Being empowered is enabling or allowing yourself to act in your own and community’s best interest in a self-assured and confident manner because it’s your right to do so.
What is Empowerment?
Empowerment, according to the Oxford Dictionary, describes the “process of becoming stronger and more confident, especially in controlling one’s life and claiming one’s rights.”
The word, empowerment is often used to describe how employers enable their employees to provide good customer care and things like that. Or how the government empowers people to start a business or go to school and so forth.
However, empowerment also describes what you can do for yourself. Because empowerment is something, you can also give yourself as you learn how to take the power you already have. It’s not completely external to you.
Being an empowered human today requires that you develop the right attitude, learn how to do the things you want to do, and that you have the ability to access those opportunities with the support of your community, organization, or family and, of course, most importantly yourself.
The elements of empowerment include:
- Attitude
- Capability
- Opportunity
Each of these elements affects your ability to grasp your empowerment potential as well as define what type of empowerment you’re capable of having. If you live in a western country, it’s likely you can become fully empowered as a fully equal human being regardless of your sex.
If you don’t live in a western country, there may be roadblocks that affect your empowerment potential that you’re going to have to deal with through education and even political action. However, you can still take the power that you already have and use it for good in your life and other’s lives.
- Your Attitude – Having the type of mindset that enables you to realize your own ability and be confident in those abilities. The right mindset to act, the desire and confidence to influence outcomes, and the recognition that you have a right to do it, whatever it is. This mindset comes from within you and not from outside, but it can be built by filling yourself with knowledge.
- Your Capabilities – Empowerment can only be real if you really have the knowledge, skills, and information to really accomplish your goals. That means that you must be dedicated to getting an education about the things you want to influence and impact. You must trust your own skills and be willing to hear from others and use theirs and your own experience to make choices.
- Your Opportunities – Depending on where you were born, your financial resources, and other factors, you have numerous opportunities and roadblocks. It’s important for a person who wants to feel and act empowered to really know what their true opportunities are, as well as how they can take advantage of them.
To take advantage of these elements of empowerment, it’s essential also to recognize that self-perception, self-efficacy, and competence are important for empowerment including self-empowerment. After all, you’re only empowered if you have the confidence, ability, and potential to take advantage of the opportunities that come to you.
What can you do today to empower yourself?
To Your Success,
Coach Cheryl
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