What's Your Superpower?

Like many other 90’s babies, I was obsessed with the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers and the idea of having my own superpowers.  

As a child, few things captured my imagination quite like the superpowers of my favorite superheroes. When I was 8, there was nothing cooler in my mind than the idea of being able to climb skyscrapers with my bare hands, shoot spiderwebs from my wrists, and swing through the air at supersonic speeds. 

As I’ve gotten older, my conception of what makes an ability a superpower has expanded. I no longer believe that superpowers exist solely on movie screens or comic book pages. Superpowers are real and very much within our grasp. And I'm not just talking about the superheroes among us who fight fires, land planes, and save lives on a daily basis. I believe superpowers are even more ubiquitous than that. In fact, there’s a good chance that you know and love someone with a superpower. 

Still not following me? Okay, bear with me for a second.

Have you ever met a good listener? I mean a really good listener. Did you know that good listeners have the power to bend time and space? Seriously. When talking to a good listener, it’s just you and them and nothing else. The magic of a deep conversation causes time to slow down and opens a portal that allows us to truly see ourselves.  

Irish poet John O’Donahue spoke about the amazing fact that none of us have ever truly seen our own face. We have seen reflections of our faces in windows and mirrors, but such reflections are “notoriously untrustable.” The same can be said for photographs. Thus, “if love means anything or a friendship means anything, it means that in the presence of the other, you begin to see who you are in how they reflect you back to yourself.”

Good listeners excel at this. I know this to be true because I am lucky to be married to one. The first thing that stood out to me about my wife when we first met was the way she listened. We were having a conversation about Malcolm X and the impact that his life had on both of us in the home of the dear friend who introduced us. And though the conversation was brief, I knew in that moment that I wanted to experience the magic of that conversation again and again. Our conversations today are still animated by the magic of that very first one. It is through the art of conversation that my wife and I continue to grow together and discover new ways to see the world and the beauty that lies in one another. To me, what makes this possible is her superpower of good listening. 

This portrait of Malcolm X hangs in our home. The first conversation my wife and I ever had was about Malcolm X, and I knew instantly that she had the superpower of good listening. 

Of course, there are other superpowers too. One of my college roommates is probably the most disciplined person I have ever met. He had the ability to go to the library on a Saturday morning, turn off his phone, and work on a paper for three hours straight with impeccable, undivided focus. He would take a break for lunch, then do the same thing in the afternoon, finishing the paper that he started earlier that day just in time to join the rest of us for dinner. I marveled at how my roommate’s remarkable self-discipline allowed him to achieve a type of work-life balance in college that I could only dream of. 

While I am better about limiting my distractions nowadays, in those days, I too often let Facebook timelines and funny YouTube videos distract me from remaining focused on my work for extended periods of time. As a result, the same paper that took my roommate a day to draft would have likely taken me several days, sometimes at the cost of precious sleep or invaluable time with my friends. 

For my roommate on the other hand, work never seemed to get in the way of his social life or his sleep. My roommate taught me that 24 hours is actually enough time in a day. For many of us, I think that the thing standing in the way is not time, but our ability to focus in a world full of distractions competing for our attention.  

The good news is that I believe the superpower of self-discipline is something we can all tap into. Little by little, day by day, I strive to be a better version of myself than I was yesterday when it comes to limiting my distractions and improving my focus. I now sleep with my phone outside of the bedroom. I now wake up early enough to exercise and work on my creative projects before my regular day job, accepting that I will rarely have the energy to do these things at the end of the workday. 

These small changes in my routine have made a world of difference in my life. Since making a conscious effort to improve my self-discipline, I have managed to write and publish a novel, teach myself how to play guitar, and release an album, all while working as a full-time attorney. 

If you are reading this and find yourself struggling to achieve a professional or creative goal, I encourage you to tap into the innate superpower of self-discipline that lies within all of us. Examine the small changes that you can make to your routine, and watch how your life will soar. 

People who don't take things personally also have a superpower. A person with this superpower has the uncanny ability of not letting anything that other people do or say ruin their day or affect their internal world long-term. For example, a person with this superpower can get cut off by another driver on their way to work and carry on with their day, refusing to give a stranger more energy than they deserve. At work, that same person could receive critical feedback on a project they’ve poured their heart into, and not let that feedback destroy their internal sense of self. 

In the same lecture I quoted earlier, O’Donahue comments on how, even though we all inhabit the same physical world, each of our internal worlds are completely different. No one can actually see the world the exact same way that you do because no else can actually see your experiences. They can only see your behaviors. “So in a certain sense, if you don’t look out for your inner life, nobody else can. . . . The world that you inhabit and see is shaped by the way you see it. And the way you see is shaped by the way you think. So if you really want to change your life, the best way to change it is to change the way you think.” 

This is one of my favorite photos of my mom. She has the superpower of being able to not take things personally. I believe she has this superpower because she does a good job of looking after her inner life. 

I believe people who are good at not taking things personally are able to do so because they have done a good job of looking out for their inner life.  My mom has this superpower. My mom looks out for her inner life like no one else I know. She is always praying. She reads her Bible every day, multiple times a day. And she praises God constantly, if not outwardly with her words, then more subtly with her actions. When I look at my mom, I see a woman with an unshakeable faith in a higher power, and it is this faith that enables her internal world to be one that is rarely disturbed by the actions of others.  

As a child, I could never tell whether my mom was having a bad day. I could always count on my mom to be loving, warm, and lighthearted. I would not be the person I am today were it not for her love and presence in my life. And it is only now that I can see her through adult eyes that I see the source of her superpower. It is the way she looks after her inner life. 

While her faith is how she looks after her inner life, by no means does one have to be religious or even spiritual to look after one’s inner life. I am confident that this superpower can also be accessed through others means, such as meditation, making art, or spending time in nature. I believe what matters most is that you do the things and go to the places that have the tendency to shape your thoughts in a positive direction. 

Well, there you have it. Three real-life superpowers and three real people in my life that embody them. If, before reading this, the only images that came to my mind when you heard the word "superpower" are Marvel movies, I hope that I was able to help expand your imagination for the amazing things that each and every one of us is capable of.

The only question that remains is . . . what’s your superpower?

If you enjoyed this piece and would like to learn more about my mom’s superpowers, I invite you to read my debut novel The Dreams of Our Ancestors, a tribute to my incredible mom. In learning her story, I hope you'll come to see why she is my real-life superhero.