Empower yourself!  Notice your thoughts and your thought patterns.  Are they self-destructive?  Do you find yourself criticizing you in varying moments of the day?  WAIT.…Maybe I need to back up and start more slowly.

What do you think about?  I know, I know…you think about all of the lists of ‘to do’s’ that you have, especially during the busy holiday season that we’re in.  Well give yourself a moment to stop thinking about all of those goal-oriented tasks, just for a moment.

This next part is your choice (of course it all is, really).  I want to keep this interactive for you.  To read the whole blog, simply continue reading.  To skip the depressing part go down to where it begins “EMPOWER”.

Ok……relax for a moment….pause…….breath…….  What are you thinking about?  What are you feeling when you stop and slow down for a moment? Do you feel love and joy?  Do you feel sad, alone, or anxious? If so, tell me, what are you thinking about?  Are you remembering something, missing something or someone or wishing you were in a different place?  Now what are you doing?  Are you still reading this or have you decided it is a waste of time, so now you’ve moved to another site that is more entertaining to distract your mind? (I’m not saying that distractions aren’t good things sometimes.)

Your mind has likely told you something about yourself that is not true.  You might be blaming yourself for something that happened years ago that you think was your fault or maybe you’re angry and you’re blaming someone else for something that happened in the past.  Or maybe you are just plain sad, alone or anxious for ‘no reason at all’.

Let’s take the word ‘blame’ for a moment.  ‘Blame’ means ‘consider somebody responsible’ or ‘criticize somebody’.  We do live in culture where blame is prominent either to ourselves or blame is shifted regularly to another person, another culture, another country.  We have learned about this since we were children.  Blaming others for whatever has gone ‘wrong’, is easy to do and takes us ‘off the hook’ so to speak.   Blaming ourselves brings feelings of ‘guilt’, ‘shame’, ‘regret’, ‘sadness’.  Blame is a ‘normal’ part of life really, isn’t it?

Geez…this is getting depressing, isn’t it?  STOP IT!!!!  I thought this started with the words “Empower yourself”…..Ok, let’s get back on track…

EMPOWER – “give authority to somebody” or “make more confident or assertive”.

YOURSELF – “making reference to somebody spoken to “ or “your normal self”

EMPOWER YOURSELF!!  Give your ‘normal’ self authority to be confident.  I know I played with the definition a bit on this, but I think you get what I’m trying to say, hopefully.

Empowering yourself is a little tricky, wouldn’t you say?  It’s takes away all of the fun of the ‘blame-game’.  Actually it’s simple, but sometimes the most simple things are the hardest to do.  Decision-making and commitment to yourself is the beginning to self-empowerment.  The fable here though is the script that keeps running through your mind over and over, what you’ve said to yourself for years, that you really have never even consciously noticed.  We are such creatures of habit that everything that we do again and again does seem ‘normal’.  Wait a second, I remember hearing one definition of insanity was “doing the same thing over and over and getting the same results”.  Hhhmmmmm.

I guess what I want to really say is this.  If you decide to take a few moments to yourself during this winter to let your thoughts and feelings come into your consciousness, remember that you have a choice in the matter.  This can go really deep, which I don’t want to go into right now, but if you want to chat more, you can always email me.  You do have a choice though in your circumstances, your thoughts, your feelings…it’s not easy to make that step into empowerment, but once you do you’ll be glad you did.  It gets easier each time you make that conscious choice.

Willingly prepared and ready for comments,

Susie