Personal Empowerment: What It Is, and How To Develop It

Posted by Alcyone _Featured_, Conscious Living Tuesday, October 2nd, 2012

Empowerment is a mechanisim that can be developed by anyone who wishes to deal with life’s challenges in a positive way and to get the best out of every situation. Human beings worldwide are taught and programmed to view life as one long stressful event with intermittant inputs of happiness or joy.

To understand this and start empowering yourself, you want to be open to mindset change. In other words, to completely reverse the thought process and training that brought you to view life as a stressfull event.

No one knows if we are destined to live for five years or 105 years from our birth. That’s out of our control, but we do have considerable input into this outcome.  The early years of our lives are where we get most of our influences and, where we learn the physical and phsycological habits that point us in whatever direction we are going in today.

When the place you are in now and the direction you are headed in does not serve you well or when you are stressed, unhappy and feeling unfullfilled, you want to stop, take stock, realize that this is your life, and no one else can change or point it in a better direction than you.

Start by establishing a “sell by” date on the negative experiences of the past that we tend to drag with us because we don’t understand that there is a better, more fulfilling way to view and live life. Nothing in anyone’s past can be even near as powerful as their best vision of themselves for the future. See your best vision of you starting with your relationships — with your partner, family, friends, health, work, money, and spirituality – and in all of these, see yourself having fun. Hold the vision of each that makes you feel good, then put them all together and go for the best you can be every day.

Empowerment and self esteem are driven by honest feedback that is not influenced by emotion. To get the best from honest feedback and understand empowerment we want to present honest personal traits. It’s as simple a process as this; if you wave your fist or act dishonestly with someone they will go into a defensive or agressive mode and that’s what will influence any feedback you get from them. How would that make you feel?  Now that you have negative feedback, how would that make you act?.  How would that affect your self esteem?

Now if instead of waving your fist or acting dishonestly you are always smiling, helpful, consistently honest and reliable you will receive much the same in return. How would that make you feel?.  Now that you have positive feedback, how would that affect your self esteem? How would that make you act? Yes, you want to do it again and again, and when you do it again and again your self esteem grows and you become more empowered every day. Stress reduces, joy increases.

Then eventually, this will attract happier events into your life. But a happy event can come along that can become stressful when we drop our guard to think and act egotistically or to do something for the sole purpose of pleasing someone else at our own expense. If this happens, look at it as  feedback that something is not in alignment with your attitude and outlook, put your ego aside so you can reposition your attidue toward the situation from a higher perspective, free of ego distortion. When you do this, you start to feel better happiness and joy will soon again be restored to the situation.

Our lives and relationships are truly a mirror of our actions and reactions, and what you put out is what you will get back.When you have a change of perspective and feed your positive side more than your negative side consistently, life can be a very fullfilling process in a very short time. 

Brendan McDonagh

2 October 2012

About the Author

Brendan McDonagh is a former Five-star chef.  Now an accredited life, executive & wellness coach, author, facilitator and public speaker.

Brendan specializes in natural weight management and Reverse Type 2 Diabetes wellness programs.

In 2008 Brendan was 53lbs overweight and was diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes, a life-threatening degenerative disease.

Not taking the traditional diabetes treatment route, Brendan developed a system incorporating his culinary and coaching skills to manage his diabetes and, with medical supervision, he successfully reversed his Diabetes without medication. Brendan reduced his excess weight without dieting, over-exercising or any other quick fix methods. Three years later Brendan received a complete bill of health and a letter of congratulations from his Doctor.

This is considered to be even more amazing as Brendan suffered a main artery brain haemorrhage in September 2009 half way into his diabetes management plan.

Today, Brendan continues to maintain his natural weight and is still Diabetes free. His mission now is to coach others to manage their weight safely to avoid the many food related illnesses and to reduce the pandemic impact of  type 2 diabetes. Brendan has put his natural weight management / diabetes system into Book form. His new book, “Reverse Type 2 Diabetes Naturally” released in E-book form can be purchased on http://www.type11diabetes.com. The book is soon to be available in hardback.