3 Steps To Personal Empowerment
What do you want from your life? Is it to work 40 hours a week for 40 years? Is it to build someone else’s dream versus your own dream?
Here’s a living breathing example of someone who made a change towards personal empowerment and what her experiences included. Beverly Price shares her 3 steps.
Beverley Price, over 25 years worked her way up in the Corporate Media Industry managing 70-100 people, then took a break, and realised that she was confronted with the fact the that she didn’t know who she was outside of her working environment. She describes herself at this stage in her life as ‘fat, frumpy and fifty’!
Time for a change…
Her thinking about what an ideal working environment is has changed. The self-development and training programs Beverley has undertaken in the last 2 years has led her to a space where she knows herself a whole lot better. This has resulted in her realising her strong desire to work with people and help create healthy and fulfilled lives.
The key turning point for Beverley was the change in her belief system. Where her beliefs were no longer driven by the head, but her heart. A nice transition into the topic for the evening – 3 Steps to Personal Empowerment:
1. Getting out of your comfort zone.
Only 2% of the population lives out of their comfort zone. There is nothing wrong with this. It’s safe, familiar, predictable and easy. The major reason people prefer to stay in their comfort zone is because ‘fear’ holds them back.
However, the more you push yourself to live in the ‘uncomfortable zone’ the more fun your life will be.
2. The Colin James (Executive Coach), Lizard Management Strategy
Generally, most people think they are not good enough and they don’t love themselves enough. The Lizard is the inner voice in your head. What we want to do here is stop the inner voice in our heads. The steps are:
Name it
Be Aware – actively listen to it. What’s causing the fear and doubt? What is the conversation in your head? Deal with the chatter and don’t take it too seriously.
Interrupt it / Stop it.
Contradict it – think the complete opposite. I can do it and put the plan together.
3. How to connect with people faster. Work and socially.
Yes, it sometimes feels weird trying to connect with people or thinking about connecting with people. How do you get past this?
You can try The FORMULA Strategy, which is based on finding common ground.
F = family, friends
O = Occupation, Past, Present Future
R = Recreation, sports, hobbies
M = Meaning, what gives your life meaning?
U = Use open-ended questions ‘what is your favorite sport?
L = Listen and remember what you heard
A = Ask what would you rather be doing?
4. The Homework
- Take some action from this wrap-up and consciously do something to get out of your comfort zone each day and journal it. It doesn’t have to be ‘crazy big’. It could be to take a different route home from work. Write your lizard chatter down. Increase your awareness and then banish it.
- Connect with 10 new people this week.
- Here is an example of Beverley’s daily writing ritual:
2 x gratitude.
1 x looking forward.
1 x thing she did well.
1 x highlight moment and why it was great
Other tips to empower yourself.
- Choose how you show up.
- Rather be the person that smiles than the person that didn’t.
- Get off your bum and do stuff.
- Leaders are readers, listeners, and learners
- We are all leaders. A leader doesn’t mean you have to be the boss of a company.
Assume less = less judgment.
Beverley’s Reading Recommendations on Personal Empowerment
Susan Jeffers – Feel the fear but do it anyway
T. Harv Eker – Secrets of the Millionaire Mind
Napoleon Hill – Think and grow rich
Bob Burg and John David Mann – (1) It’s not about you (2) The Go-Giver
Michael E. Gerber – The E Myth Revisited
Robin Sharma– The Monk who sold his Ferrari
John C Maxwell – The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership
Don Miguel Ruiz – The four agreements
David T S Wood Podcasts – Crank it up & amplified network marketing
