“Empowering your Life” It’s a phrase that seems to be tossed around a lot these days. Empower someone, yourself, your life, your dog, the guy at the stop light. It sure sounds like a lot of work! Especially when you aren’t entirely sure what that looks like. How is it any different from, say, giving someone good advice or controlling the situation, or being courageous – I mean, all of those are very different, but they also sound like “empowerment”?

It seems confusing, so let’s break it down…

“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs,
ask yourself what makes you come alive.
And then go and do that.
Because what the world needs is people who are alive.”
~ Howard Thurman

The first step to Empowering your Life

First, being empowered is discovering that the real power that affects your life, actually resides within you.

Recognize you have a lot more control on what happens to you than you’ve been giving yourself credit for. Your choices, including your reactions, big and small, have a large impact on the world around you. It’s easy to take for granted our own feelings and our own thoughts. They can be habitual and learned from generations of lessons that taught you how to interact with life. If you (or someone you know) have been taught that life happens TO you, then how can the reverse be true? And yet, it really is true, and once you take a breath and stop to look, then it becomes clear that your life is reacting to you.

Regardless of whether feel that you are the one who is reacting to life, it then turns and reacts back to you. The cycle can stop with you; it’s in your hands. That moment, when you realize you can stop the cycle (or more accurately change the cycle) is empowerment.

Living an empowered life can be scary; it requires courage to accept responsibility for your actions and your feelings. Not everyone is ready to accept this idea. Some need to slowly warm up to this responsibility, because they are afraid it means all those “bad things” that happened, were their fault – which they cannot believe is true. If this is you, just know blame is not the message here. No one has to “be at fault”.

Let the past lie, and know that moving forward you are now aware you can choose your actions and just as importantly your reactions. You also know you’ll need to learn some new habits, which will take some practice. When your old habit pops-up you can just say “Ooops, there it goes again, I’m gonna try a do-over and be the empowered person I want to be.”

I know, that sounds a little silly. But when you give your self the space to try again, minimizing the fact that you just did something you didn’t want to do. When you work at retraining your habits. It becomes very powerful.

What about when life around me sucks?

Even when there are outside circumstances beyond your control, within the confines of your circumstances, there are always choices. Most notably, the biggest choice is how you react to the situation. This is governed by what you tell yourself about the situation.

Seeing your Choices, is your number one tool for being empowered.

Some examples of what I mean:

• Will you add a layer of morality to the circumstances – is it “good” or “bad” or “neutral”?
  
• Are you going to blame someone, or decide you are responsible and need to take a certain action?
  
• Are you curious to see where this path is leading you, and just choose to observe?
  

There are far more possible choices than I can illustrate here. The trick is to notice what choice you are making, and is there a different choice you’d rather make? It is these choices that determine your degree of power in creating your entire life.

What does “Living an Empowered life” look like?

Living an empowered life brings you freedom, greater health, and deeper fulfillment. When you begin to accept that you always have a choice, you also accept that the same is true for everyone else around you. They have their own choices and actions and reactions – you no longer need to control them, nor react to them. You can let them make their own life, and decide if you will be affected by them – or not.

You won’t get sucked into their bad day if you don’t want to. You can fully enjoy their happiness and success because you do want to, not because you think you “have to”.  In turn, their feelings become more genuine and true without your accidental, or obligatory, reactions confusing the interaction.

See how powerful you are? You empower many others simply by empowering yourself.

Benefits of Empowering your life

Being empowered goes beyond just having control over your own life and destiny; it encompasses a number of interrelated and interdependent factors. Everyone has personal factors, unique to themselves. Plus, we all have universal factors, such as:

• Your sense of self-worth, and capability
• Your power to control your own emotions
• Trusting yourself and believing you have the answer
• Your belief that you have and can determine your own choices
• Your ability to see opportunities, and the choice to take those opportunities
• Your ability to influence change in the environment in which you live.
• Your ability to influence the society-at-large.

Reaching this level often means intentionally creating a different way to think about life, and yourself. Cultivating a new mindset is about your willingness to grow and expand as a human being. It is also about acknowledging that you can control your mind.

Observe your current, thoughts, beliefs and habits. Do they serve you or do they keep you stuck? This is a life-long inquisition.

As you grow and evolve, you will discover that what served you before no longer gets you what you want now. Like a seed, being buried in the dark, cold and wet soil doesn’t give the new sprout all that it needs, likewise the sapling has different needs than the sprout and the tree from the sapling.

Life is ever-changing, which is an awesome sign that you are truly living your life.

The future of being Empowered

When you decide to be a self-empowered, loving, caring, person, the success and happiness that you desire will begin to attract the very people, events and milestones that re-enforce your empowered life. By learning to empower yourself you learn to bring balance into your life. You will enjoy a life where you are in harmony with yourself and those around you.

That clarity will lead you to decisions which are in accord with where you want your life to go. At the same time, you will be more cognizant of your actions and will be more of an enrichment to other’s lives.

Regardless of your past or your future, you are in control of your now. And that now just got here. Choose wisely.

What does empower mean to you? Is it something you give away, give to yourself or is it a feeling, a sense of your well-being.

What examples can you share of empowerment in your life?

“Success and happiness can be found by meeting certain needs that are fundamental to the human experience.
The tricky part is meeting these, oftentimes conflicting needs in ways that are constructive, proactive and empowering.
It’s the way you get those needs met, that changes your life.”

– Tony Robbins