PAGE IN PROGRESS What you see here is a page of my hypertext book POWER of meanings // MEANINGS of power. Initially empty, this page will slowly be filled with thoughts, notes, and quotes. One day, I will use them to write a coherent entry, similar to these completed pages. See this post to better understand my creative process. Thank you for your interest and patience! :)
You can think about a superhero discovering their power. But this is actually a much more mundane scenario. We have many powers that we are not aware of. These include ability (usually as mental abilities) and also influences. In other words, we often do not know what we can do (we don't know that we can tame our anxiety) or we don't know what impact we have on others.
Other words we can use: understand one's power, realize one's power.
Can we use power without realizing it? It is probably more relevant in case of power as influence. We often are not aware of how our actions and non-actions impact people around us.
Recognizing your power often means recognizing your responsibility, which is not easy to do. So people often do not recognize their power (recognizing one's power is itself a kind of power that one might have but not use).