how to practice self empowerment
Empowerment is defined as an “authority or power given to someone to do something” and “the process of becoming stronger and more confident, especially in controlling one’s life and claiming one’s rights.” (Oxford Dictionary)
We can define self empowerment as the process of “becoming stronger and more confident in self and taking control of our own life”. Self empowering is the process of empowering ourselves – stepping into our own power. Self empowerment is taking control of our own life, (re)actions, and emotions.
Self empowerment is the process of becoming more confident in ourselves and encouraging ourselves (encouragement is defined as: “the action of giving someone support, confidence, or hope).
Self empowerment is essential to becoming more confident in ourselves, as engaging in self criticism, self judgement, and negative self talk can very negatively affect our self worth and self belief.
In order to feel empowered, we need to empower, encourage, and talk ourselves up every single day. We need to start taking control over our life – take responsibility for our actions and our life, and commit to making positive changes in our life
empowering self talk
Observe your thoughts and your self talk. Do you (mostly) think positive thoughts about yourselves or negative? Do you talk good things about yourself or you constantly criticise yourself? Is your self talk empowering or disempowering?
In order to feel more confident and empowered, you must think positive things about yourselves and speak positively about yourself. You must practice self compassion and let go of self judgement.
It can be very helpful to write journal in which you will note down all the things you have accomplished, your success stories (or success stories of your clients), and positive affirmations.
It is much easier to replace negative self talk with positive self talk if we make ourselves habitual of listening motivational and empowering words on a daily basis (such as motivational talks, podcasts, audiobooks, and affirmations audios).
Meditation practice can help us to clear our mind of negative chatter and connect with our infinite wisdom and potential within, while practicing mindfulness can help us become more aware of our negative thoughts and self talk.
taking control over your life
Taking control over our life starts with realising that we can chose to react instead – acting – on circumstances that we find ourselves in, and taking responsibility to change our life, because we are the person that created it with the decisions, actions, and choices that we did or did not take in the past.
There are numerous ways you can change our life for the better, learn, evolve, and grow every day. You can decide to work with a life coach, seek our professional therapist or counsellor, change your diet, start exercising, meditate, join yoga classes, read good books, enrol in a coaching program or an online course, attend seminars or webinars, learn a new hobby, martial art, skill, or a language, change your place of living, start working on your dreams, start writing that book you want to write, or work on that business idea you’ve had for a long time
Self empowerment is very important in achieving success, because it is how we deal with failures, challenges, setbacks, and whether we believe in ourselves or not, that will ultimately determine if we will achieve the success. You can read more about why self empowerment is important for achieving success here.
practicing self compassion
When a good friend, family member, or a person we love confide in us and tell us that they made a mistake, disappointed someone, or failed at something, we generally react with empathy, act with compassion, and start consoling them:
“You did the best what you could/ knew at the time…”
“Because you experienced one failure, that doesn’t mean you will fail again!”
“There’s no point to to beat yourself up now, regret won’t change anything…”
“You need to think ahead and focus on the future…”
We can show compassion to others easily, especially if those are the people we love deeply and care about, but if we made a mistake, experienced a failure, or failed to meet our own expectations, we can find it very hard to show compassion to ourselves and find it very easy to engage in harsh self criticism and self judgement:
“How could I be so stupid and naive!?”
“I am the worst mother/ manager / person…”
“I always mess things up…”
When we make a mistake, fail, disappoint, or ‘underperform’, we can treat ourselves the way we would never treat our best friend, or even our biggest enemy. We can be our own harshest critic (self criticism), judge (self judgement), and the jury (self punishment).
Self empowerment is the practice of picking ourselves up when we fall, forgiving ourselves, letting go of self judgement and self criticism, and encouraging ourselves with positive self talk.
If you enjoyed reading this post, I whole heartedly suggest checking out my book Self Worth – Women’s Guide To Increasing Self Worth, Self Respect, and Self Confidence on Amazon.