Jan 24 2014
Personal Empowerment starting young! Image from http://www.huffingtonpost.com
I recently sat with a man who had asked me to write his biography, his journey from weighing 350 pounds (160 kilograms) back to 200 pounds (90 kg). After he told me his story, I had a question for him. First, here is his story, briefly.
He had told me that as he grew fatter, just from being a glutton and careless, he grew too big to do his ceiling insulation batt business he couldnt fit through the manholes into the ceiling cavity, so he sold that business and bought a security patrol business. Then he couldnt get in and out of the patrol cars because of his rapidly expanding girth, so he sold that business too. Eventually he began selling real estate in a city office because all he had to do was stand (or sit) near the front door where people would walk by, and he could talk to them.
Something wrong with this picture Image from nypost.com
However, the life changing chain of events for him began with the bicycle shop next door. Sometimes hed stand at his front door and chat to the owner of the bicycle shop, a former triathlete champion, and one day he asked him if he could try riding a bike, as he thought he might like to lose some weight. Just making conversation. The reply was that he didnt stock a bike that would hold his weight!
Then he needed to run to the back of his shop again to the toilet, for the fifth time that hour, and the bicycle shop owner told him he needed to get that checked out. He already knew what his problem was. The doctor told him after a few short minutes You have chronic diabetes caused by your eating habits. If you dont lose 100 pounds this year, you wont see next year! It scared him; he said those words felt like machine gun fire into his chest!
My question to him was: If that doctor had not threatened you with your own death, at what point would you have decided you were overweight and needed to do something about it?
His answer? I dont know. I never considered it! I dont know what it would have taken to have that amount of personal empowerment, to recognise my problem and deal with it!
A whale of a time! Image from selfimprovementdevelopment.com
My definition for #personal empowerment is the willingness to honestly see yourself as you are, and to commit to making any changes you feel are necessary for your wellbeing, on any level, physical, mental, emotional or spiritual.
That just means that if you know you are not fit, you decide to change that and you do what you need to do, to become more fit. If you have bad breath, you brush your teeth. If someone tells you that your breath is bad, you dont abuse them for being rude to you; you thank them for being honest with you and then you brush your teeth.
Being less than you can be, less than your human potential is a crime against yourself. That doesnt mean that you need to be training to be fit enough to run the next marathon. It doesnt mean you need to immediately begin to diet, or take any other radical steps. It has nothing to do with vanity, and everything to do with your personal pride. Look honestly at yourself. Ask yourself if you are the person you always wanted to be. If you can see how you can become closer to that ideal, then you need the strength to commit to making the changes that will get you there.
OK, I hear some howls of protest! Personal empowerment? Im suffering from a chronic illness, I cant do that! I was in a car accident and my injuries wont allow that! I am overweight because I have a medical condition and the drugs affect me!
Relax. The question is; are you being all you can be? If you are ill, then you are ill and that will place limitations on you physically. But how is your heart? How is your spirit? How is your mind?
Personal empowerment will take you from where you are in your life, to where you could be. Its not about being fitter, faster, smarter or better than anyone else, just being the best YOU that you could be. Sometimes, personal empowerment is just being the best parent you can be, so that you can be an empowered parent for your children. What this world needs probably most of all, is empowered people, who can be empowered parents, so that the next generation who are our children now can take over this world and continue to make it better and fix the mistakes we have made in getting it to them.
Its the little things that count! Image from mylifeismymessage.org
Its easy. Baby steps each day. Its not a massive shift, its just a few little success habits to get into each day, and then continue to do them every day! Not hard at all. You already have a number of habits right now, perhaps some that dont serve you that you could replace, others that you definitely want to maintain. Like brushing your teeth. But add some affirmations and goalsetting to that. Perhaps doing a few minutes reading of something positive each morning and evening just a few minutes. Perhaps setting priorities for your day, specific things that will actually advance you a little closer to your goals. Perhaps at the end of the day, doing a review and seeing what you achieved, what you learned, what you felt, and checking off what you actually did. If you started a new habit, check off that you did it, or didnt make yourself accountable.
Get into success habits. Start feeling a sense of achievement for the little things, so that when the big things come up and real personal empowerment is needed to face those challenges, you have already been practising, you have the success habits in place, all you are doing is changing the goal! See? Simple.
That is personal empowerment. A program with all of this exists now for you to slip into your daily routine; you can get it here. A few minutes morning and evening and it is done.
The bonus is that it teaches you lots of other cool strategies as well, such as communication skills, financial success tips, stress management and health tips, mental strategies, conflict resolution, goal setting and a whole heap more over the 90 days of the program. Thats the few minutes of positive and empowered reading material, a couple of hundred words a day to get you on track with life changing strategies in every area of your life. Personal empowerment was never so easy! Start your personal empowerment program now! Click here to begin!
If you feel this article has empowered and benefited you and you feel it could benefit the personal empowerment of other folks you know, please reblog it, share it with your friends and associates. It might be the day you changed someones life for the better!
Til next time, fair winds and full sails,
Ray Jamieson
Please also refer to other posts on Empowerment:
Financial Empowerment
Empowerment
Empowerment for Men
Empowerment for Women
Empowerment for Teens
Empowerment for Children
What would an empowered man do?
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Original post:
Personal Empowerment - Life Change 90
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