by Kimberly Design Love | Empowerment, Motivation Mindset
Personal empowerment is about taking control over your life. Of course, life is multi-faceted. There could be many areas of your life that you want to improve or feel more control over – for example, your finances, your career, your health and maybe even your love life.
Instead of feeling like a victim or like circumstances control you, you can become empowered. The first step to empowerment is to begin to identify your self–empowerment goals.
Your self empowerment goals help you take action and direct your life to where you want it to be. Identifying those goals can feel confusing and overwhelming. Your answers to the following questions will help you define your personal empowerment goals.
3 Ways to Help You Identify your Self Empowerment Goals
1. Where Do You Feel Unhappy?
Take a look at your life and start asking questions. Focus on where you feel most happy and where you feel unhappy. Unhappiness may stem from not feeling appreciated, purposeful, or respected. Explore where you feel unhappy and why. You can then set goals to reduce or even eliminate that unhappiness.
For example, if you’re unhappy because you never have any energy, you can begin researching the cause of your lack of energy. You can then set a goal to get more sleep, eat better, or you visit a health care practitioner to identify the cause.
2. Where Do You Feel Like a Victim?
Whether you feel like a victim of circumstance, your past, or a victim of a person or organization, you can regain control and set empowerment goals to move past this feeling. For example, maybe you feel like a victim of circumstance with your current financial situation. Assess why you feel like a victim and what you can do to turn around the situation.
3. Where Do You Feel Confident?
What are your strengths? When do you feel most confident? In what areas of your life do you feel like you’re most in control? Sometimes when you focus more on these areas of your life and strengthen your sense of joy and empowerment, it spills over into other areas of your life.
Identifying and defining your self empowerment goals takes some time and deep thought. Give yourself time to think about how you feel about your life and what steps you can take to make your future one that you’re excited about.
Grab a notebook and start jotting down goals and ideas for your future. Don’t just stop at the goal that you want to set for yourself; also identify how you’re going to achieve that goal. What steps are you going to take? Identifying your goals is the first step to living a more empowered life.
by Kimberly Love | Empowerment
How Do You Define Empowerment For Yourself ?
What do you think of when you think about self-empowerment?
Many imagine a person that speaks up for themselves; others see a person who sets both personal and professional goals and works toward achieving them. Both of those definitions would be correct, yet they’re only part of the story. Self-empowerment is a broader concept that encompasses all areas of a person’s life, from the physical to the spiritual.
1. Physical Empowerment
How do you feel about your physical self? Do you like the way you look and feel? Do you have the energy, vitality, and wellbeing that you desire or is something missing? Physical empowerment is about both loving yourself as you are right now and seeking to improve your health and wellbeing.
There’s a balance to be found here and personal responsibility to take. If you don’t feel physically well, you have to be empowered to seek answers about why you don’t feel well and to make changes. It may be something as simple as drinking more water each day or getting more sleep and it can be much more involved like losing weight, exercising, or going to the doctor. Pay attention to your physical body and take initiative to make changes when it’s required.
2. Emotional and Mental Empowerment
Do you have control over your emotions or do they have control over you? What about your thoughts? Can you control them? Are you able to achieve a sense of calm, happiness, or focus when you need to? If you’re not in control over your emotions or thoughts, why not? What triggers affect you? Stress is often one area that throws emotional control out of balance. Learning to manage and reduce stress can help you feel more in control over your emotions and your mindset.
3. Professional Empowerment
Are you happy with your professional life? If not, why not? Many people find themselves feeling burned out, dissatisfied, or even angry about their current professional path. You are the only one who can change your professional situation. It may not be easy and it may take time; however, as soon as you begin on the path to professional empowerment, you’ll begin to feel better. Take charge of your career.
4. Financial Empowerment
Do you control your money or does your money control you? Ask most people and they’d say that they live paycheck to paycheck and their finances are totally out of their control. This often comes from feelings of lack or limiting beliefs about money. If you can shift your mindset and your habits, you can begin to feel financially empowered. A simple budget can really do a lot to help you feel in control over your finances.
Every aspect of your life can be empowered – you can be in control over it. Take some time to assess the various areas of your life. If you don’t feel empowered and in control, it’s time to make a change.
by Kimberly Love | Empowerment
Self-esteem is an important element of success. It’s also an integral component of self-empowerment. Without a belief in yourself, it’s difficult to accomplish your goals. In this article we’ll explore definitions of personal empowerment and self-esteem and then talk about how they overlap.
What Is Self-Esteem?
Many people feel like they intuitively know what self-esteem is. They know when they have it and when they don’t. However, it’s a bit more difficult for most people to actually define self-esteem. The Merriam Webster dictionary defines self-esteem as a feeling of having respect for yourself and your abilities.
That’s a surface definition. If you look a little deeper, self-esteem describes your sense of self-worth and value. It’s generally considered to be a personality trait that can involve your experiences and beliefs about your appearance, behaviors, emotions, and skills.
Your self-esteem runs deep into the thoughts you have about yourself daily. For example, there’s a difference between thinking, “I’ll never get this right” and “I can do this”. Self-esteem doesn’t necessarily lead to self-empowerment but it sure does help.
What Is Self-Empowerment?
To be self-empowered means that you have the strength to do something that that you believe to be in your best interests. For example, if someone asks you to join a club and you don’t want to, you are able to say no. Conversely, if you want to achieve a goal that others perhaps don’t support, you’re able to stick to your thoughts and beliefs and follow your own path.
Self-empowerment means having knowledge about your own skills and abilities and confidence in them, so that you’re able to set appropriate goals and reach your potential.
The Self Empowerment and Self Esteem Overlap
If you don’t believe that you can follow through on your goals, or you don’t believe in your skills and abilities, then you may struggle to be empowered. How can you have the strength to follow through on your goals if you don’t believe that you can?
So where do you focus your attention first?
Do you focus on building your self-esteem or your self-empowerment?
The great thing is that by taking steps to improve your self-empowerment you will also improve your self-esteem. As you start to set goals and take small steps to achieve them, each small success will help increase your self-esteem. You’ll begin to see that you can in fact make positive change in your life and that you’re capable of more than you initially believed. While self-esteem and self-empowerment are separate characteristics, the overlap can be powerful and life changing.
by Kimberly Love | Empowerment
Even the most self-assured and positive people can have days where they feel emotionally defeated and out of control. Being self-empowered isn’t a magic state of being that is achieved and never goes away. It’s an approach to life that needs constant work, assessment, and care.
There will be days when you do not feel empowered. On those days it is important to take extra care of yourself. These are the days when you need a little extra support and attention. So let’s talk about what you can do when you’re not feeling in control over your life.
1. Pay Attention to Your Thoughts and Words
There’s a very good chance that some negative self-talk has crept into your thoughts. Spend some quiet time being aware of your thoughts and actions. How have you stopped treating yourself well? What caused that change? Awareness is the first step to regaining your sense of wellbeing and empowerment.
2. Forgive and Move Forward
If you’re feeling out of control or a loss of empowerment, it may be because you’ve made a mistake or you feel like someone has harmed you. It’s often best to forgive yourself for the error, or to forgive them, and to move forward. Use it as an opportunity to learn more about yourself and apply that information to your future decisions and behaviors.
3. Treat Yourself Well
Forgiveness is part of treating yourself well. Depending on what has caused your recent situation, you might also give yourself a little extra room and time to regain balance. For example, if you are feeling bad about your physical empowerment because you cheated on your diet, then forgive yourself and treat yourself to a healthy and positive meal that nourishes your body and your spirit.
If you made a mistake at work, you might forgive yourself and then treat yourself well by enjoying a hot bath or a run or something that brings you joy.
4. Take Positive Action
Finally, there’s nothing that helps you regain your sense of empowerment like taking positive action. When you’re having a difficult day, week, or month, then identify what you can do to make it better and take action.
Even in the worst situations that life can throw at you, you always have a say in how you respond, react, and feel. You get to control the thoughts you have, the actions you take, and how you respond to the world around you. Self-empowerment means not forgetting that you are in charge of your life. Sometimes that can be easy to forget. When it happens, become aware, treat yourself well, and take positive action to turn it around.
by Kimberly Love | Empowerment
You are empowered more than you know. Being self-empowered means that you have made the conscious choice to control your life – all areas of your life. Instead of being the victim of others, of circumstance, and even of your own negative 
or limiting thinking, you’ve decided to take life by the reins, make your own decisions and set your own goals.
Now that you’ve made that decision, it’s time to focus on where you want to change your life. What goals do you want to set? And most importantly, what is the first goal you’re going to tackle?
There are a number of areas where you may want to take control of your life. You may have lifestyle goals like meditating, exercising, eating healthier or thinking more positively. You may have career goals like going back to school, getting a promotion, or starting your own company. You may have personal goals like finding a partner or spouse, improving your finances, or buying a home.
Most often, the key to success with any goal is to focus and take small and manageable steps. For example, if you want to start a business then you’ll ideally make a list of the steps required to achieve that goal. Each step can then be a smaller and more attainable goal.
Once you’re on the path to achieving one goal and have taken some significant steps toward success, you can add another goal to your plan. Most people have more than one goal, but trying to focus on them both at the same time can be overwhelming.
So, which goal will you focus on first?
Consider the following questions and ideas:
- What goal will have the biggest impact on your life? Sometimes one goal on your list will make the biggest definer for you. That can be the best place to start.
- What goal is the easiest to achieve? Another option is to focus on the simplest and easiest goal. Create a pattern of success by starting with goals that you know you can achieve. It’ll help make empowerment part of your life.
- What goal feels necessary to move forward? There may be a goal on your list that just logically comes first. For example, maybe you want to start a business as a personal trainer but you can’t begin that process until you become certified. Logically, certification must come first.
- What do you want to do first? All things aside, what goal on your list gives you the biggest smile or sense of inspiration? What goal do you want to focus on first? Pay attention to your thoughts and emotions about your goals. They’re powerful signs that you’re on the best path.
Choosing the self-empowerment goal that you focus on first may feel overwhelming. Enjoy the process of becoming empowered and taking control over every aspect of your life.
Personal empowerment is about taking control over your life. Of course, life is multi-faceted. There could be many areas of your life that you want to improve or feel more control over – for example, your finances, your career, your health and maybe even your love life.