PsyBlog shows a simple mental exercise that can increase one’s power:

“Have successful professionals always been successful? Take Francesca Gino. An Associate Professor at Harvard, she is considered by many to be a superstar. But things did not always look so bright for her: two years in a row she gave job talks at a number of top 10 schools and universities, but got no offers from those schools. Yet, in 2009, everything suddenly turned up roses; she got offers from Harvard, Wharton, Berkeley, and New York University. What had changed? Well, clearly she was older and wiser. But she also changed her pre-talk ritual: before each campus talk and interview she sat down and wrote out a reﬂection of a time in which she had power.”

The efficacy in this exercise stems from your ability to identify with successes. Tasks that seem unreasonable or far-fetched are now no big deal because you’ve already been there.

On the other side of the coin, most people fail due to focusing solely on what can go wrong. Whether you’re in an interview or about to approach a person, you could get bogged down in how you made a fool out of yourself last time, or how the approach didn’t go well, etc.

So, what is one to do in this scenario?

“All you do is sit down beforehand and reflect on a time when you had power. By doing this you are activating your own personal sense of power.”

If you don’t have any success with which to identify, then get out and create it.