How to Feel Empowered
There’s a lot of talk about empowerment lately. And for good reason - we all want to feel empowered. But what does that actually mean? And how do we do it?
Understanding Disempowerment
To understand how to feel empowered, it’s helpful to first understand the ways in which we may be disempowered. To be disempowered means to “make a person or group less powerful or confident.” We have seen time and again the disempowerment of large groups of people including women, black & minority groups in the United States, and those who are economically disadvantaged, to name a few. But not only can we be disempowered by others, we can disempower ourselves.
Let’s take the example of women’s disempowerment. Although this happens in many ways, one way is by objectifying women or turning them into objects that should look a certain way to please men. This is women being disempowered by another group of people. However, let’s say I play into this narrative and spend much of my time and energy trying to look a certain way, all because of a deep fear that I will not be lovable or worthy unless I’m valuable to men. This is me disempowering myself. (I don’t say this to place blame. There are many men who don’t objectify women and many women who care about their looks in a way that is not disempowering. I give this example only to illustrate a common example of personal disempowerment. When we begin to recognize the ways in which we disempower ourselves, we can begin to shift those beliefs and ways of being.)
Power Over versus Power Within
Broadly speaking, there are two types of power: power over and power from within. The first is the root cause of much of the disempowerment we see in the world today. The second, on the other hand, is the foundation of true empowerment.
The first type, “power over,” occurs when we try to exert power over another person or group of people. It may manifest in oppression, manipulation or even something more subtle like using status, money or prestige to momentarily feel we are “above” someone else. This type of power is really, at its core, about satisfying our own ego. It comes from the part of us that feels small or desires to feel better than others, in order to prove our own self worth.
Power from within, however, is something completely different, and is the source of true empowerment. When we experience power from within ourselves, it comes not from a place of ego, but from a place of deeply understanding our inherent worth and our inextricable connection to others and to life itself. Some examples of this type of power would be saying “no” when something doesn’t feel right; or standing up for what we believe is right even when it’s hard; or saying “actually, this is how I want to live my life”; or wanting to be part of something bigger than ourselves. This type of power, while in the short term is often unpopular and much harder to tap into, is how we begin to build an authentic and empowered life. So how do we build the confidence to live in this way?
How to Feel Empowered
There are various practices and techniques we can use to feel more empowered. But I believe two of the less talked about and among the most important places to start are healing ourselves and finding compassion for others.
When we do the challenging work of healing ourselves, we find many places along the way where we have to “unlearn” what we know. It is this great unlearning that gets us closer to who we really are and makes us feel more empowered. Let’s take the earlier example and say we grew up believing that women have to look a certain way to be beautiful. We may have learned this from being explicitly told this, or from subtle messages we picked up from family, friends or society at large. When we believe messages like this, we disempower ourselves because there is an internal program running in our mind that we get to feel worthy or confident only if we look a certain way. We may pour much of our energy - knowingly or unknowingly - into this belief. It is actually in the unlearning of this belief that true empowerment (and true confidence) comes. It’s when we begin to recognize that beauty cannot possibly be defined as one thing, and more importantly that we are worthy no matter what we look like, that we begin to become empowered. As we continue to heal, we will likely find many unconscious patterns and beliefs that we have to unlearn. But as we do, we will likely also find that the power from within grows stronger and stronger.
The other, perhaps less obvious, piece of becoming empowered is in finding compassion for others - even those who have disempowered us. When we find compassion for others, we can learn to forgive them for acting from the part of themselves that doesn’t feel enough in some way. This is so important for our own empowerment because when we’re busy being angry or resentful, we continue to feel victimized. And feeling victimized is the opposite of feeling empowered. Have you ever heard the quote “Forgive others not because they deserve forgiveness, but because you deserve peace.”? It’s something like that. If we practice finding compassion often enough, we will likely come to find that as we cultivate more power within, we truly want others to also be happy and fulfilled. When we begin to become empowered, we want others to feel empowered too.
by Alexis Bethel