Empowerment takes courage. It is difficult to be yourself in a world that shouts the personal power message, but really just wants to sell you something.
What is empowerment anyway? How do you find it? Does paying a thousand dollars for a one day workshop empower you, or does it just demonstrate the depth of your dependence on others?
Building self confidence and personal power is an especially tough task, because you must make empowered decisions on how to be yourself, from a weakened living-for-others perspective.
It is a classic example of trying to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps. That is why you seek guidance to empower yourself.
But…
Help is a double edged sword
You must be careful how you use outside help such as workshops and seminars. Your dependence on them can negate any value they offer.
The true teacher teaches you how to do without them. There is no thought of keeping you under their influence. The only outside help you should seek then, is that which triggers your personal power without hidden agendas.
Motivational seminars that artificially and temporarily boost your self confidence, only serve to disappoint when you come down from the high. For some people these seminars are like drugs. And for some seminar facilitators, that is exactly what they intend. The onus is fully upon you to discriminate wisely; not an easy task considering the marketing prowess of some of these seminar operators.
Self empowerment
There is another way to empowerment though. Despite the impossibility projected by the bootstrap argument, it is possible to achieve self-empowerment. That is, to empower yourself to be yourself, without overly depending on outside help.
Courage and a small leap of faith are key ingredients in the formula for self empowerment. Without a measure of courage you cannot proceed into the unknown, and without some faith in yourself you would have no reason to exercise courage in the first place. Courage and faith then make good partners.
What specifically will you base this faith upon? Well, even in your weakest moments you retain traces of self belief. Despite how you feel, you know that you have the potential to reach your goals. This knowledge is what motivates you to seek solutions, and it can be the springboard for your leap of faith.
Of course, it is easy to say we have potential. Using it is quite another matter is it not? Acting on your potential takes courage. Courage then is the fuel that will power your leap into yourself — into your personal empowerment.
The formula for self empowerment then is: faith or self-belief + the courage to take action = empowerment.
Finding the power to help yourself
But how do you find the power to help yourself when a lack of personal power is the problem you are trying to overcome?
One way is to begin by reasoning with yourself that you have potential. If you accept that fact, then must accept that this power of potential is within you, and therefore you do have power, albeit temporarily out of reach. Do you agree with that reasoning? I hope so.
So now that you recognize you have personal power, your task is to identify it, access, and use it.
What are the things that make you special? Identify them by asking questions of yourself, then sink into them and become them. You are not your recent response to circumstance. Circumstance is like the weather; it comes; it goes; it passes over and influences how you proceed, but that is all. You continue on your journey regardless. Your special and finer qualities are the only true constant.
Your journey through life is empowered when it is purposeful and proper. And your proper purpose in life is found in the things that make you unique; the qualities that you know you have, but have lacked the courage or determination to act upon.
It is not a great task to identify these special qualities. Most people already know what they are. The difficult part of empowerment is developing the courage to take real and meaningful action using your finer qualities. But this is precisely where the power is — having the courage to take action.
One small action on another, properly directed, will dramatically change your life if you just keep doing it. Action speaks loudest in this world. You will become whatever you do, and you can do it a bit at a time.
To discover yourself; to be yourself; to be the finest person that it is in your nature to be, is true courage — and true empowerment.
Over to you now…
Stumble it!
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9 comments ↓
“One way is to begin by reasoning with yourself that you have potential. ” This is a great pearl of wisdom, one that I’m happy to receive. We can be our worst enemy, or our greatest ally. But in order to propel ourselves and to be that ally — we must reason.
I don’t know too much about seminars. But what I will say, is I do have mentors. Some I don’t even know personally, but consult their wisdom for my own life. When it comes to ethics, I submit: it isn’t always ideal to rely on ourselves. What we may contrive as right, may be wrong. It’s not always so simple.
Self empowerment is not an end all be all in my calculation. It’s important. Very important. But there is also the element of living a life of goodness. And one can do that even independent of their inner climate.
Again, another excellent post. Thank you.
Bamboo,
You are right; it’s not always so simple. It is difficult to see within ourselves and discriminate between the good and the bad, the right and the wrong. But I always feel that it is one of the most worthwhile endeavors.
I like your thought on living a life of goodness. it is simple and true. In that I see power, and that is the self empowerment I speak of. The goodness that is in us can move mountains — if only we give it some exercise now and then
Thank you for adding clarity to this.
Finding the power to help yourself. This has to be the most powerful and useful power ever (the power to help others comes from it).
The resistance to action always seems to be fear of some sort. To bring about action you have to have greater power than fear. When people see others with greater power than the perceived level of fear they say they have courage.
So to create action you either have to lower the amount of fear or increase the amount of personal power. Here’s where personal power has the advantage.
When you have something you want to do there is a certain level of fear opposing it.
Then you break down a set of tasks to get you to what you want. Looking at a smaller task in isolation you still have the same amount of personal power. However the fear for the smaller task is reduced!
The more fear you overcome the greater your personal power becomes until one day people will say you are courageous.
That’s my take on becoming self-empowered.
Hi Jarrod,
I totally agree. fear is at the heart of all dis-ease, discontent, and dis-empowerment. You could say that fear is da king of da dises, but since it’s poor English you’d better not.
Words are powerful aren’t they? They can be precise or vague, and then there are the different connotations we each have for many words.
Courage and power are two of those words that are difficult to pin down. Perhaps that is why they are so powerful. They both have such broad reach and depth that expresses the perspective of the speaker more than it pins down an exact meaning. And sometimes we learn more from that perspective than we would if things were carefully spelled out.
Thanks for your take on it. You’ve widened the view
I like this article, timely one for me this week. I find it takes a lot of courage to be yourself and as a Mom, I notice that the decisions we make as parents that do not coincide with the popular vote require me to be truly in tune with my inner guidance system.
I agree that self help and seminars are a double edged sword and while the high is so uplifting, the post seminar lows are equally excruciating! The one thing that they have offered me, that I might otherwise not have is a new language (of possibility) that happiness and success are not as elusive as one might think.
I think the missing ingredient in self empowerment for me was action. I finally learned that I need to take small steps forward to honor myself and my dreams, in spite of the fear.
Monica,
I too have found that workshops or seminars can expand the range of your conceptions. Another great feature of being in a group setting is that you connect with many others and benefit from their diverse perspectives. And you can make some great friends that way. Of course you have to take the lessons home and work with them.
Most of us, myself included, have feared taking action and suffered the consequences. Your web site is a clear indication that you have taken many of those small steps you speak of
[...] this week, my friend John Rocheleau published an article on empowerment and the Courage to be Yourself. John reminds us that we too frequently look to external resources for our empowerment, instead of [...]
Fabulous article from the very first line: “Empowerment takes courage.” It sure does, but once you find a way to empower yourself through any of the wonderful suggestions you give here, you’re well on your way to success! I shall Stumble and Digg this wonderful article!
Doc KC
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