Do you wish you had more control sometimes over your own life? You could do more and help yourself. Well today I am going to share this short article to help you feel more empowered.
I can remember feeling out of control, so reliant on external factors. If I got the praise I’d feel good only temporarily short term, if I didn’t I’d feel bad lponger term. That’s not to say when someone compliments you, you shouldn’t embrace it… please do, but we need to praise ourselves first.
So here are my tips today how you can become more empowered:
Write your own rules for approval
In life we create beliefs and rules based on experiences. We aren’t often conscious of what we are taking in though and the rules we are forming, especially in childhood. So it’s important to become more conscious of your own rules for approval. I mean what does it take for you to feel approval?
I found that my rules for approval were completely reliant on external factors like other people’s approval and were hard to meet. These were things like ‘everyone has to like me’ or ‘I must be liked by this person’… My rules for rejection were things like one person not liking me, or not everyone agreeing on what I was saying. Which made it pretty much impossible for me to feel approval.
Sounds ridiculous right? But we’ve been conditioned in experience to create these rules and rarely pay attention to them and just go about life. No wonder there are so many challenges in self esteem.
So spend some time and think about what are your rules for approval and rejection? What would some better ones be and rewrite them to where you can consciously see them. Make your rules for feeling approval easy and feeling rejection almost impossible. So you are in control of your own approval and rejection.
E.g to receive approval I tell myself ‘I love you’ in the mirror once a day.. EASY
To receive rejection I would have to shout I am rejecting myself to myself ten times in a row and phone ten people to announce it.
Study someone who models empowerment and take notes
We all know that person or have seen that person who seems so cool and empowered.The great news is we can study them. Take notes… as you write you invite as one of my mentors says. The more you can observe the desirable behaviour the more you are likely to take it on.
I’m not saying become someone else, always be you but take on new behaviour by role modeling others who have that quality. I for example studied the character Harvey Specter off Suits on Netflix. The way he went about life was so cool and empowered and modeled it into my own life.
Take small action each week
Ok so we’ve talked about writing rules and studying empowered people… if you don’t take action or implement anything your life won’t change though. So think of something you can do each week that will empower you to grow.
This could be going on a spontaneous trip to the city or country or saying something you usually wouldn’t. The more we come out of our comfort zone the more we are likely to empower ourselves. I see this said time and time again in personal growth but people don’t know this until they actually do this.
Conclusion
We’ve gone through some pointers on empowering yourself. Be sure to think about what you can do more of from this. If you don’t empower yourself what would the consequence be? Not just for you but those around you. You deserve to empower yourself.
By Jonny Pardoe
Podcast Host, Confidence & Podcast Coach and Author
© The Self Esteem and Confidence Mindset Ltd February 2022
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