How much have you thought about what it means to feel empowered over the past week? If you were able to read my blog from last week (read it here), it helped outline some questions you can ask yourself in order to narrow down parts of you and your life that can benefit from self-empowerment as well as some of the barriers that you possess preventing you from being able to feel empowered.
Start by determining what parts of you need empowerment. There are several questions you can ask yourself in order to find these parts. For example:
- What is possible for me right now that I wasn’t able to do last year?
- How do I want to feel?
- What can I enjoy more of?
- What stresses me out?
- What kind of experiences do I want to have?
- How can I do things differently?
- What is my definition of success?
- How do I see myself?
- What am I afraid of?
- How do I make use of my time?
- What are my goals?
Then, figure out what barriers to empowering yourself exist, if any, so you can work on eliminating those:
- Negative self-talk/inner critic
- Lacking self-care/self-love
- Missing life goals
- Comparing yourself to others
- Lacking motivation
Once you’ve spent the time to self-explore and answer some relevant and important questions toward self-empowerment, next you can identify which areas of life these answers and insights pertain to. According to Dr. John DeMartini, a human behavior expert, and published author, there are seven main areas of life where we can apply our methods of self-empowerment as well as the consequences of not doing so. After taking a look at each, start to think about how you would reorder this list based on your perception of priority and level of importance which is determined by identifying what values we hold and how each of these seven areas upholds those values.
Physical
This area of life represents health, stamina, strength, and physical well-being. If we fail to empower ourselves physically then we’re more susceptible to manipulations of our bodies and coercion to engage in unhealthy behaviors. We lose a sense of autonomy and ownership over our bodies and are likely to ask fewer questions concerning our physical health and general healthcare.
Financial
The financial area of our lives surrounds our financial success and independence. For those who place a high value on achieving financial success, living a certain lifestyle, or financially taking care of our loved ones, this is an important area and there should be goals set around reaching a certain income level or other ways to measure self-empowerment and success through financial gain. Lacking self-empowerment in our financial lives can lead to making us feel worthless or allowing others to dictate what we’re worth.
Relationships
This area of life should be a priority for many of us. After all, relationships are one of the most vital needs in order to live the best quality of life, according to Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Relationships can be defined in a variety of capacities, but we will focus on defining this area of love and intimacy in our familial and other close relationships.
This is an important value if support and feeling connected to people are a priority to you. The risk we run if we don’t empower ourselves in our relationships is that we may end up doing or agreeing to things we don’t want to do. This can also be described as having more parasitic relationships, where only one person gets his/her needs met, rather than symbiotic relationships, where both get their needs met by each other.
Social
Being social is more than liking to attend parties or social events or preferring to engage in social activities. Self-empowering the social aspect of your life is accomplished through opportunities to have social influence and demonstrate leadership to others.
This can derive a high degree of satisfaction for those who place a high priority or value on being in public roles or helping others. Social self-empowerment is important for many of us as it gives a sense of purpose to be able to positively influence or help others, and it promotes independent thought and value in yourself which will make it more difficult for others to impose their beliefs and expectations on you.
Mental/Wisdom
We all possess our own version of creativity (yes, even if you can only draw a stick figure), and we all need outlets for expressing it. For some, a high degree of importance may be placed on creating innovative ideas and using their mental capacity to its fullest. This may look like pouring your goals into creating a hobby or side gig surrounding your brand of creativity, or maybe self-empowerment would best be placed in taking a sculpture class or writing a memoir. When we place value on this area of life and empower ourselves, we are less likely to be told what to think.
Business/Vocation
Maybe we place our highest value on what skills and utility we have in our careers vs. how much money we make. In that case, we place importance on our career success and achievements. Goals can be set to get around barriers to advancement such as increasing our level of education to advance ourselves in our career or reinventing what type of industry we’re in entirely. This, of course, depends on how satisfying your current career is and what level of advancement is available. When we place emphasis on our career success, we’ll be less likely to be told what to do while gaining a greater sense of career independence and achievement.
Spiritual
Maybe money, career success, and focusing on a hobby are not important to you, but what is important is gaining a sense of something beyond yourself or the environment you’re immediately surrounded by. This can lead to a spiritual journey with the intent and purpose of finding a meaningful purpose for life, thereby improving overall life satisfaction. You can choose to take this journey alone, gather with a group of people on similar journeys to experience the journey with, or allocate your time to connecting with others on more of a spiritual level than just a social level.
Gaining self-empowerment in spirituality can lead to experiencing more gratitude for things in your daily life or placing importance on a force or movement beyond yourself. Placing your perspective on understanding and exploring phenomena that remind you your problems are comparatively insignificant when measured against the vastness of the world and universe can greatly improve overall life satisfaction.
Once you’ve taken inventory as to which of these seven areas are most important to you and your values (what values you hold at the highest priorities are those which will give you the greatest satisfaction to achieve your goals and empower yourself), begin to brainstorm and identify what goals can be set to improve each of these areas you chose, starting with the one holding the highest level of importance to you. When we live our life congruently to what values we hold highest, we gain the most fulfillment, our confidence increases, and we feel ready to take on increasing numbers of tasks and challenges.
In next week’s blog, we’ll discuss how to actually form your self-empowerment goals and hold yourself accountable for making the steps toward accomplishing them.