How to Empower Yourself and Others

I often use the word empowerment, and I love it for everything it represents and means to me. I love feeling empowered; I love empowering people; I love seeing people empowered; I love receiving empowerment. But each time a new experience comes in, I sense there is a new understanding of it, like discovering a new hue in a picture that I have contemplated many times and now it changed its entire composition.

So, is it the picture that has magically added a new shade, or it’s my perception that has shifted and now I am seeing something new?

Let’s reflect on this… What does it mean to be empowered?

For me, like any other word that carries a strong emotional statement, being empowered is a state of being. I can see or hear something that resonates with me, something that feels good, and the sense of empowerment raises. But in essence, it’s always a choice I am making. As soon as I recognize that I want to feel uplifted, I try to turn my attention to something that can lift my spirit, so to speak.

However, seeking empowerment can bring me close to it, but it’s just the first step, as it can also hold me from being there if I stay too long on the search for it. And that I consider my freedom of choice; how long, and how quickly I decide to stay or move my current attention from one topic to another. This transition from asking for something to feel good and actually releasing the need for it always brings me faster to where I wanted to be. The reason is that, once I am empowered, I don’t want it anymore, I am there, it’s done; I become the empowerment itself.

Now, I just bask in it until I go to interact with the variety of the physical world offers to me, which will always bring me to question something, the birth of another desire for a fuller and wider sensation of empowerment, bliss, divine, appreciation, and love. But empowerment is not like a college degree that once you get there, you are forever just there. It’s a dance between asking for it and discovering the path towards its fuller and fuller experience each time I go within to feel that way.

For example, the other day, a friend of mine “made me feel” that I was responsible for some choices he made. That caused a sense of discomfort and, to some degree, even a little bit of guilt, especially since it’s someone I care about. That was certainly disempowering. I decided to recognize his narrative, even though I saw the situation in a different light, and the best thing I know to do, it’s to turn myself within. So, I breathed for a few moments, I felt how beautiful this friend is, I appreciated our friendship, and as I was letting it go, I felt empowered again.

Did the situation change? Yes, as my own perspective of what it was has shifted. And guess what, I received a beautiful message from that person, which just embraced my already uplifted state into a fuller experience.

That was what I was talking about. I observed and experienced something in my life, my physical world, which I didn’t like so much. Then I moved my attention from that topic by going within, which brought me to a fuller and most beautiful state of empowerment by empowering myself. And then, I will go and experience the variety of my physical world again. At some point, I might observe something I don’t like so much, but I know that my empowerment is knowing that I always have the choice to go within, then without, and then within and without, and so on…

This movement between observing the variety of our physicality, then choosing and discovering the pathway to go within, but then again, the excitement of going from within to observe our thrilling, physical world – is this blended, almost seamless balanced movement we create and call it, life.

So, here is the next question. Can I empower people or people can choose to be empowered by seeing me in that state?

I am going within now, and as I know; the answer is there…

 

Photography // Christopher Campbell