Ask three people for their definition of the word “empowerment” and you’re likely to get three different answers. Some feel empowerment is about the ability to live a life of their own design. Other people think it’s about directing their own life while living up to their fullest potential, so they can draw pleasure and satisfaction, fulfillment and self-actualization from their experiences. And still others feel empowerment is about learning to be stable, resilient and confident in the face of other people’s opinions.
Any way you look at it, true empowerment is always involved when we find ourselves “stuck” and want to get “unstuck.” Have you ever had that feeling? You want to move forward beyond the invisible limitations that are holding you back. You want to feel more in control and experience more success. Perhaps you want to increase your feelings of autonomy and self-determination, to understand your strengths and weaknesses, and to believe in yourself.
When life is not playing out the way you desire, and you aren’t experiencing the levels of empowerment you have identified as important to you, slowing things down, and having a good hard look at what is actually going on, can be the first step to change. Asking questions is a great way to kick-start the process, and you might find these ones helpful:
- What parts of my life make me feel dissatisfied?
- What triggers are causing me to feel out of control in my life?
- What parts of my life are causing me grief?
- What parts of my life are not meeting my expectations?
- What parts of my life would I like to change?
- What unproductive habits and patterns are showing up in my life?
- What can I become more aware of in my life?
Taking a step back to examine what is going on in our lives gives us the opportunity to examine behaviours, patterns or habits that have become familiar and repetitive, but that do not ultimately serve us. Those behaviours and habits may present as resistance, procrastination or an inability to embrace growth, or we may simply feel stuck. The end result may be dissatisfaction in our health, our careers, our relationships, our happiness or our finances.
To experience empowerment, we first need to make a conscious decision to recognize and take action in those places in our lives where we are not being proactive. We need to understand how we have positioned ourselves, often unconsciously, in the current unsatisfactory situation, and then take responsibility for where we are. Then and only then are we able to create change, create a new experience and shift our outcomes.
Once we understand that we have been sitting in the passenger’s seat of our life, rather than in the driver’s seat, we can take responsibility for our results, and make the commitment to switch seats. That’s when everything changes. We start to feel a sense of empowerment and autonomy, and our confidence begins to build; we start taking steps to recalibrate our lives. When we acknowledge and assess where we are with our health, our careers, our relationships, our happiness and our finances, we can take the next step and decide what we would like in-stead.
In our next blog post, we’ll look a little more closely at that next step.
To learn more about the Dynamic Visioning Six Step Process and tips for manifesting your own success to live a life of your own design, please book a 30 minute phone session with Simone Usselman-Tod, Certified Integrative NLP Practitioner and Coach. Learn more about Dynamic Visioning.
