Empowerment

What does it mean to live? Think about this. It’s really a simple question. The answer should be equally simple too. What does the word “Live” mean? What else could it mean other than to have a life, to be alive, or adversely, to not be dead.
But what does it mean to die? It has been argued by me on several occasions that we die in many ways. We experience death while living alive—and some people live lifelessly, always following, always wishing they were someone, somewhere, or someplace else. What kind of life is that?

By definition, if life is that which separates us from organic and inorganic objects or dead organisms, then what does it mean to be alive?
What does it mean to live?
The word “Now,” means the present moment, at this time, and now, as in without further delay.

There is another word I use often. This word is empowerment. But what is empowerment?  What does it mean to empower, to give authority, to permit or give permission, or to enable?
To empower is to decide or grant the ability, to do, to act, to administer, and to distribute the responsibility, and most importantly, to empower is to give the permission to go forward.

With complications aside, to empower is to give the right to move ahead. That’s it. That’s all. There’s no big secret.
It’s a simple task.
Think of the things we permit in our life. Think about the people we interact with and the treatment we accept that is less than acceptable, yet we stay anyway.
Think about the times when we wish we could stand up and walk away, but yet, we don’t.
Instead, we stay because we are leashed to different fears, like the fear of lonesomeness or the fear of loss, or the fear of rejection; afraid we are not or will not be accepted anyplace else and this is the best life will ever get.

Think about the habits which hold us back from reaching our full potential. Think about the way we treat our bodies. Think about the food we eat and what we drink.
Consider the exercise we get. Consider the importance of time management, when we sleep, when we eat, when we run, and when we go.

Time management is key because on their own, deadlines can be a bitch. But add stress, add unforeseen complications, add traffic, add the guy in the elevator that pushed three different floors and then goofishly apologizes, “Like oops, sorry.”
Meanwhile, the elevator is full and there is a conference room awaiting your presence or an angry boss wondering, “What they hell is taking so long?”
Or maybe there is a deadline, like a test or a certificate that needs to be handed in by a certain time and a certain date, but due to procrastination—the last minute was the only minute you had left.

This is life undressed.
This is us racing through the pedestrians on the street that somehow stops in front of us when we have to do something or be somewhere. This is us at the last minute with our last minute mindset, slaved to a leash of overthinking, over complicating, and under-appreciating our own personal assets and value.

What else stands in the way of empowerment?
What stands in the way of living now, to be alive, or to give ourselves the permission to authorize our ability?

Doubt is a real thing. Fear is a real thing. Shame, guilt, and blame, are all obstacles that stand in the way of us empowering our abilities to be the best we can be.  

I have been using new tools with clients that hold themselves inaccurately and inappropriately too accountable for things beyond their.
First, we define what is and what is not within our control. We understand what the word unmanageable is. We understand what it means to be powerless. We talk about the words unchangeable, like the past, or unalterable, like life on life’s terms.

Together, we learn we are most powerless whenever we try to fix or change things that are beyond our control.
Think about the energy it takes to change people, places, or things. Think about the drain of manipulation and the needlessness of wasted salesmanship. Why do we need to sell ourselves when the truth is we already have the job?

There are aspects of our past that creep in our minds and cause our mental calculators to add up the accounts of our yesterday. We add the fears and the possibilities of outcome; meanwhile, we subtract from our energy because we waste this as we consider all the unknown variables that may or may not happen. Either way, yesterday is gone. Not every experience is the same. Why not allow this to change? Why not allow us the ability of a new process? Or, what about now, as in this instant, or without further delay?

To empower one’s self is to choose to free one’s self from personal burdens and inaccurate (or over-amplified) fears.
To empower us is to permit us to live, right now, until death do we part.

It’s just a decision.
In all honesty, this is a decision, which we complicate with our excuses and then rationalize them with our self-serving lies as to why we stay as we are.

What would it look like to write a personal letter of forgiveness?
What would it be like to write a pardon for yourself or to let yesterday go and to live life today as if it were new?
What would you remove from your forward vision so that you can see clearly and walk ahead?

This is basic life coaching 101

To empower you now is to permit you to do whatever it is you choose to do; to not give in to the internal narrative, to not live up to the internal biases, or submit to the subconscious programming that keeps us stuck as we are and don’t want to be

Empowerment!
I love that word

It means so many things to me. This means I can walk in a room and not feel afraid or intimidated. This means I am free to be me, now and for the rest of our days, amen.

I know what the empowerment means to me.
More importantly, what does it mean to you?

Think about it . . .