contributes to your success in various fields, and personal authority is one of the most important traits to master leadership skills, which, in turn, is necessary to excel at work under any circumstances.

One of the essential things to gain this authority, whether in professional or personal life, is the ability to cooperate with others, influence them, and build strong relationships with them.

In this article, you will read an explanation of the concept of personal authority. We will also provide five tips that successful people apply, which will help you enhance your influence.

What is personal authority?

Personal authority is the qualities you possess in your personality that help you influence your surroundings through your core values, such as self-confidence, a positive mental attitude, self-awareness, talents, skills, and wisdom. Through this authority, you can influence others and the surroundings. This power lets you maintain your composure and focus while facing sensitive situations and difficulties.

Different forms of personal authority

Personal authority plays a very important role in relationships of all kinds, and it is clear that it is positive authority. Therefore, developing it improves your positive qualities in general. There are two basic types of this power, and it is best to have a strong combination of both types together to obtain better results:

1. The ability to inspire others

A person who has this ability is loved and respected by others because they raise others’ morale, and can communicate with them constructively.

2. The ability to influence others through experience and wisdom

It is the characteristic of people who are trusted by others and listen to their opinions because they can provide reliable information and solve problems based on their knowledge and skills. This ability enhances mutual trust between the two parties and is the basis for practising leadership efficiently.

Formal authority (power derived from official position)

Authority derived from official position is different from personal authority. Formal authority stems from the job title or official position, but it is less effective and influential than personal authority. While personal authority helps create sustainable relationships and permanently gain the loyalty of others, the authority derived from the official position loses its influence once you step down from the position, are replaced, or once circumstances change.

Recognising the different types of power derived from an official position enables you to avoid exploiting others, playing tricks in your relationship with them, or feeling a false sense of power. Here are the different types of this form of power:

1. Influence using enticement

When you use this type of power, people are motivated by the rewards you offer them, such as the promise of a promotion, financial rewards, or salary increases. When these rewards are not available, your power is diminished. However, another form of power can be resorted to rewards-based by showing gratitude and praising others.

2. Authority derived from law

Others are influenced by their belief in your right to ask for something, which is the form of authority on which political officials, such as heads of state or government, rely.

3. Authority using intimidation

In this type of authority, others submit to you for fear of being removed from office or otherwise punished.

4. The authority based on breaching privacy and withholding information

By withholding information from others or accessing their sensitive information, a person can manipulate others and force them to obey orders.

The law of personal control and authority

The "Law of Control" states that a person who views themselves positively reaches a stage where they can control their lives. The same law, in contrast, states that a person who views themselves negatively will be pessimistic to the point where they lose any control throughout life.

Psychologists call this concept “locus of control.” It is a theory that shows that every person feels that their lives and personal power are controlled by either internal factors related to the person only or external factors, such as life circumstances and so on.

A person who has an internal control centre feels that they are responsible and, therefore, makes decisions that determine the course of their lives. A person who is affected by external factors tends to believe that others are responsible for what happens to them and that external factors control their lives and influences that leave them only a little margin to decide and change things. People with this type feel that their managers, financial burdens, childhood experiences, current family life, or relationships control their lives.

Building relationships

You must organise your life to give you a feeling of control over its course to live happily and enjoy a high level of self-confidence. Nothing will help you achieve this goal more than your ability to push others to help you achieve what you want. You need the help of others to accomplish almost anything. To achieve important achievements, you need help from as many people as possible.

To raise your performance to the best levels, you need to persevere in organising your entire life so that appropriate and supportive people surround you. Therefore, your task is to be able to direct your life towards the path that leads to achieving the goal. Also, you have no choice if you want to achieve your goals but to enhance your skill in effective communication with others. Competence, effectiveness, and the ability to build relationships with others are essential to enhance your self-esteem and gain the respect of others.

How do you influence others in a way that motivates them to help you?

You have a choice of two: either you influence others or allow others to influence you. So, you can learn how to influence others through your way of thinking and push them to help you, or you can allow others to influence you through their way of thinking and thus push you to help them.

Here lies the fundamental difference between influential people by their personalities and people who feel helpless in their relationships with others, between effective people and those who play the role of victims, and between leaders and followers.

Learning how to influence others gives you a feeling of strength and competence. Every time you accomplish a goal with the help and support of others, you feel more competent and effective. It is a win-win equation for both parties, so the person who receives the help and the person who provides it feels successful and accomplished.

People who have high levels of self-confidence are those who, through experience and hard work, have reached a very advanced level of skill in cooperating with others of different personalities, so they invest this cooperation in achieving their goals, and this is the basis for building relationships and gaining personal authority.

How do you gain personal authority?

The idea is simple. It is that you gain this power through your relationships. Everything in life revolves around relationships. The main factor that affects the course of your life more than anything else is your relationships in terms of their number and quality.

Your personal relationships determine your success or failure and how quickly you achieve goals. They also determine your happiness level, self-confidence, and self-esteem. Your ability to influence and persuade others and push them to help you is an indispensable part of any field in which you seek to achieve goals.

What is the importance of personal authority?

This authority is important for the following reasons:

Enriching your life and the lives of others.
Giving you a greater sense of satisfaction with yourself and helping you succeed.
Increasing your sense of satisfaction with your professional and personal life.
Giving you new opportunities.
Helping you achieve more success.
Encouraging you to develop and advance your potential to the highest levels.
Enhancing your communication skills and improving your ability to listen.

How do you enhance your personal authority?

Your self-development depends on strengthening your personal authority. To achieve this goal, we will provide you with five basic tips that will help you strengthen this authority.

These are tips that successful people apply to obtain high-quality results in various areas of life. The wonderful thing is that these tips are skills that anyone can learn. Once you learn them, you will develop your self-confidence to the point where you can deal with any situation without feeling afraid. Here are these tips:

1. Dream big

What we mean by dreams here are goals because if you think about all successful people, you will find that they often lived an ordinary life until they started thinking about their dreams.

They literally imagine what they want to achieve; that is, they see other successful people and ask themselves: What prevents me from achieving this, too? Or if someone else can do it, why can't I do it too?

Your mission is to dream, and do not think that dreams are limited to children. Do you remember how we dreamed all the time when we were young?

The most competent, intelligent, knowledgeable and successful people always dream, and here is this practical advice: Create a list of your dreams without any restrictions.

The first step in learning how to dream is very simple, but at the same time, it is effective and practical, and it is what will make you notice opportunities that you did not expect. It is called ‘the dream list.’

Start creating your dream list by answering the following question: What would I want to dream about without restrictions?

Remember that the limitations that limit your abilities or that you think limit your abilities are the biggest obstacles that prevent you from success. In reality, these limitations are often the result of your thoughts only. That is, they do not exist in reality. Restrictions are created by our thoughts and stem specifically from our negative thoughts.

Bring a blank sheet of paper, and imagine that you have as much money, time, knowledge, and resources as you want, and there are no limits to your knowledge, skills, talents, and potential. You can become anything you want, or own or do anything, and if you do not have any restrictions, what would you like to have or achieve in your life?

Dream about what you want to achieve today and in the near and distant future (a week, a month, a year, five years, and so on), and write down everything you think about on this piece of paper. However, remember to decide what you want to achieve before you stop to analyse what is possible.

If you have a partner, take some time with them to write down your dreams together, and think about what you want to achieve, whether in terms of having children, family life, the future, mental and physical health, home, lifestyle, work, everything and unleash your imagination.

You should know that thinking big dreams enhances your self-confidence. When you make dreaming an organised practice, your concept of yourself improves, as does your perception of yourself. So, you see yourself in a better perspective.

The reason is that you allow yourself to think of yourself as a person capable of achieving what you wish and dream of. You will also notice an improvement in your self-esteem, and you will love and respect yourself more, not to mention an increase in your sense of happiness and self-confidence once you start imagining, dreaming, and thinking about what you can achieve. So, here are some great techniques to help you apply this advice:

1.1. Mental visualisation through “Back from the Future”

It is one of the wonderful mental visualisation techniques. After you write down your list of dreams, allow yourself to take a trip “back from the future.” This technique is used by the happiest, most successful and wealthy people, and they apply it constantly, even if they do not realise its name.

You can apply this advice by imagining your dream that you want to achieve 5 or 10 years from now, then travelling in your imagination to this future, and then returning with your imagination to the present time as if you were on the top of a mountain and seeing what exists below from this height towering. So, ask yourself while imagining your dream: What must you do to make this dream of yours a reality? What path should you take?

You are now starting to analyse from the present to the future instead of the first step in which you look at your present from your future. You will then be able to realise things you were unable to realise during the first step, which is imagining the future and returning from it to the present.

The idea is that this helps you realise the path that must be followed and the steps that must be taken to reach your dream, and then all that remains for you is to follow these steps for your dream to become a reality. At regular intervals, imagine your dream as if it has come true, and imagine what you must do, and you will be surprised at the amount of improvement in your application of the steps required to achieve your goal.

1.2. “Blue Sky” technique

Here's another technique you can apply to think big and achieve your goals. The “blue sky” technique is one of the most important habits that people with exceptional performance adhere to. This method is based on unleashing your thoughts, and you are required to imagine that the blue sky is completely above you, that it is entirely yours, and that there are no restrictions, as if you are swimming in space.

Imagine that anything is possible, like the list of dreams in the previous advice. However, as if you were starting to establish your life from scratch, what would your life be like if you did not have any previous restrictions and had not committed to any decision or life path? If you could do whatever you wanted now, what would you do?

This technique is the basis of the process of reinvention (creative solutions) in companies, so you can undoubtedly reinvent your life using it.

1.3. “Rip Van Winkle” training

"Rip Van Winkle" is the title of a short story written by the American writer Washington Irving. It is about an American villager who leaves his village for a picnic and lies down under a tree to take a short nap, but he is surprised when he returns to his village, where he has slept for 20 years. As a result, he encounters a lot of troubles.

The “Rip Van Winkle” training is an effective technique. As the story goes, the training is based on the idea that you imagine yourself waving a magic wand and falling asleep for five years, and then imagine that the entire world is working in a way that makes your life perfect in all aspects. Imagine that you woke up From your dream:

Who is with you now?
What do you do?
Where do you work?
How much income do you have?
What are the characteristics of the house you live in?
How is your health?
What is the nature of your relationship with important people in your life?

You may discover that everything must be completely different from what it is in your life for it to be perfect, and remember that the ability to imagine and unleash ideas is evidence of mental superiority and a distinctive mentality. It has become clear through studying all the geniuses of history that they have a common denominator: they were accustomed to letting their imagination run wild, allowing themselves to come up with unusual ideas and imagining what can be achieved.

When you unleash your imagination to develop fun or innovative ideas, you will begin to have the habit that characterises the greatest thought leaders throughout history. However, do not overlook the importance of having clarity of vision to gain personal authority. One of the important tips for achieving your goals and turning your dreams into reality is having a clear vision. Therefore, you must precisely define your ideas, values, and goals. The more clarity you have about your personality, what you want to achieve, what you believe in, and what interests you, the greater your chance of achieving your goals more quickly.

Successful people believe in the existence of a meaning in life, either by virtue of their nature or because they have worked to develop this trait in them. This conviction is a firm belief in the necessity of a sublime message that must be performed in life or that their presence in this life is only to achieve a noble goal. Hence, they constantly try to verify whether anything they do serves the mission they were born to achieve in this life. So, ask yourself: What is the purpose of my existence in this life? And what should I do? What is my dream?

2. Develop your unique skills

The second tip to enhance your personal authority that all successful people apply is to develop their unique skills. Each of us is unique in some way, and we can't be exactly the same.

The genes that make up our inheritance are so complex that it is impossible for there to exist a person who is absolutely similar to another person. In simpler terms, it is impossible for a person exactly like you to exist now, later, or in the past.

Therefore, you possess capabilities and talents of your own that enable you to achieve anything you desire if you use them well. Your task is to determine what you want to achieve in your life. One of the ways to achieve this is by asking yourself some questions, which are:

What do you enjoy doing?
What makes you happy?
What can you do super easily?
What talents do you think you have naturally?
Why do others turn to you for advice, help or knowledge?
What activities give you the greatest sense of importance?

Happiness is the most reliable indicator that helps you determine what suits you, and the most intelligent people are characterised by listening to their intuition. So, think about the most enjoyable activity for you, and organise your life so that you can do more of these enjoyable activities.

Childhood is a reliable matter for identifying your purpose in life. If you think back to childhood when you were between 7 and 14 years old and remember the things that you enjoyed doing most, you will find that they are often the purpose that you came into this life to achieve. It is an activity that pleases you as an adult.

If you find it difficult to remember what you loved to do in your childhood years, ask your parents or people close to you about the activities you practised most at that stage. Then, determine the activity that you can do now that fits with your childhood interests, and be sure that you will feel very happy and excited once you start this practice.

Think about what you're good at doing easily and the things you're good at doing without much effort. These things will often be your innate talents. Here's another great question to ask yourself: What would I do if I had a million dollars right now?

Suppose the immediate answer to this question is leaving your job. In that case, you are likely working in a profession that is not suitable for you and in which you can waste your life working without any pleasure or achieving success. Often, the things that you love to do or learn more things about or start trying are the things that imitate your innate talents and abilities.

3. Work in a field you love

The third tip for developing your personal authority is to do what you love. We assure you that most self-made wealthy people, stars, and entrepreneurs do not consider their work a duty. Still, rather it is a kind of enjoyable activity that they love and through which they develop their careers.

You won't lack motivation when you work in a field you love because you automatically feel excited. A person needs motivation to feel enthusiasm, motivation requires a feeling of desire, and desire requires people to love what they do. Therefore, people who love their work always feel enthusiastic, but you will likely fail if your work is a means to achieve something in life.

All successful people in life work in jobs that they love, and you find that they are more motivated than others to do more work, but because you bear the responsibility of ensuring your livelihood as an adult, the next important question is: What is the work that interests me? How can I become good at it and earn a respectable income?

You will be happy, successful, and respected by others when you work in a profession that you love. Here is the final step that helps you determine what you love to do: to think about what calls your attention and makes you feel pleasure. Any person must be able to integrate fully into any activity. It grabs their attention and demands their attention.

Notice that you give your full attention to the activity that you love, that you want to immerse yourself in it completely, that you enjoy it and want to learn more about it.

Therefore, when you work in a field that is appropriate for you, you will become completely immersed in it, to the point that you do not feel the passage of time, and you may forget your need for food or sleep. So, think about the topic that captures your interest and gives you a feeling of pleasure to the point of absolute integration into it.

4. Take full responsibility for your life

The fourth tip for developing your personal authority is to take full responsibility for the results you get in your life. Everything starts with an idea, and you are responsible for the ideas you have and the decisions you make.

The best motivational quotes ever created are based on the idea of responsibility. So, say to yourself this phrase: “I am responsible for everything that happens in my life.” When you avoid blaming others and making excuses, you feel responsible and set yourself up for success. So, repeat the following positive motivational phrase daily: “I am responsible for what happens in my life.”

5. Develop the habit of focusing

The fifth and final tip to enhance your personal authority is to develop your focus to the highest levels. Any great success requires absolute focus, and it is a habit you must possess to enhance your ability to influence others and achieve success.

We may not be exaggerating when we say that absolute focus is the most important characteristic of successful people, but self-discipline is what you need to reach a high level of concentration. So, self-discipline can be defined as the ability to force yourself to do what needs to be done at the required time, whether you want to or not.

Keep asking yourself these two questions: How do I make the best use of my time right now? What can I do that would improve my life if I did it well?

Once you identify your most important tasks, give them your full attention until they are accomplished. This habit gives you more enthusiasm, a feeling of greater self-esteem and self-confidence and your ability to achieve great things, which is what you need to start planning big goals.

In conclusion

Successful people, from the greatest CEOs to the most influential world leaders in history, are distinguished by their ability to influence others.

So, if you apply these tips, you will be on the path that leads to amazing success and a happy life in which you achieve what you dream of.