
Empowerment comes via responsibility. What do I mean by this?
Only by being fully responsible for our lives, taking ownership of every single event in our lives (whether positive or negative) and moving through these, can we truly feel empowered.
We are in control of ourselves. We have the power to navigate our lives and overcome every, and any, hurdle.
We are not in control of external events, other people’s comments or opinions, or events that may happen to us.
Life will always happen. There will always be highs and lows, good times and bad, happiness and sorrow. But what we always have, is a choice. How we choose to interpret an event, our reaction and whether we choose to let it smoother us, or propel us forward, is completely down to us. We cannot change other people or some of life’s circumstances, but we can always ourselves.
We are all on a journey. A journey of self-discovery and fulfilment. There is no such thing as coincidence. There is a reason for everything. A lesson to be learnt. A story to be shared. A mission to serve. A passion to ignite. A message of hope for others. It is our responsibility to choose the most empowering reasons for the challenges, events and circumstances that life throws our way.
When we become fully present in our lives, accepting every celebration and learning from every knock, we feel empowered and develop a strength and resilience to keep moving forward. Once we expand our thinking and open our minds, although we may slip back at times, we never shrink back to where we started. We all evolve.
We all have limiting beliefs and tell ourselves ‘stories’ in order to try shift blame or make excuses for things we perhaps know we should be doing (or not doing). These stories are our ‘get out of jail’ card. They keep us in stuck patterns, tucked up inside our comfort zone and inhibit us from progressing to where we want to go, or to where we know we can go.
But these stories are just patterns, and patterns can be changed.
When we wake up to these patterns and take responsibility for them, we can question them, distort the image of them, learn from them and view them in a different light. How we interpret events is solely down to us. Whether we realise it or not, we choose every time how we react and internalise events. Nobody forces us to create this meaning, except ourselves.
This can be a hard one for people to grasp because we want to blame others or life for our circumstances. But remember life is external to us. Yes it will throw things at us but we attach the meaning to that event, not life. We create the internal story and dialogue. We attach the emotion to that story and from these emotions, we create our life and feelings.
Waking up to this realisation is powerful.
Once you realise, you are responsible for how you feel, you are responsible for your actions, you create the meaning from events and you create your story and your emotions, that’s when you feel empowered. By allowing another person or event to control your inner world, you hand over your power. By being fully responsible, you take ownership and anything is possible. Once you find that inner power, you need to nurture it, develop it and maintain it. It’s constant work but the best investment you can do for yourself.
Get curious about the stories you tell yourself, question them, explore what emotions these stories are fulfilling in you, can you replace these emotions in a more positive way, picture what your life might be like without these stories.
Life is not out to get us. We are not sent anything we cannot handle. It’s all part of our journey.
Take ownership, change your story and empower yourself!
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