Real Talk.
Empowerment is a choice. Choose it.
Believe in yourself. Stop looking for others to validate you, this won’t work. You’re facing insecurity and self doubt, because those are the wounds you’re meant to heal in this life. Your healing process enables you to help heal those same wounds within others. But more than that, it enables you to reclaim your personal power and your freedom. Here are 14 tips to guide you.
1. Be Mindful
The key to empowerment is choice. And every moment you can choose to reclaim your power, or give it away. People give their power away all the time: it may be through unhealthy habits, addictions, toxic relationships, or self limiting beliefs. Be mindful of how you relinquish yours. Mindfulness of your own disempowering habits, beliefs, and personal narratives is the first step to reclaiming your power. Because once you see it, you can choose differently.
2. Believe In Yourself
You don’t have to keep living a life that doesn’t serve you, or help you become your best and most authentic self. You can be the person you truly want to be. Remember your worth and who you truly are. You have the ability to overcome any challenges you face. If you’re reading this post, part of you knows that already. The fact that you’re even here, means that you’re already on your transformation journey. Be proud of yourself, and trust in your ability to succeed.
3. Don’t Give Up
Overcoming long held fears and insecurities can seem impossible at some points, especially when you’re on the cusp of growth. So on your healing journey, think of heightened fear as the soldier’s last stand. As the fear is challenged, it knows going to be released soon and lose power. Because it loses control as you reclaim your own. So at certain points, the fear may feel even stronger as you further your healing journey. It may seem as if you are not gaining progress, or like you’re not capable of overcoming it. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. Trust yourself, and keep going.
4. Face Your Insecurities
As you confront your insecurities, they may initially intensify. That’s okay, think of this as your fear or insecurity being scared. Fear has no real power, besides the power you give it. Because when you challenge limiting beliefs and question their validity, they lose it. So when you’re at the the brink of pushing past your former threshold into a new way of being, those fears rise because they were put in place to keep you “safe.” So this fear uses every ounce of energy it has to disempower you and keep you the same. But as frustrating as this is, it is integral that you don’t resist or judge it, which only perpetuates the problem. What you resist persists.
So instead, create a safe space for it to arise within you without judgement. Those fears were kept in your brain to “protect” you, even if the initial threat is gone. So maybe question what circumstances were there to cause you to have this fear or belief to begin with, and have compassion for your for yourself. Try to approach it through the lens of curiosity and understanding. And be there for yourself in the ways you wish others were. This is an opportunity to truly face your fears and insecurities, and heal the deeper wounds keeping them ingrained. This is how you transmute and release it.
5. Expand Past Familiarity
Fear comes from the ego, and its power lies in illusion. The ego’s job is to help you survive and function in life and society; and is initially there to keep you safe and comfortable. But the problem is, expansion and growth forces you to extend past your comfort zone into unknown territory. The ego doesn’t like the unfamiliar, because it doesn’t know how to protect you there. To the ego, familiarity equals safety, and safety equals survival. Fear can’t keep you safe when you consciously choose to override it. So it increases, revolts, and tries extra hard to prevent you from growing; because this is what kept you safe from the original threat or harm in your past. Only now it has become a habit, an almost instinctual reaction in situations where it is no longer needed and holds you back.
6. Make a Decision
The truth is despite the difficulty or sense that you may not overcome this, you have and have had the power all along. It’s within you now, not outside of you or in the future. Your decision to reclaim it, is when it dies. But the trick is you have to commit to your decision, again and again and again. Change and transformation is a choice, and often one that requires frequent reaffirmation until the change is fully integrated. You can almost feel it fall off of you, you may feel lighter or even breathe easier because you are freer. Remember, you were never actually powerless to begin with, it was just an illusion.
Just as we can know the ocean because it always tastes of salt, we can recognize enlightenment because it always tastes of freedom.
Buddha
7. Let Go of Disempowering Narratives
You staying under that illusion is the only power that fear and insecurity have to cling on to. But when you stop feeding these false and disempowering narratives with energy, you remember and reclaim that you are a powerful being. And you remember that you are fully capable of shifting your reality into the one you truly desire. This remembrance will help catapult you back into empowerment; and into the truth that you are love, and filled with infinite potential. This is when you reclaim your power. Your truth is your power, and as soon as you remember that, stand in it, and live from that space, you rise. You transform everything, including yourself.
8. Don’t Give Limiting Beliefs Your Energy
Again, your fears and insecurities are just false narratives and limiting beliefs you’ve kept thinking on replay. But lies cannot survive in the presence of truth. When they are confronted with truth, they become smaller and fall away. False narratives are powerless unless you give them power with your energy and belief. So what’s your truth? What feels most true, authentic, and empowering for you? What frees you and allows you to live a more empowered, authentic, and joyful life? Empowerment releases you from the prison of your own fears and limiting beliefs.
9. Embrace Imperfection
If perfection is the limiting belief or crippling standard you are trying to achieve, who’s version of perfect are you trying to live up to? And who decided that you needed to be perfect to be worthy of love and happiness? Did you? Or did society, or your father, or boss, and the list goes on. Whoever it is, question that. Question why, and where they are coming from. Most of our fears and insecurities weren’t originally ours to begin with, but were often taught to us consciously or subconsciously, and absorbed during our upbringing from our surrounding environment. But we didn’t come here to be perfect, we came here to be human and to have a human experience. Perfection wasn’t a part of the deal in order to live a life that fulfills you, or to give yourself the unconditional love you deserve. Empowerment does not equal perfection.
Your imperfections, your “faults,” your “problems,” they’re not problems they’re gifts. The only problem, is your perception of them. Shift your perception and you shift your reality. Stop seeing them as weaknesses and start seeing them as secret superpowers that only you can unlock and release. Love them, see them, own them. They are blessings in disguise, because the Universe only does things for us, for our highest and greatest good, not to us. To us, is a victim mentality.
10. Release Victimhood
We are not victims. But if you were, that is not who you are, or who you have to remain. Because victimhood does not empower you. When you are a victim, and choose to remain in that mentality, you give away your claim to your own sovereignty; you give away your power of owning, and taking control, of your life and your happiness. You own that shit, that’s your birthright. No matter what happens, how you choose to view yourself and how you choose to view a situation is what will ultimately free you or imprison you.
11. Validate Yourself
You are more than your past, and more than any experience could define or encapsulate. But it’s up to you, it’s your mind. Your past does not define you, you define you. And that may not be pleasant to hear, but that’s the truth. You are the sole owner of your autonomy, and the power to create and shift your reality is yours. So stop disempowering yourself by ascribing to beliefs and mindsets that tell you you can’t do shit. Stop clinging to mentalities and situations that don’t remind you of the powerful, amazing, and worthy person you are. Only you know that truth, and it’s your job to validate and remind yourself of that. It’s up to you.
12. Remember Your Worth
It’s up to you to remember your worth, your power, your truth, your beauty, your love, your passion, your dream, and your own unique and individual light. You need to own it. And it’s only up to you. No one can make that decision or do that for you. It’s your choice, and your responsibility to commit to it. The power to live life and view it on your terms is up to you. So decide. Who are you? Who are you really? It doesn’t matter who you were or what you used to do or be, who are you in the present moment right now? And who do you really want to be? What reality are you calling in?
You know who you truly are in your deepest heart of hearts, and you know who you were meant to be. Is your current reality and lifestyle aligned with that person? What reality do you choose to birth into existence? Now whatever your answer was, go do it. Go be that person, create that life, and live in alignment with what feels true and right for you. Live your truth, and be the version of yourself you know you truly are, and were always meant to be.
13. Just Drop It Boo
Drop the shit. Drop the lies, drop the false narratives, drop the woe is me. Step into the version of you and reality that empowers you, fulfills you, and nourishes you. Take what serves you, and leave the rest behind. If you’re reading this, it’s time. So rise up, and take your place. Choose the reality that grounds you in unconditional love, self acceptance, and self validation. You can do it, you just have to stop believing that you can’t. You’re more powerful than you know. Now go be that bad ass bitch, and show yourself what you got.
14. Make Choices that Empower You
Your challenges were just fuel for the fire of your rebirth. Your foes were just mirrors, helping you see what you had to heal and accept within yourself. So thank them, because without those obstacles they wouldn’t have pushed you into becoming the amazing person that you are, and the amazing person that you came to be, if you allow yourself. The power is in the choice, and the choice is up to you. Transformation and empowerment is a choice you have to make every day. And through choosing the things that empower you, again and again, you affirm this empowerment into your reality.
So what do you choose? And are your actions, relationships, and lifestyle aligned with that choice. Do they fuel and give life to that reality, or do they suck life from it? Be compassionate with yourself, but be honest. Does your current lifestyle truly affirm and contribute to the reality and version of yourself that you are trying to manifest, or not? And if not, change it.
Love, Simone.
