Empower yourself

When you go to bed very early just to get to the next day, you know you had a rough one. Or if you start wondering by Wednesday whether the Blue Monday will finally end today. Multiple challenging events in a short period of time.

I do not know if it is in the stars or the moon, or the stage of life, or the time of year, but I am finding people around me, and myself, are going through hectic stuff without a lot of energy to deal with it. Or even worse, the wrong kind of energy to deal with it. So now, reminiscing on how to empower yourself when things are not working for you, I find it quite challenging as I have recently been reminded how difficult it can be.

I have recently been exposed to and had head on collisions with two very disempowering situations: exclusion and abuse (emotional in this case). Both these behaviours are typical bullying behaviours, which indicates poor self-esteem. I know this, in my head, but my heart still feels the hurt when it happens to me or if I see it around me.

This is visible everywhere: with clients, where someone is excluded purposefully from meetings or teams (even though a very sensible reason may be presented at the time). It still hurts the excluded one. Or snappy comments, maybe coming from a place of frustration or insecurity. It is still abusive. With my kids I see it all the time, the two year old baby sister crying at the boys’ room – not allowed in. The hurt of exclusion.

I am not dissing any of the reasons for exclusion or the ‘excuses’ for the momentarily bad behaviours. I get them all. But what the disempowered person can do about it - that should be the focus. Throwing a super tantrum in front of the boardroom door to be let in might be, let’s say, “career limiting behaviour” (as appealing as it may sound!). Or swearing at or even slapping the abusive colleague or husband of a friend is also not ideal…

A line learnt from a retired business partner goes like this: “This is not working for me..” – realising the disempowerment or need to change the situation. And the second part: “… so what can I do?” Believe me, the answers will pop up. And more often than not one of the most empowering things to do, is simply to walk away.

Motto Model: http://goo.gl/cNnpy and Motto Individual Assessment: http://goo.gl/UhC7V

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