What the heck is 'EMPOWERMENT' exactly?

As most of you will have undoubtedly noticed there’s an awful lot of talk of ‘empowerment this’ and empowerment that’ going on and around B|B|B these days.  This coincides with our decision to start offering ‘empowerment’ activities such as firewalking at some of our seminars and workshops.  But, what exactly is empowerment?  To different people it’s different things but I’ll talk to you about what it means to me.

My personal summery of empowerment is formulated in my following quote,

“Empowerment is not the absence of fear.  It is the acknowledgement of personal choice in the face of fear.”

For me this is the biggest part of what ‘being empowered’ means.  It’s not about overcoming fear, confronting fear or curing fear.  It’s about acknowledging the fear and then being empowered to still see ALL the options available to you and not just the one or two offered up by your fear response.  The subconscious will always throw up fear until the day we die, its just part of what it does.  It’s there as a primary survival response and as much as we might have socially evolved beyond the requirements of a strong overpowering fear response, biochemically we’re pretty much unaltered since it was all that stood between us and daily threats of death.  It’s therefore essential, in my opinion, to start accepting fear in our lives.  I like clients to acknowledge that any feelings of fear are merely a sign that they are expanding themselves and to see the feeling as a positive piece of feedback that life is growing for them.  The power is in accepting these feelings of fear whilst maintaining the freedom to still make authentic choices based on what’s best for them.

It’s all about doing the right things for the right reasons.

It may be that the fear pushes us towards the ‘right’ decision for us but unless we ‘make’ that decision then there’s no power in the action.  Empowerment comes from being able to do the things we ‘choose’ in spite of any internal resistance we might be experiencing.  Fear, in its many guises, is the biggest resistance working against us expanding our lives.  Limiting beliefs and limited expectations is another.  Empowerment is accepting that there are these internal resistances but acknowledging that we have the power to choose for ourselves and are not merely ‘puppetted’ by our automated emotional responses.

The good news is that once we start to override these fear responses and ‘survive’, our subconscious starts to be reprogrammed about what represents a ‘real’ threat and we get less fear in these situations.  It is possible to lose the fear response altogether in a given situation but this is only going to happen as the subconscious is ‘reprogrammed’ to respond differently.  But remember, there’s no point fighting your fears for the sake of it - pick your battles wisely.  Empowerment is about being able to take the action and make the choices that are right for you regardless of any internal opposition, even if that action or decision is aligned with the fear response.  Sometimes we get into the habit of always going against our fears as we try to become ‘fearless’ or empowered but the truth is the more we make the ‘right’ decisions for the ‘right’ reasons the more our subconscious will learn to trust us and allow ‘us’ into the decision making process by not releasing the manipulative chemicals of fear into our bloodstream.  To expect to have a life without fear is naive; it’s been instrumental in getting our species to where it is today.

Firewalking along with the education that I support it with is a great metaphor for the process of empowerment.  You stand before red-hot coals, fears racing through your body but you have a choice – the choice to walk or not walk.  Once you make the right decision for the all the right reasons, you take the associated action.  If you walk, you walk purposefully and confidently until you reach the other side and reward yourself for exercising your personal free will.  If you choose to not walk, you walk away from the coal bed and reward yourself for exercising your personal free will.  Whether you walk or not is not as important as excising your power of choice and free will… just like in the rest of your life.

I hope that clear it all up a little :)

Until next time,

 

George

To see our next empowerment seminar dates and events, go to:  www.biggerbrighterbolder.co.uk/Events.html