Empowerment tiny changes-Big Shift podcast

Summary: Empowerment is made up of acceptance, trust, courage, humility and being open. These ways of being bring clarity and allow me to feel confident and take bold action. Empowerment is not control, it is letting control go and seeking for the outcome that will happen if I try to control or not. If you feel powerless check if you are over identifying with a personality trait. Stop saying I am and say I’m experiencing instead.
Hello and welcome to Episode 25, Empowerment. This is a fascinating topic. I'm excited you're here, and thank you so much for listening. What is empowerment? What's the goal? Why do we want to feel empowered? Anyway, for me, the goal of empowerment is to feel strong and secure enough and safe so that I know that whatever is going on in my life I can handle it. I can feel confident, and I can cope. I want to be stable, resilient, and when life's challenges come, which they do, I want to be able to face them with some equanimity.
Is empowerment the same as control? No. I assert control when I feel the most powerless. The more powerless I feel, the more I try to control that person, place, or thing, that something in my life that I find unacceptable. This can lead me to manipulation, trying to control that person, place, or thing, trying to stop something from happening. It's an effort to protect myself from failure, disappointment, getting hurt, and it's natural. I want to stress that I think this is very natural, and it's our first fallback position. It may even work in the short term, but it's never the way to build the connections that I really want, and it's not the best place to make decisions from.
For example, I recently wanted to control the outcome of a decision in a committee that I belong to, and it was about control. I wanted to be right that the company I wanted to hire was the best company and the other committee members wanted to hire somebody else. When I felt that impulse to control, I paused and checked inside and said, "How important is it?" In this case, it wasn't that important. I want to say sometimes it is, but in this case, it wasn't. That outcome of that decision didn't reflect on me as a person at all because in that case, I didn't need to be the smartest or know the best choice, I can let the group decide.
What stops empowerment? When I come from my ego or when I believe my identity in my changing emotions or circumstances is who I am, over-identifying with a personality trait or belief. For example, if I say, and I've done this a lot in my life, if I say I'm an anxious person when it comes to money, I get anxious when my finances are low, I can't help it. It's just who I am.
If you listen carefully, what I'm saying is a lot of negatives. I'm telling myself I can't help it. I'm telling myself that being anxious is me. It's who I am. It's an excuse to become anxious when my finances are low.
These comments cause me to focus on my anxiety, then I feel like I'm in crisis. The finance problem is too big to handle, and my thinking and feelings continue to spiral out to control. I pull away from my partner. I worry. I become convinced I can't be happy until this situation is over.
What happens if I were to focus on the solution instead and tell myself I am experiencing anxiety about my finances. Words are important. Words put a distance between me, my identity, and my experience of anxiety. Experience is something that passes. Who I am is a part of me. If that's my position - I am an anxious person, then I argue to be right about it and no one can tell me any different.
I can even say, "I don't want to be anxious about this," but I still will unconsciously argue to be right that I am an anxious person. It's part of our human condition to find meaning in events, so be careful what meaning you assign to who you are. Be careful of how you describe you. Try saying, "This is an experience." I can do the same with anger, depression, fear. The more I over-identify with a speci