Self-Empowerment: Becoming the Driving Force for Your Life
Wikipedia defines empowerment as 'the capacity of individuals and/or communities to take control of their circumstances, exercise power and achieve their own goals. It is the process by which they are able to help themselves and others to maximise the quality of their lives’.
I see self-empowerment as having the capacity to take conscious control of your unique set of circumstances and mitigating and/or leveraging them to create opportunities for yourself.
At the foundation of self-empowerment is a deep understanding of one’s strengths and weaknesses and how to work each. This means self-empowerment requires a lot of self-awareness.
Self Awareness: The Starting Point
Without it, we remain blind to the patterns, beliefs, and behaviours that hold us back. Self-awareness is about observing yourself without judgment, understanding your triggers, and recognising the stories you tell yourself about who you are and what you’re capable of.
Because of the accelerated pace of society and urgent need to get things done, we have collectively conditioned ourselves to stop feeling and heeding our internal cues. Over time, this pace of life disconnects us from ourselves; from our emotions, feelings and even subtle physical sensations in our body.
When we are disconnected and unable to think, feel and intuit our way though our lives, we default to our childhood programming, otherwise known as autopilot.
Doing something as simple as finding two minutes in your day to sit and take 10 slow, deep and intentional breaths can start the process of rebuilding your relationship with yourself. It will provide the mental space and stillness needed to ask yourself, ‘How am I feeling now?’ With time, you will hone your ability to tune in to your thoughts, feelings and behaviours.
With self-awareness, comes self-knowledge. You will gradually learn about what you are made of; your values and beliefs, your strengths and your weaknesses.
When I began to truly pay attention to my thoughts and feelings, I noticed how often I operated on autopilot. Especially on days when anxiety was high. I would default to an overly cautious approach instead of a new, creative one. I realised that I was allowing fear and doubt to guide my decisions. Practising self-awareness allowed me to pause, reflect, and question these automatic responses. It was the first step in reclaiming control over my life.
Recognising Self-Limiting Beliefs…
We all have narratives we’ve internalised—those little voices that whisper doubts into our minds. They tell us ‘facts’ about ourselves based on what the world has told us. They might even tell us that women are inferior to men. These beliefs often stem from past experiences, societal / cultural / religious conditioning or even the well-meaning advice of others. Even though these beliefs are not ours, they can certainly shape our reality because they influence the decisions we make on a daily basis. And more often than not, they discourage us from doing things we are actually quite capable of doing! (whether we know it or not)
Self-limiting beliefs will have us take the easy way out or the path of least resistance. They distance us from what we truly want, whether it is connection, recognition, safety or independence. They distance us from more creative solutions to our problems.
Self-limiting beliefs are the bars of the prison we create in our minds that not even Michael Scofield could break out of!
A big part of the prison in my mind is made up of these core limiting beliefs:
I must have everything figured out to succeed.
My self-worth is tied to my significant other’s approval.
I am alone in my struggles.
And all of them were rooted in the same emotion: FEAR of failure. I’d tell myself every version of “I’m not the type to succeed” every time I talked myself out of acting on an idea or a goal.
I self-sabotaged. I procrastinated. I doubted. I did whatever necessary to lower my chances of success. And I also covered these beliefs in a lot of shame so that I would never go near them or dissect them.
…and Overcoming them
But here’s the thing: self-limiting beliefs are just stories. And stories can be rewritten.
Overcoming them will take a bit of time and a lot of faith in yourself. Just imagine the life you could have if you could unapologetically go after anything you wanted!
Before overcoming self-limiting beliefs, it is important to first identify them. This takes a bit of investigative work. Think of yourself as a person-of-interest. You have to research and observe yourself.
Research yourself by reviewing your resume, your habits, your relationships, your achievements and your failures. Observe yourself by asking your trusted circle what they think your biggest strengths and weaknesses are. And if you haven’t already, start journalling your thoughts and feelings on a regular basis. This will feed back into your ‘self-research’.
As you go along, look out for patterns in your thoughts, feelings, emotions and behaviour. From here, everyone will go on their individual paths as they discover the unique factors and circumstances that make up who they are and what makes them tick.
As you review your findings, keep asking yourself ‘Why?’. Keep asking why, even to the answers that you’ve given yourself. As you keep questioning yourself, you keep distilling your reasons down until you arrive at the crux of the matter - your limiting self-belief.
Now is where the real work begins! After sitting with it and reflecting upon it and finally accepting it and forgiving yourself, it’s time to put in place a new belief. One that supports and facilitates, not doubts and sabotages your goals and dreams.
Tell yourself your new belief and set yourself little tasks prove it to yourself. For example, Imagine the self-limiting belief of ‘I am fat and ugly’. It’s time to change that bs into, ‘I am healthy and attractive’.
Think of the little things you could do to become healthy and attractive. Pick the things that you think you could manage and commit to them.
It could be as simple as committing to a daily skincare routine. It could even inspire you to park further and walk the rest of the way. With patience and consistency, you could change your reality just because you authentically reframed your mindset.
Personal Accountability - The Backbone of it All
Being held accountable means being able to explain your actions. Many a time, when we are ‘caught’ in some wrongdoing, the shame that comes up compels us to distance ourselves from from the ‘crime’, be it telling a lie or deceiving someone.
Having a sense of accountability means rising above the shame and owning one’s actions and answering for them. It requires a sense of integrity to do the right thing as well as the capability of yielding to the influence of your higher self.
Accountability isn’t about beating yourself up for mistakes or past failures. It’s about acknowledging your role in your own life story. It’s about taking ownership of your choices—both the good and the bad—and recognising that while you can’t always control external events, you can control how you move forward.
Practising personal accountability helps develop trust in yourself. It’s a process of showing up honestly, owning your actions, making amends with others or defending yourself, where necessary.
For me, this meant:
Owning My Choices: Whether I succeeded or failed, I had to own my decisions. If I chose not to pursue a dream because I was afraid, that was on me. If I let fear or doubt hold me back, that was on me. If I didn’t speak up for myself in an effort to preserve the peace, that was also on me.
Recognising My Patterns: I had to look at the patterns in my life and ask myself tough questions. Why was I sabotaging my own success? What beliefs were keeping me stuck?
Rewriting My Inner Scripts: Identifying negative thoughts that played on repeat in my mind and actively challenging them. Instead of thinking, “I’m not good enough,” I began asking, “What if I’m more than enough?”
Understanding and Anticipating My Emotional Triggers: I learned what my triggers were and actively did my best to keep myself out of such situations. I also make an effort to communicate my experience if it helps the other party to understand me better.
Asserting my Boundaries: This was a hard one for me, since I grew up believing that girls are supposed to be nice and not say no. Whenever my boundaries are breached, I develop the urge to remove myself from the situation. But being a ‘nice’ girl meant that my learned response was to suppress that urge, smile and pretend that everything was ok. To unlearn this, I had to actively heed that urge whenever it hit. I would make up any excuse to get the hell out of there.
You CAN Do It
Committing to self-empowerment will ultimately change you from the inside out over time. It begins with taking small, intentional steps, celebrating every small win (like speaking up or setting a boundary) and forgiving myself for falling back into old patterns (like saying ‘yes’ when I want say ‘no’).
It’s a gradual process that has to be done with much honesty, self-compassion and grace. Because your body and mind have their own pace at which they can operate and that must be respected.
Practising mindfulness is imperative in this process. Because your body holds all the information you need to achieve success and wellness. All you have to do is tune in and receive it. Have patience because the path is never linear and and rarely comfortable; But it is worth it.
Empowering yourself is and act of self respect and self love. And its effects will trickle down to the next generation of women as they see you breaking barriers that society set for you.
You, beautiful reader, truly do have the power to rewrite your story, one choice at a time.
Sources
https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/empower-your-mind/202311/overcoming-self-limiting-beliefs
https://hbr.org/2023/06/how-to-overcome-self-limiting-beliefs
https://www.believeandempower.com/self-empowerment-tips-for-an-empowered-life/
