Yes, you are a mover and shaker. You already know that you have personal power and you know that together, women can do great things. You know what accomplishment is all about. Still, let’s look a little deeper and turn the light on to empowerment with a high beam focus.
To “empower” means to give authority to, or power to act; to make yourself or someone else stronger, or more confident. In essence, it is a force for moving forward.
Consider the key ring that you carry with you – the key ring that unlocks the doors that are most important to you, and the doors that you help to hold open for others. Today, you can add five new keys to that key ring. These are the keys to empowerment – to carry with you wherever you go – the keys that
will empower you to open new doors, to accomplish even more as you travel your personal and professional paths.
1. Empowerment means you have to stretch. Consider the Tai Chi exercise move of holding up the cauldron – that giant bowl that is your responsibility to carry. Picture yourself holding it high in the air, then stretching upward even further, and being beckoned upward even more when that voice inside says, “What’s that barrier you have to break through? Keep stretching…break through that ceiling!”
The need to keep stretching is Key #1.
2. Empowerment can be heavy. It is a responsibility – one that you have signed up to carry. Because it can be a heavy cauldron, you need to balance that load with some joy and lightness. Laughter is that balancing key. Laugh and the whole world laughs with you; smile and the world smiles back. It has
been written that we need about a dozen hearty laughs a day for staying healthy and balanced. Children can laugh hundreds of times in a day; but what about you, the adult career woman?
When was the last time you laughed? Balancing with joy is Key #2.
3. The third key is provided in Stephen Covey’s book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. His habit, “Keeping the End in Mind” is powerful. Do you know what the end point is for what you’re trying to do? Can you see it? Sense it? What are those big goals for you…personally, professionally, organizationally? This is not your to-do list nor your New Year’s Resolutions. This is about the big dreams in your life, the achievements that are pulling you forward – the ones with your name on them in bold letters.
Keeping the end in mind is Key #3.
4. Understand that mediocrity can creep in to diminish your degree of success and empowerment. Mediocrity means of only average quality, or to not stand out. Mediocrity has been described as a dimension that is bound by the likes of indecision, compromise, past thinking and lack of vision. But you
have been endowed with a certain mixture of abilities, talents, Skills and opportunities that make you unique and significant. There’s something within each of us that cries out to be above average, extraordinary, to be empowered to act, to move forward. It is in that recognition, that we resist mediocrity. Abraham Maslow gave us the life secret that is at work here: You will either step forward into growth or you will step back into safety.
Resisting mediocrity is Key #4.
5. The final key comes from our self awareness and being awake. It is to consciously know that each of us has that choice – whether to step forward into growth or to step backward into safety. Empowerment of oneself or of others is a choice. People choose to stop or not, to build walls or not, to act or not, to push through to the next level or not, to move forward or not, to see things from other views or not. Each of us has a built-in barometer that tells us (if we are aware and awake to it, that is) of our own level of empowerment. That barometer is the answer you give to this specific question, “How do I greet change?” (You can substitute the word change with dilemma, situation, etc.). The conscious introspection is what is so important.
Key #5: Every empowered step forward is a choice!
Life is here and it is now. Either we meet it and we live it, or we miss it. When you choose to be empowered, you won’t miss it.