Keep your thoughts positive because your thoughts become your words. Keep your words positive because your words become your behavior. Keep your behavior positive because your behavior becomes your habits. Keep your habits positive because your habits become your values. Keep your values positive because your values become your destiny.

– Mahatma Gandhi

When you speak of power, you usually think of a Rockefeller or a Trump, somebody with money or property. But one of the most powerful men who ever lived had neither. Mahatma Gandhi didn’t own a house, he had no money, but his influence eclipses that of any other person of this century. Though born into wealth, he ultimately gave it all away and through the course of his life managed to let go of material trappings. He followed a life of simplicity.

Here was a man who over long years, step by step, defeated the British Empire. Gandhi’s ideas and strategies of non-violent civil disobedience might have initially appeared impractical to some people. He obtained freedom for India from the British by using a power.  There were seven sources to his power:

Clarity

Gandhi’s purpose was to bring freedom to the people of India. He knew clearly what he wanted, what his major aim in life was, and he was determined that nothing would defeat him.

Belief

Gandhi completely cleared his mind of any doubt that he would eventually win the freedom he desired for his people. He kept his mind securely fixed on his definite major purpose. And this resolute purpose and his persistent actions to achieve it opened his mind to the power of Infinite Intelligence.

Extra mile

No one asked Gandhi to spend his life as he did; no one paid him to do so. He did not have a selfish purpose; he did not think in terms of personal reward. He went not only the extra mile but many millions of extra miles because he was planning to benefit the four hundred million people living in his country. No wonder he had the power.

Discipline

How do you suppose Gandhi managed to keep his mind focused on one definite major purpose all those years? He had many opportunities to capitalize on his situation or to use his power for his personal benefit. Anyone who had the power Gandhi had might have been tempted by such opportunities. But he had the self-discipline to lead a simple life, and thus he had the self-discipline to free a nation. He practiced discipline and expected discipline from everyone around him.

Habits

Gandhi believed in experimenting and forming new habits. He  believed strongly that no one outside can control how he feels.  Gandhi’s ethical thinking was heavily influenced by a handful of books, which he repeatedly meditated upon. Although Gandhi was not the originator of the principle of nonviolence, he was the first to apply it in the political field on a large scale.

Attitude

His positive attitudes of love, respect, understanding, and compassion replaced within each individual all the negativity that ruled within them. They saw the simplicity in his message to replace the existing culture of violence with a culture of nonviolence by replacing with positive.

Mastermind

Gandhi assembled what is probably the greatest mastermind alliance in human history. It consisted of hundreds of millions of minds. Many of these minds may have been lacking in formal education, but each had the capacity for faith and a burning desire to achieve the goal of freedom Gandhi was leading it toward. No power in the world could have defeated such a powerful mastermind alliance-except an even larger one.