To be empowered means you own everything about you and your life – everything you would label as good and bad. You understand that you are the sum total of all your choices, decisions, actions and inactions. It’s true that you can’t control others or certain events, but you absolutely can control your own reaction to them. Empowerment is responding the way you want to – to everything in your life.
There are many expressions in the English language that shift responsibility from you to someone or something else. “They hurt my feelings.” “That makes me mad.” “The economy is bad.” The government is…” “My parents made me eat everything on my plate…”
When you accept responsibility for your own responses to what occurs in your world, you stop victimizing yourself. This doesn’t mean that you won’t feel anger or sadness or happiness – it just means that you know you have the power to change your reactions and how you want to feel as you go through life. Then the only one who can control you is you – and this is true empowerment.
Let’s say you have a goal to reduce your body fat by 5% within 6 months. Every day you have to decide if you want to move closer to that goal or not. What should you eat or drink? How much should you exercise? These are all choices where you can take 100% responsibility and move yourself closer to your goal. Or you can choose to step off the most direct path to your goal and “cheat” once in a while with your eating plan and exercise. The key is to own or take responsibility for whatever choice you make and be ok with it rather than blaming the party food, beer, or rainstorm for your lack of results.
Being willing to change what’s not working for you rather than denying responsibility makes you a more powerful person. Trying to get different results by doing and thinking the same things over and over just frustrates you. It’s not about being right or wrong – it’s about making your life work for you.
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