Empowerment

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There is no sense that can give us a worse feeling than to feel powerless. To not have the power to do, act, react, or affect things that are happening to us is in most cases a traumatic event. It is something that we want to move away from ~ we want to grow, develop life skills and empower ourselves.

It is the healthy thing to do...

So what skills then would we need to feel empowered?
The first one that comes to mind is assertiveness. Having or showing a confident and forceful personality; according to the dictionary. And while being assertive is a good thing, it is also easy to go overboard on that forceful confidence ~ something that can come back to bite you...
An other ‘skill’ that pops up is to be honestly convinced that you yourself are a good person; a person with rights, talents, abilities, and lots of potential to enrich your world and the world around you with. No doubt, no hesitation. You are a good person. Of course that doesn’t mean that you are better than anyone else ~ those other people, each in their own way are also ‘a good person’ until proven otherwise. And then still there is no reason to judge them ~ although you may choose not to be around them.
It seems to me that what we perhaps need most in order to feel empowered are a sense of (inner) balance and (inner) peace...

What comes first  ~ the sense of balance or the sense of peace ~ can be a ‘chicken or egg’ question. The more peaceful you feel, the easier it is to remain balanced. The easier it is to stay balanced ~ the greater the sense of peace one can experience.
Yet once we have found them, it seem that all other things start falling into place...

From a sense of balance, we can be assertive without being ‘pushy’. When we are at peace with ourselves there is indeed no doubt that we are indeed a good person.
It puts us in a state of being where the need to prove that we are good, right, important, and yes, powerful becomes less and less significant. The result is that we feel more empowered.

Other things that tend to take place when this starts happening are that we often find it easier to decide, to make choices that are good for ourselves rather than choices that are just catering to others. And when we really start doing those things that feel totally right to us ~ what the rest of the world thinks about that becomes less and less important. It gives a great sense of liberation!

All the more reason to find that point of peaceful balance inside ourselves...
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