Power runs through ten levels, from believing nothing can change at Level 1 to becoming so embedded in society that the rules bend around you at Level 10. According to the video, power is not money, status or fame. It is something much more delicate: the ability to influence or control the future, and if you want the world to move in the direction you choose, you need to see how it works in action.
Here are the ten levels in order, with what each one looks like and what moves you up to the next.
Watch the full video here, or skip to the breakdown below.
The 10 levels at a glance
- Level 1: Powerless (0:29)
- Level 2: Aware (2:00)
- Level 3: Active (3:14)
- Level 4: Competent (4:44)
- Level 5: Resourceful (6:23)
- Level 6: Influential (7:38)
- Level 7: Authoritative (8:39)
- Level 8: Decisive (9:49)
- Level 9: Transformative (11:13)
- Level 10: Untouchable (12:47)
Level 1: Powerless
At this level life feels like walking through a rainstorm without an umbrella, hitting a dead end every few steps. People talk over you, make decisions for you and you accept it. You have no money, no confidence and no control, and you are a helpless product of circumstance.
The script’s hard line is that being here is a choice. Powerlessness has nothing to do with money, birthplace or what has happened to you. It is the belief that nothing can ever change, and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. The way out is a switch in belief.
Level 2: Aware
This is the opposite of powerlessness. You are the same person in the same room with the same problems, but the lights come on. You realize that your decisions influence your future, in the most practical sense: actions have consequences and your choices shape your life.
That means you are not stuck as the character the world assigned you at birth. You can choose who you want to become, and that choice alone gives you more power than you have ever had. Your identity may not match your reality yet, but you now have something new: hope.
Level 3: Active
Up to now everything has happened in your head, and that is not enough. At Level 3 you start doing things. They can be tiny, almost stupidly simple, like drinking water instead of soda, cleaning your room or saying no for the first time. Or they can be bigger, like learning a skill or emailing someone you want to work with.
None of it looks impressive from outside, and that is not the point. This is about inputs, not outputs, and each action moves the needle a little. As long as you keep trying and keep acting, you can achieve almost anything on your own. To make big things happen out in the world, though, you need more power.
Level 4: Competent
This is where power finally becomes useful. Anyone can take action, but not everyone can do it well. At Level 4 you have practiced, learned and paid enough attention to actually do things well, so your actions lead to real results.
People notice. They rely on you and trust you with bigger opportunities because you have proven you can deliver. The script calls competence the turning point in the game of power, and says becoming competent is within your control. The remaining question is which part of life to improve.
Level 4 is about becoming effective.
Level 5: Resourceful
There is a strange ceiling built into being human. However disciplined or skilled you are, you have two hands, one mind and 24 hours in a day. Breaking through means no longer treating yourself as your only source of power.
You start noticing the tools around you, such as money, software, machines, people and systems, and see that each can act on your behalf. A resourceful person combines technology, systems, people and money into a single extended movement, and makes things happen without personally doing them. This is not manipulation. It is what businesspeople and politicians do: pull on levers to bend reality through indirect force.
It explains why some people seem impossibly effective. They are not doing more than you, they have learned to multiply themselves.
Level 6: Influential
A different kind of power appears when people factor you into their decisions. Your opinions matter now. You warn them and they pause, you give advice and they change something in their lives. Your reputation works for you even when you are not in the room.
People pay attention because they believe you see something they do not, and nothing is being forced. When you move, others move in response, creating ripple effects that reach people you have never met. Doors open and opportunities come to you, because the world starts meeting you halfway.
Level 7: Authoritative
At this level power stops depending on how convincing you are or how much people admire you. It comes from the weight of an institution behind your voice. Most of the world is held together by rules, such as traffic laws, company policies, military ranks and government procedures, and somewhere inside those rules someone has the final say.
Level 7 begins when you become that person. It might be in a company you built, a team you lead, a community you manage or a position you were chosen to hold. People move in the direction you choose because the rules say they must, and your decisions become orders. Your power becomes official.
There is a limit, though: authority is not the same thing as true power.
Level 8: Decisive
Even with authority, a manager, team leader or public official operates inside a structure. The rules say you are in charge, but you inherited those rules and your power exists only within them.
Decisive power begins when you can rewrite the rules instead of only enforcing them. You are no longer forced to choose among options someone else designed. You can create new ones and design a process that fits the reality you want. The script adds that this does not have to be used in an evil genius way, since the world often needs a change of direction. You can remove bottlenecks and change conditions, and problems that felt impossible become solvable.
Decisive power is the freedom to rewrite the rules for everyone else to follow.
Level 9: Transformative
The earlier levels were about written rules such as laws, company policies and political systems. Every society also runs on unwritten rules: the quiet expectations about how people should live, what they should value and what normal looks like. Most of us move inside those patterns without questioning them.
Occasionally someone powerful enough arrives with a vision that shifts those patterns, and at this level power reshapes culture. Buying a company like Twitter and changing its rules can do it, as can building a revolutionary technology, or creating an artistic movement, a financial model or a political philosophy.
This level does not always show up in your personal life. The inventor of a new iPhone gets very rich, while an author of a manifesto may sell a few hundred copies and see the impact years later. The effect is the same: people adopt new habits and the old ways fade.
Level 10: Untouchable
It is hard to point to a single person who has reached this stage. The level almost always belongs to organizations so deeply embedded in everyday life that removing them would set society back a few decades.
The script gives Apple and Microsoft as examples: entire industries run on their tools, governments depend on their infrastructure and billions of people organize their days around their products. Another example is the World Bank, whose disappearance would leave entire continents unstable. Their power comes from how many systems rely on them. They sit above the rules and exist at a level where the rules have to bend around them.
There is nothing left in your weight class.
Climbing the levels
Read as a ladder, the first four levels are entirely within your control: belief, awareness, action and skill. From Level 5 up, power increasingly comes from what you can direct beyond yourself, whether that is tools, people, reputation, institutions or culture.
The practical starting point is the same at every level: work out where you are now, and build the skill that gets you to the next one.
FAQ
What are the 10 levels of power?
Powerless, Aware, Active, Competent, Resourceful, Influential, Authoritative, Decisive, Transformative and Untouchable. They run from believing nothing can change to being so embedded that rules bend around you.
What is the difference between authority and decisive power?
Authority lets you enforce rules inside a structure you inherited. Decisive power lets you rewrite the rules themselves, so you are no longer limited to options someone else designed.
How do you move from Level 1 to Level 2?
By a shift in belief. Level 1 is the conviction that nothing can change, and Level 2 begins when you realize that actions have consequences and your choices shape your life.
What does being resourceful mean in terms of power?
It means treating money, software, machines, people and systems as tools that can act on your behalf, so you can make things happen without being the one who physically does them.
Who reaches the Untouchable level?
Mostly organizations rather than individuals. The video names companies like Apple and Microsoft and institutions like the World Bank, because too many systems rely on them to remove.
