Self-worth leads to Personal Empowerment

Contingencies of self-worth comprise those qualities a person believes he or she must have in order to class as a person of worth and value; proponents claim the contingencies as the core of self-esteem.

Contingencies of self-worth can motivate well, but often have great costs to relationships, learning, autonomy, self-regulation, and mental and physical health. Using their contingencies of self-worth, people attempt to validate or prove their abilities and qualities to themselves and to others.

In the field of social psychology, Jennifer Crocker has carried out major research on the topic of contingencies of self-worth. She says that her research "explores what it is that people believe they need to be or do to have value and worth as a person, and the consequences of those beliefs". She claims that people pursue self-esteem by trying to prove that they have worth and value, and this pursuit affects "the satisfaction of the fundamental human needs for learning, relationships, autonomy, self-regulation, and mental and physical health" (Crocker, 2007). Crocker argues that this pursuit of self-worth affects not only the individual, but everyone around the person as well.

According to the "Contingencies of Self-Worth model" people differ in their bases of self-esteem. Their beliefs beliefs about what they think they need to do or who they need to "be" in order to class as a person of worth form these bases. Crocker and her colleagues (2001) identified six "domains" in which people frequently derive their self-worth, including:

1. virtue2. support of family3. academic competence4. physical attractiveness5. gaining others' approval

Individuals who base their self-worth in a specific domain leave themselves much more vulnerable to having their self-esteem threatened when negative events happen to them within that domain (such as when they fail a test at school). A 2003 study by Crocker found that students who based their contingency of self-worth on academic criteria had a greater likelihood of experiencing lower-state self-esteem, greater negative affect, and negative self-evaluative thoughts when they did not perform well on academic tasks, when they received poor grades, or when graduate schools rejected them.

Research by Crocker and her colleagues also suggests that contingencies of self-worth have self-regulatory properties. Crocker et al. define successful self-regulation as the willingness to exert effort toward ones most important goals, while taking setbacks and failures as opportunities to learn, identify weaknesses and address them, and develop new strategies toward achieving those goals. Since many individuals strive for a feeling of worthiness, it makes sense that those people would experience special motivation to succeed and actively to avoid failure in the domains on which they base their own self-worth. Accordingly, successful self-regulation can prove difficult for people aiming to maintain and enhance their self-esteem, because they would have to actually embrace failure or criticism as a learning-opportunity, rather than avoid it. Instead, when a task which individuals see as fundamental to their self-worth proves difficult and failure seems probable, contingencies of self-worth lead to stress, feelings of pressure, and a loss of intrinsic motivation. In these cases, highly contingent people may withdraw from the situation. On the other hand, the positive emotional affect following success in a domain of contingency may become addictive for the highly contingent individual. Over time, these people may require even greater successes to achieve the same satisfaction or emotional high. Therefore, the goal to succeed can become a relentless quest for these individuals.

Researchers such as Crocker believe that people confuse the boosts to self-esteem resulting from successes with true human needs, such as learning, mutually supportive relationships, autonomy, and safety. Crocker claims that people do not seek "self-esteem", but basic human needs, and that the contingencies on which they base their self-esteem has more importance than the level of self-esteem itself.

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Definition: Personal Empowerment - selfgrowth.com

Self-empowerment is necessary for us to live authentically, find self-realisation, and fulfil our life purpose. Self-empowerment is a state of being that is available to us all, despite the widespread feeling of powerlessness and the unresourceful states of self-denial, low self-worth, and fear that commonly sabotage our self-empowerment.

In this post I will give an explanation of self-empowerment, from the perspective of authentic living, and will explain how to embrace this state with the practice of mindfulness and personal growth, so that we can live successfully and fulfil our life purpose. I will also reveal the hidden factors to self-empowerment that need to be addressed that are often omitted in the narratives of the self-help movement, such as enculturation and socialisation.

Self-empowerment is the state of having the social, economic, psychological, and spiritual power to meet our needs, and the ability to express this power. Often self-empowerment is used in contrast to states of non-resourcefulness and social exclusion, which are disempowering. Self-empowerment does not require others to give us power, but rather requires us to own and use our inner power, skills, and resourcefulness to meet our needs.

Self-empowerment is the positive expression of power, as it relates to self-actualisation and self-fulfilment. It contrasts with the negative expression of power that is exercised over others in the form of manipulation, coercion, and force. The negative expression of power is an ego-based attempt to control the external world by directing the will of others or using their energy. This negative expression of power is based on a sense of lack, and actually comes from a state of disempowerment and desperation.

When a person lacks self-empowerment, they are in a state of disempowerment, lacking the skills and resources to meet their needs. They then become dependent on others to the extent that they are disempowered. The problem with this is four-fold:

These four problems explain why the powers of mass society resort to techniques of appeasement and distraction to hold together societytechniques known since Roman times as bread and circus. Without institutionalised appeasement and distraction, there is a risk that the frustrations of disempowerment and inauthentic living will lead to the breakdown or overthrow of society, and therefore to the fall of the powers that control mass society.

Self-empowerment involves the three processes of self-awareness, self-liberation, and self-actualisation, which are harnessed for the meeting of our needs.

Self-awareness is gained through mindfulness, self-inquiry, and meditation. It enables us to become aware of our inner source of power and potential, such as our inner resources, skills, talents, aptitudes, and our connection with our authentic self. Self-awareness also enables us to become aware of our authentic needs and our inner blocks. Self-awareness enables us to develop a strategy for meeting our authentic needs, liberating ourselves, and actualising our potential.

Self-liberation is the process of overcoming the inner blocks that sabotage or prevent our successsuch as limiting beliefs, unresolved traumas and complexes, false identifications, draining attachments, dissociative states, and a reactive mind. Self-liberation is gained by combining mindfulness with therapeutic techniques that help to transform and release our inner blocks. An important part of our self-liberation occurs when we use mindfulness to come back to and stay in the present moment, which is where our power is found.

Self-actualisation is the process of manifesting or actualising our potential by using our self-awareness and our mindfulness to consciously direct our will, with a strategy for success. In its ultimate form, self-actualisation is the process of actualising the potential of our authentic self, so that we become more ourselves and manifest our true life purpose. This is an important point because if we are not aware of our authentic self, we may be trying to fulfil the desires of our reactive ego-self, which may not be authentic needs.

As well as working on these three processes, it is worthwhile to gather support from other people interested in your self-empowerment, whether they be mentors, teachers, therapists, life coaches, friends, or loved ones. These people can provide insight, feedback, training, and encouragement.

Self-empowerment requires that we embrace the shadow self. The shadow self holds the unconscious aspects of our personality that we do not wish to own, and therefore do not consciously integrate. These unconscious aspects are the qualities we have that we do not want to admit to, usually out of fear. They are often the negative traits we condemn in others, but they can also be the positive traits we reserve for our idols, heroes, or divinity.

To discover our shadow self we can work mindfully in self-inquiry, digging deep into our personality with our self-awareness. We can also seek out the opinions of an honest friend who can tell us things about us that we may not want to hear, or are surprised to hear. In the process of revealing our shadow aspects, it is crucial to stay mindful and centred to avoid the reactivity that may cause us not to accept these aspects.

Once discovered, we can start to own these shadow aspects with self-acceptance, and transform them if necessary before integrating them. For example, if we have a negative trait of being a complainer, we need to own the fact that we complain. As we own the trait, we can observe mindfully any emotions that arisesuch as guilt, shame, embarrassment, and fearand accept them without identifying with them or reacting to them. Then we can transform the trait by uncovering through self-inquiry the positive need buried within it that has become distorted. Once we find the positive need behind the trait, we can release it and redefine its expression in an undistorted, authentic way.

For example, with a complainer, the positive need may be to live at an acceptable standard, and once this need is uncovered, we can redefine the terms of our acceptable standards so that they are based on accepting our present moment experience and our potential. We can also define how we can actively go about living at an acceptable standard in place of passively complaining about situations.

Sometimes there may be many layers to peel back. For example, the need to live at an acceptable standard may mask a need to avoid a certain consequence that our parents went through when we were a child. In this example we can work on our insecurity or reframe the belief to acknowledge that the consequence that our parents went through is in the past and probably does not apply to us.

Self-empowerment requires that we break free of the trance of mass society with mindfulness. This is particularly challenging as it requires us to release our social conditioning and some very deep attachments and illusions.

One of the ways that we are held in trance is through the power of spectacle. Spectacle is created in the mass media and in the patterns of social behaviour that are adopted in response. The use of entertainment as a spectacle to entrance a population so that they are appeased and distracted from the issues of self-development and social organisationand so do not challenge the status quowas written about by the ancient Roman poet Juvenal when he wrote about the practice of bread and circuses and the deterioration of society in his Satire X. Today the circus is the image-saturated sensationalism of the mass media, broadcast to us 24/7 through the television and the Internet. The sensationalism of the non-stop media holds us in trance by fixating our attention and stimulating the release of dopamine as we react to the sensationalism of a news story, a video, a soap opera, a movie, an advert, or an imagewhich explains how easily we can become addicted to spectacle, and why the television and Internet dominate our lives and render us passive.

Apart from news and entertainment, we are also held in trance by more subtle representations of life, which take the place of our direct, authentic experience of living. These representations of life are created through marketing and PR, and by the consumer culture of mass society, which reduces life to images of what we want, and reduces authentic social relationships to impersonal relationships based on the relationship between commodities. The spectacle traps us, unknowingly, in a virtual reality, making the image more important than the real, natural world, and our roles more important than our authentic self. This leads to the estrangement of people from themselves, each other, and the natural environmentthe essence of inauthentic living.

When we are addicted to spectacle, and trapped in a reductive worldview, we clearly lose our power and authenticity. We dissociate. We need to wake up the spectator and become the mindful observer by bringing the power of mindfulness to bear on our experience of society and its culture, including the way we behave in society, the roles we play and identify with, and the unquestioned beliefs and values we inherit from its culture.

Self-empowerment requires that we identify the things that are inauthentic by considering, from the viewpoint of our authentic self, whether they limit our authenticity or not. If we have already created a list of our authentic values while present in our authentic self, it becomes easy to test the values and norms of the society we live in against these authentic values to see if they support them or conflict with them. For example, there may be a behavioural norm in society that would keep us in a state of separation or disregard for the whole that we are part of. This will conflict with the authentic value of wholeness, and so we can recognise this norm as a pattern to release because it encourages us to be inauthentic.

Releasing a social norm is often not a trivial activity. The level of attachment we may have to it is often very deep and habitually reinforced by millions of other people, amongst which may be our colleagues, friends, and loved ones whose disapproval we may fear if we release that social norm. Furthermore, we are also faced with the fear of being unsupported by society, or of reorganising our entire life which may require further attachments to be let go of, such as the work we do, the things we buy, the things we own, and the people we form relationships with.

At each instance we can face our resistance with mindful self-inquiry and overcome it, and trust in the process that the big step we are taking is towards authenticity and not towards our doom. Uncertainty about releasing attachments is itself a resistance, and can be overcome once we stay centred in our authentic self. Developing a network of authentic relationships and authentic community as support through this social change is of great benefit.

The empowering feelings of compassion and gratitude help us to break through the spectacle of inauthentic living, piercing its veils to expose the magic of life and the love that connects us as a whole. These feelings are the nectar of the godsanomalies that contradict the virtual reality that dominates our lives, and that show us that life is infinitely richer, deeper, and more meaningful than the spectacle of materialism would have us believe. These feelings help us to value the gift of life and are therefore prime motivators for sustainability. Cultivate these feelings, along with mindfulness, and you will have the keys to the kingdom of your self-empowerment, and the reward of authentic living.

In my Inner Wellness Programme I help you to increase your self-empowerment by identifying and clearing your negative patterns, and helping you to implement the best strategies for self-development andInner Wellness. To book aFREE Inner Wellness Session, click here.

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Self-Empowerment - Leigh Tremaine - Self-Help that Works

This guide has been written to help you understand how to become a personal empowerment coach.

Before I start though, let me tell you a bit about myself.

I am Sai Blackbyrn and I am the founder and CEO of .Coach LLC. Over the past decade, I have worked with hundreds of coaches and have helped establish their business online from scratch.

I started out as a dating coach with my company SaiFai Dating before moving on to become the coach for coaches with .Coach.

In my journey so far I have the good fortune of interacting with a lot of personal empowerment coaches and that has taught me what exactly it takes to become great in that field.

So, without further ado, lets get started.

Empowerment coaching can be a bit tricky to understand at first. Empowerment coaching is about gauging and understanding the emotional state of your clients and realizing where they are resonating. After that, you are supposed to elevate them above their current state and make them see where they are and where they want to be emotionally.

The main idea is to accept the clients for all their flaws without any judgment and help them gently shift their attitudes and emotional state to a greater plane.

Personal coaching is basically forming a partnership with your client and helping them achieve a state of well-being that they thought wasnt possible with their lives. The connection between a coach and a client is an extremely intimate in nature.

As a personal coach, you are privy to your clients most vulnerable secrets and moments. It is your responsibility to embrace them for who they really are and allow them to truly flourish and grow under your care.

It is a position of heavy responsibility and something that you cannot take lightly which is why I find it STAGGERING that so many coaches dont even have a proper business in place.

How can you possibly affect change in someone else when you do not have a proper business? How can you help someone respect themselves when you do not give your coaching the respect it deserves?

I will tell you more about this at the end of the article, you may scroll down if you want to know how any coach can easily create a business from scratch.

However, there is a problem with personal coaching. What is the problem? Well, read on.

A personal empowerment coach combines both the attributes of being an empowerment coach and a personal coach and brings a unique set of skills to the table for the client.

It is basically a highly intimate form of empowerment coaching. However, there is a problem with personal coaching though that has not been brought up before.

In fact, the truth is that most coaches coaching institutes will be afraid to tell you this. Most of them are looking to make money off you by any means necessary. What this means is that if they can get away with telling you half-truths then so be it.

Well, I am not going to do that and I am going to lay everything out right off the bat.

One-on-one coaching OR traditional personal coaching is in essential a dead practice, none of the top professionals do that anymore because it is a waste of time.

YesI just said that.

Which begs the question

When you become a coach, it is your duty to serve as many clients as possible (without stretching yourself). But here is the thing, you cannot dilute your message to your clients because everything that you say is going to affect their lives in a very organic way.

That very reason is why one-on-one coaching is now obsolete. As you scale up, you simply wont have the time you need to take care of all your clients personally.

So what do you do about that?

It is a very simple solution and I discuss that in detail in my webinar. Scroll down to the bottom and you will know what I am talking about.

We have touched on this topic for a bit before, but here we are really going to go deep into what you, as an empowerment coach, can do for your clients.

Lets find out what empowerment means first.

Empowerment means understanding where you are present emotionally and then eventually working towards your goal. Many people who have gone through trauma or have gotten complacent tend to get stuck.

Most people accept their mediocrity and live their whole life in a complacent manner. Very few decide to do something about it and these are the ones that you can help through your coaching.

As a personal empowerment coach, you can take them from their present emotional state to where they want to be by:

The emotional state that one is in often gets manifested into their real life. Their state becomes their reality.

That is what the law of attraction is all about.

When people hire a personal empowerment coach, they are hiring someone who can help them unclutter and get unstuck.

They are looking for someone who can elevate them to a higher emotional state and help them manifest their deepest desires and dreams.

The simple idea is this: You attract what you feel.

There is a very simple and subtle difference between life coaching and personal empowerment coaching as Crystal Andrus Morissette puts it.

Life Coaching: This more often than not focusses on specific parts of the clients lives and helps improve those super specific areas. They identify the obstacles in the path of the clients in those specific areas and they help them get around it.

Personal Empowerment Coaching: It identifies the emotional that the clients are in and helps them elevate to the state where they want to be in so that they can attract greatness. Its a lot more encompassing than life coaching.

Obviously, the skills that you will need as a personal empowerment coach can be very diverse. Lets discuss some of the common ones that everyone will require to succeed in this field.

A personal empowerment coachs salary can vary greatly and thats because of a very specific reason.This is the exact same reason why, back when I was a dating coach, I went on from making $50 per client (sometimes that was $25 or even $0) to making $100,000 in 2 months.

Here is the secret to this humongous jump.

You ready?

You need to respect your coaching.

If you respect your coaching enough to find the best possible high-ticket clients for it then you will never ever have a problem with making the money that you deserve to make.

How do you do that? How can you find high-ticket clients who will be perfect for you coaching?

Scroll down to the bottom and you will find out.

You dont really need certification to get started as a coach. Tony Robbins doesnt have a coaching certification and he sure did pretty well with his life.

The idea is to just get started. If you have the gift inside you then why wait?

Bill Gates didnt wait to get his college degree to start Microsoft now did he?

However, if you do insist on getting certification then checkout S.W.A.T. Institute and Empowerment Institute (links given at the end of the article).

If you do want to start being a personal empowerment coach as soon possible and fulfill your lifes purpose of being one, then there are two things that you need to do:

So, how do you start creating your business?

Well.read on!

So, how can you go about laying the foundations of your empowerment coaching business? If you are planning to reach out to as many people as possible then it is absolutely critical that you have a robust business in place. It is only when the roots are strong that a tree can truly grow.

When I first started out as a coach, I realised the importance of having a proper business in place. I have spent hours and weeks and even months trying to learn everything that there is to learn about creating a business.

The worst part is, everyday when I was sitting religiously in front of my laptop learning all the nitty-gritties, I was getting extremely frustrated. Why did I have to learn everything from the scratch? Why cant I just adopt a formula and use that to create my business?

When I was creating my business, there was no template or anything specifically made for coaches and their businesses, and I was so frustrated.

Why cant anyone tell me which design worked best for a coaching website?

Why cant someone tell me how my Facebook page should be designed?

Why cant someone help me out with my funnels?

Why isnt anyone telling me what kind of clients should I get?

How do I make clients pay me the money that I deserve for my coaching?

How do I get clients who will truly value me and not haggle with me every step of the way for my services?

All these questions were affecting me and in this deep state of frazzlement.it dawned on me.

If no one is doing all this. If no one is giving me a template on what to do with a coaching business, then why shouldnt I be the one to do it?

It was such a simple and obvious solution!

Ever since that day I devoured everything that I could find my hands on. After that I spent the next few months constantly testing out various designs. I spent close to $65,000 (most of which I had to borrow from friends) on various website designs, funnel designs, business structures etc.

After tons of testing, I finally hit the nail.

It was just such a beautiful feeling to finally get everything right.

Imagine setting up the perfect webinar and website which gives you a stead flow of clients who are willing to pay your price to learn more from you.

Within 2 months of implementation, I made my first $100,000. Most of that money went into paying back people I owed money to!

But since then, there has been no looking back.

All those years that I spent working on my templates and my designs were worth it. Within a year I was able to scale my company to generate a 6 figure revenue consistently. I was also able to grow my company from just me and a random freelancer to me and a full time in-house team of 23 employees.

So why am I saying all this to you?

I am saying all this to you because I am eternally grateful to all that I have gained so far in my life as a coach and as my karma I want to give back as much as possible.

When you give the universe value, true value, the universe will reward you back with all that and more. It is an endless cycle of give and take.

If you are generating an atmosphere of sharing value around you, you will manifest an environment wherein everyone will want to share their rewards with you.

That is the true law of attraction.

Having said that, how do I plan to give back to the universe?

Well, I am giving away everything that I have learnt during my journey as a coach, in my webinar:

How Your Coaching Business Can Let You Live The Lifestyle Of Your Dreams

In this webinar, I am going to teach you everything that I learnt after spending $65,000 in testing out all the design templates and business frameworks.

This webinar is the only one that you will come across which will tell you how to speed up a business specifically your coaching business.

This is the only place where you can get that information if you are a coach.

If you are anything like me, you hate the technological side of your coaching business. Why the hell do you have to learn how to do JavaScript when all you really want to do is to touch as many lives as possible and inspire them.

If you are anything like me, you HATE clients who devalue you and constantly try to haggle with you and get a discount on your services. Worse yet, they dont see the true value in what you are offering and try to get your services for free. These are the worst kind of clients because they dont see the value in what you are offering.

What if I were to tell you that in this webinar you will learn how to get clients who will pay you what you are worth and truly value what you have to offer? And more than that, you will be getting a steady flow of these clients on autopilot?

What if I were to tell you that instead of tearing your hair out over learning all the little things in your coaching business, you can simply implement the various templates which can create YOUR empowerment coaching business FOR YOU on autopilot so that you can live the lifestyle that you deserve?

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How To Become A Personal Empowerment Coach: The Definitive ...

Our Personal Empowerment Coach Certification is designed for the woman who is either ready to launch her coaching business or is already an expert in her chosen field and would love to add Accredited Personal Empowerment Coach to her resume.

This self-paced program will give you the fastest yet most comprehensive training to help shift your clients out of any disempowered situation into making healthy, authentic, appropriate choices.

Crystal is a Godsend! I have had the privilege of working with Crystal as a student in her S.W.A.T. Institute, as a coaching client, and as a participant in her 12-week Emotional Edge Telecourse. As a S.W.A.T. student, I have been blown away by the quality of the educational curriculum. I have a doctoral degree and have taken many advanced level college and graduate courses. However, the S.W.A.T. curriculum was more comprehensive and useful than most of the graduate level courses I have taken! I learned SO much going through this program and it has been amazing to use the material to help other women.

Crystals coaching style is simply Genius! Her intuition is spot on and I have personally experienced how incredible Crystal is at seeing things for what they truly are. On our first coaching call, Crystal was able call me out on my secrets and get to the core of my issues in a way that was unbelievable to me. I have worked with other coaches in the past and none have had the intuition and wisdom of Crystal Andrus Morrisette, who has helped me to make MAJOR transformations in my life. Before working with Crystal, I felt lost and confused. I felt desperate, looking around relentlessly for answers. Well, Crystal quickly guided me to all the answers. She re-connected me with my real self and helped me to heal the wounds I had been carrying around for decades. I feel like a million bucks after working with Crystal! I wake up each day with a huge grin on my face, excited and hopeful for a future that I could not see before working with Crystal. I am so endlessly grateful for all she has done for me and I am so lucky to have her as a mentor and a coach.

~ Dr. Ellen Morello, PhD in Physical Therapy, S.W.A.T. Personal Empowerment Coach

Throughout this course, you will work closely with Professor of Coaching Izabela Viskupova, L.L.M., M.A., and The S.W.A.T. Institutes Founder, Crystal Andrus Morissette, in receiving all the the practical and theoretical guidance youll need in order to fully master your coaching skills.

Izabela Viskopova graduated with a Masters degree in Law at the Comenius University in Bratislava, Slovakia. Later, she earned another Masters degree in Psychology, from the University of Glasgow, Scotland; she also holds a Certificate in Person-Centred Counselling from the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland and is a Master Empowerment Coach certified by The S.W.A.T. Institute. Izabela also offers a weekly LIVE phone/webinar conversation where you can learn from, ask questions, and be fully supported in your studies.

Check out the extraordinary video testimonialssent into us from some of our graduates!

Our Personal Empowerment Coach Certification is composed of three modules:

The learning objective of the first module is to introduce the students to Empowerment Coaching and the basic tools of this specific coaching method. In this module, students will be invited to master the basic framework of Empowerment Coaching which includes:

This module takes the students in detail through the most crucial emotional levels on the Map of Empowerment such as Shame, Guilt, Apathy, Grief, Fear and Anger, while offering specific coaching strategies and interventions for each of these levels.

Module One offers a vast opportunity for the students to listen to practical examples of real life coaching sessions, which is an invaluable component of the program. Also included are video lectures on each emotional level, one live weekly call where students can chat with Professor Izabela, and a private Facebook Group for fellow student empowerment coaches to share, connect, and support each other.

Nearing the end of this module, students will also be introduced to the concept of Emotional Age (EA), which is the basis of Crystal Andrus Morissettes upcoming book, The Emotional Edge (Random House Publishing, December 29, 2015).

The objective of the second module is to build on the foundations laid out in Module One so that the students can further hone and expand their coaching skills.

This module also incorporates some of the more general topics in coaching such as how to structure the coaching sessions or how to build rapport with a client.

The aim of Module Two is also to prepare the students for some unexpected or more challenging circumstances in coaching such as coaching a client with a different cultural background or a client that has just lost someone they loved.

At the end of this module, students are invited to participate in the 12-Week TeleCourse: The Emotional Edge taught by Crystal Andrus Morissette in order to integrate their learnings, personally. Completion of the 12-Week TeleCourse is not mandatory in graduating with your Personal Empowerment Coach Certification.

The objective of the last module is to have the students do their own coaching and practice all the skills and techniques they have learned throughout the course while coaching their own clients. The clients will be provided by The S.W.A.T. Institute through the Mentorship Program that enables women from any part of the world to get free coaching. This is a beautiful opportunity for our students to hone their coaching skills.

Section 1: What you need to do to start your Practice Coaching

The objective of this section is to cover the logistics side of the coaching practice so that the coaches in training have everything set up and ready before they start their practice coaching.

Section 2: The Critique session

As soon as students have completed approximately half of their practice sessions (10-15 practice session), they select three of their calls and submit them to their Professor of Coaching who will review them and schedule a critique session with them. The objective of the critique session is to give them feedback on how they have been doing thus far.

Section 3: Final Exam Assignment

The objective of the Final Exam is to put everything together for the students both the practical as well as the theoretical side of the training. In order to do that, they are required to:

A new generation of women has emerged and I feel honored to be part of it. Unique women who have come together under a common call: to thrust the world forward while birthing a brighter humanity.

I proudly belong to a tribe of visionaries. They may call us insane, rebels, inspirational, powerful masters, guides or coaches we call ourselves: Simply Woman Accredited Trainers!

~ Loredana Thoenig

Every Tuesday, Crystal Andrus Morissette answers your questions and offers you strategies to your own challenges during a live call! You can write in or chat with her directly on the phone or Skype. Plus, you have two other opportunities each week to chat live with Professor Izabela and our Student Advisors! No matter where you live in the world, you will feel like you are close by, connected to, and supported by our entire institute. We are women empowering women!

Our Mentorship Coaches have all graduated from their Empowerment Coach Training at The S.W.A.T. Institute and are beginning to build their own coaching practice. Before they can graduate they must complete 30 practice hours. Our coaches have spent countless hours learning the empowerment process and this is the perfect way for them to refine their skills while women around the world get the support and empowerment they need at no charge. Its a true giveback and a beautiful win-win! Plus, our Mentorship Coaching Program offers our students and graduates lifelong coaching at no charge. Thats right! You have a slew of brilliant coaches at your fingertips, whenever you need a listening ear, a shoulder to cry on, or some kick-ass advice! Click here to learn more!

One of the most unique and special aspects of The S.W.A.T. Institute is our private forum where our students or as we call them siSTARs connect with, share, care, and support each other. No matter what is going on in their lives, each woman gets the loving advice, feedback, validation, and support she needs. We truly are a global coalition of empowered women!

Our five-day, full money-back guarantee allows you to take your time once you register to be certain this program is right for you!

Check out the extraordinary video testimonialssent in to us from some of our graduates!

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The Personal Empowerment Coach Certification - The S.W.A.T ...

Women empowerment is, contrary to what modern day media may advertise for the sake of the pecuniary, the cultivation and fortification of women's sense of identity, power, recognition and conviction through fostering in women the capacity to acquire self-actualization critically with concrete forces- education and knowledge. Whereas befuddled women such as the Pussycat Dolls and Girlicious will argue that slavishly coquettish attire and booty-and-bosom-flashing hoverings offer women a sense of empowerment, identity and recognition, when we rarify this claim, it stipulates that our sense of power, identity, recognition and convention is viable not only just through men, but furthermore through something ephemeral and unmerited- hotness. Not only is hotness is the mere upshot of genetical lottery (unless plastic surgery is involved), but it is transient as it's definition is always changing. Moreover, it is transient as the the ramifications of inhabiting an earth with a strong gravitational pull are inevitable for both men and women. Therefore, "hotness" cannot be relied on for power, identity, recognition and approbation if we are to live provident, prudent, judiscious lives. Our empowerment must then be derived from something concrete- knowledge or education. With knowledge we can critically discern the means of acquiring a healthy sense of identity and power and we can empower ourselves based on what our concrete knowledge tells us is provident and judiscious rather than simply hot. With education, we can understand and recognize happiness as something that is not transitory, but lifelong. Empowment, at its most ideal, should imply lifelong and healthy power for women. The only way we can acquire this is through possessing, retaining and maintaining something that can endure such a lengthy period of time. And unlike anything related to the hotness and physical beauty that are inevitably doomed by gravity, knowledge can offer us this sense of empowerment, identity, recognition and approbation that is enduring. Our established and developed knowledge is the true reflection of our empowerment because it's something that we merit and deserve through habituation, through effort and through work whereas hotness, as I stated above and will restate, is often simply a reflection of a genetic lottery (or plastic surgery or makeup) and thus not in any way, shape, or form a reflection of our merit, value or personhood. To encapsulate it in one phrase: Women empowerment is the cultivation of personhood in women that consists of the only concrete, everlasting ingredient of one's identity- their mind and the knowledge it possesses.

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What is 'personal empowerment' - Answers

A Methodology for Creating Your Life As You Want It

Three decades ago, the idea of empowerment was fresh and daring. As young as the word itself, we, (David and Gail) both felt that empowerment would be at the heart of our lifes work. In our earliest days together, sitting with yellow legal pads at our kitchen table overlooking the Ashokan Reservoir and the Catskill Mountains, we planned our wedding ceremony and then seamlessly turned to designing our fledgling Empowerment Workshop. So intertwined was our love with our passion for this work, that ten days after we were married, we launched our first workshop. As we celebrate our third decade of marriage, our bond of love is stronger than ever and our passion for empowerment more compelling than ever.

All those years ago, neither we, nor the world, knew what empowerment really meant. We knew it was about helping people to grow and realize their full potential. We also knew that it was about more than just healing and fixing problems. But what exactly was its purpose? Why was this idea entering the lexicon of change strategies with such force? Over these three decades, an extraordinarily diverse, visionary, and committed community of people was attracted to our training programs to help us discover the answers to these questions.

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Personal Empowerment

Personal Empowerment Through Horses

Author: Kit Muellner, LICSW, EAGALA Certifiedand CEO of H.O.P.E. Ranch Every organization has some form of dysfunction. Its true anywhere and its true right here in Rochester, MN. Employees know it. Managers often know it, and almost always, people outside your organization know it. In fact, sometimes its easiest to spot from the outside. Degrees []

by: Kit Muellner, Owner and Founder of H.O.P.E. Ranch If you feel the blues during winter months, you are not alone. Seasonal affective disorder (SAD) is an actual type of depression thats related to changes in seasons. Symptoms and feelings may start in the fall and continue into the cold and light deprived winter months, []

H.O.P.E. Ranch is a is a beautiful 8-acre ranch in the hills southwest of Rochester, Minnesota/ We specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of mental and emotional problems through traditional psychotherapy methods and equine assisted psychotherapy. Our team of EAGALA Certified Psychotherapist Horse specialists and mental health counselors have years of experience and employ methods designed to deliver positive mental health outcomes.

H.O.P.E. Ranch not only helps individuals but also Corporate teams through retreats and exercises designed to improve how your organization functions. Get out of the conference room and onto H.O.P.E. Ranch for your next corporate retreat.

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Hope Ranch Personal Empowerment Through Horses

Personal empowerment is about looking at who you are and becoming more aware of yourself as a unique individual.

Personal empowerment involves developing the confidence and strength to set realistic goals and fulfil your potential.Everyone has strengths and weaknesses and a range of skills that are used in everyday situations, but all too often people remain unaware of, or undervalue, their true abilities.

A person aiming for empowerment is able to take control of their life by making positive choices and setting goals. Developing self-awareness, an understanding of your strengths and weaknesses - knowing your own limitations is key to personal empowerment.

Taking steps to set and achieve goals - both short and longer-term and developing new skills, acts to increase confidence which, in itself, is essential to self-empowerment.

Personal Empowerment and Personal Development are two areas that overlap and interweave, it is recommended that you read this page in conjunction with our page: Personal Development.

At a basic level, the term 'empowerment' simply means 'becoming powerful'. Building personal empowerment involves reflecting on our personal values, skills and goals and being prepared to adjust our behaviour in order to achieve our goals. Personal empowerment also means being aware that other people have their own set of values and goals which may different to ours.

Many other, more detailed, definitions exist. These usually centre on the idea that personal empowerment gives an individual the ability to:

Developing personal empowerment usually involves making some fundamental changes in life, which is not always an easy process.The degree of change required will differ from person to person, depending on the individual starting point.

The following dimensions of personal empowerment are based on the belief that the greater the range of coping responses an individual develops, the greater their chance of coping effectively with diverse life situations.

These dimensions are:

Self-awareness involves understanding our individual character and how we are likely to respond to situations.

This enables us to build on our positive qualities and be aware of any negative traits which may reduce our effectiveness. Self-aware people make conscious decisions to enhance their lives whenever possible, learning from past experiences.

Values are opinions or beliefs that are important to us but of which we are not always aware.

They can be any kind of belief or perceived obligation, anything we prefer and for any reason.The reasons we may prefer one thing over another, or choose one course of action over another, may not always be obvious or known; there may be no apparent reason for our values.Nevertheless our values are important to us as individuals.In order to be self-aware it is necessary to be aware of our values, to critically examine them and to accept that our values may be different from those of others.

An individual's skills are the main resource which enables them to achieve their desired goals.

Skills can be gained through experience, practice, education and training.It is only by developing such skills that individual values can be translated into action.

Knowledge or information is necessary in the development of self-awareness and skills.

Knowing where to find appropriate information is in itself an essential skill.Without information, the choices open to people are limited, both in their personal and working lives.The internet has provided an easy way for everybody to access huge amounts of information very quickly and easily. The problem is then centred around the quality of the information found, and the skill set is concerned with finding accurate and reliable information.

Setting goals is a means by which an individual can take charge of their life.

The process of setting a goal involves people thinking about their values and the direction that they would like their lives to follow.Choices are made through reflection followed by action.Goals should always be both specific and realistic. Setting personal goals gives us a sense of direction in life, this direction is essential to personal empowerment.

Language is the main medium of human communication whether used in spoken or written form.

The use of language, how individuals express themselves verbally and non-verbally to others, can be empowering to both themselves and the people with whom they are communicating. Looking at how language is used is important in terms of self-empowerment and when attempting to empower other people.

In terms of personal empowerment and communication the following ideas are helpful and their use can be both self-affirming and positive:

Use Positive Language: Research into language suggests that a person's self-image is reflected in the words that they use.For example, people who say they 'should' behave in a certain way implies passivity and can detract from them seeming to be in control and taking responsibility for their actions.Talking about yourself in a positive way, acknowledging strengths and weaknesses, can be empowering.

Use Active Language: Use terms which imply positive action rather than making vague statements, particularly when talking about the future.For example, 'I will...' and 'I can...'.

Use Words to Define Your Own Space and Identity: If you fail to use words to define your own space and identity then others will tend to define you and set standards by which you evaluate yourself.Furthermore, they will try to persuade you to conform to their demands.Be clear about who you are and what your values and goals are do not let others define you.

In order to use language to help empower others:

Do not use jargon or complex terminology The use of jargon and complex terminology can be both alienating and dis-empowering.When working with others the use of jargon can create feelings of intimidation and inferiority.Without shared understanding of the words you use, effective and empowering communication cannot take place. Choose words with care, which give clarity to what you are trying to express.

Focus on the words people use Mirror words people use, see our pages:Reflection and Clarification for more information. Using shared terminology appropriately can enable you appear more in tune with the other person and what they are saying.

Choose positive words Choosing positive or active words such as 'will' or 'can' indicates that you have control in your life and is more likely to induce positive action in others.Compare the use of these words with others such as might' or 'maybe' which suggest hesitancy.Using words and statements which carry responsibility are empowering as they suggest a determined rather than a passive approach.

Avoid criticism and negativity: Criticism should always be given with extreme care and only when absolutely necessary.Once words have been spoken they cannot be easily taken back.If criticism is necessary then it can be given in a constructive way, through the use of positive and supporting words and phrases.Always attempt to cushion criticism with positive observations. Our page, Offering Constructive Crictism has lots more infomation.

Use open questions when appropriate: The use of closed questions will restrict responses to 'yes' and 'no' answers.This type of question can leave people feeling powerless because there is no opportunity to explain their response.On the other hand, open questions give the person being asked the chance to explore the reasons behind their answers.Open questions encourage a person to take responsibility for their thoughts and actions and can therefore aid empowerment.Open questions can also help people to solve problems through their own devices, help them to set their own goals and work out an appropriate plan of action.

See our pages: Questioning and Question Types for more information.

We all have opportunities to explore and develop new skills. In order to become more empowered we can, in our interactions with others, aim to:

Developing trust can be a difficult and lengthy process. In order to develop trust with others you may choose to:

In the workplace, and in any professional working relationship there are three basic components of trust:

Trust can be broken very quickly and may never be restored to its former level. Think about the points above and try to build and maintain trusting relationships in both your personal and professional life.

Avoid the following actions that may destroy trust and have a detrimental effect on personal empowerment:

See our page on Trustworthiness and Conscientiousness for more information.

Becoming empowered includes knowing your own strengths and weaknesses: identifying these will enable you to work on improving your weaknesses and build on your strengths.

It is not uncommon for other people to have misjudged your strengths and weaknesses, or for you to misjudge those of others.This can lead to opportunities being limited due to the misconception of abilities.It is important, therefore, to know your own strengths and weaknesses and to communicate them clearly to others, whilst encouraging others to communicate their strengths and weaknesses to you.

In some circumstances you may feel that you face problems that are truly beyond your capabilities.In such cases you should seek help.Empowered people know their own limits and have no problems with asking for help or guidance.Self-knowledge, often referred to as self-awareness, is a strength which enables you to set personal improvement goals in order to make a more substantial contribution.The more empowered you become, the more you will be able to help others to become empowered.

Confidence acts as one of the greatest motivators or most powerful limitations to anyone trying to change their behaviour and become more empowered.

Most people only undertake tasks that they feel capable of doing and it takes great effort to overcome a lack of confidence in one's capabilities. Self-empowerment involves people constantly challenging their own beliefs and what they are capable of undertaking.

See our pages on Building Confidence and Self Esteem for more information.

Personal empowerment is not a static thing that you can do once in your life.

You should view personal empowerment as ongoing personal development. As circumstances change and develop, and as we ourselves change and develop, so do our needs for development and empowerment.

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Personal Empowerment | SkillsYouNeed

Vishal Sikka quit as Infosys CEO on Friday, following a public battle with the tech giant's founders that spanned for months.

In his blog, Timelessness, Sikka posted his resignation letter in full, under the title 'Moving On..." and which we are republishing below.

Dear Friends,

After a lot of reflection, I have resigned from my position as your MD & CEO effective today.A succession process has been initiated, with Pravin serving as interim MD & CEO, and I will work closely with the Board and management team over the next few months to ensure a smooth transition. In addition, I have agreed to serve as Executive Vice Chairman on the Board to further ensure continuity until the new management is in place.

For days, indeed weeks, this decision has weighed on me. I have wrestled the pros and cons, the issues and the counterbalancing arguments. But now, after much thought, and considering the environment of the last few quarters, I am clear in my decision. It is clear to me that despite our successes over the last three years, and the powerful seeds of innovation that we have sown, I cannot carry out my job as CEO and continue to create value, while also constantly defending against unrelenting, baseless/malicious and increasingly personal attacks.

In 2014, we started with a very challenging set of conditions, and in the last three years, we have decisively turned things around.

Three years ago, I started this journey with a calling, to help reshape the company around innovation and entrepreneurship, to deliver breakthrough value for clients, and to help elevate our work, our standing, our selves, on the basis of a dual strategy, bringing together dualities of renew and new, automation and innovation, people and software, to show a new path forward in a time of unprecedented disruption within the industry and beyond. That time, around and before June 2014, was a difficult time. Our growth rates were low and attrition was high. There was a sense of apprehension all around and I came here to help enable a great transformation as our core business faced intense pricing pressure, and clients looked increasingly to innovative partners to help shape their digital futures. Now, a bit more than three years later, I am happy to see the company doing better in every dimension I can think of.

We have grown our revenues, from $2.13B in Q1FY15 to $2.65B this past Q1. We did so while keeping a strong focus on margins, closing this past quarter at 24.1% operating margin, beating some competitors for the first time in many years, and improving against most in our industry.Perhaps more importantly, our revenue per employee has grown for six quarters in a row. Our attrition has fallen, from 23.4% in Q1FY15 to 16.9% this past Q1, and high performer attrition is hovering at or below the single-digit threshold for a while now.We grew our $100M+ clients from 12 when I started, to 19, and increased our large deal wins from ~$1.9B in FY15 to ~$3.5B this past year. We've done all this while improving our overall utilization, to a 10-yr high this past quarter, and an all time high including trainees, while improving our cash reserves, rewarding employees with a new equity plan, and returning cash to our stakeholders. And we have done all this while improving our standing with clients to the highest ever in the 12 years since we've done our client satisfaction survey, and a jump of 22 points in CxO satisfaction.

A few days ago, Nitesh, Radha, and I met a client in our office in Palo Alto. It is one of the largest companies in the world - and the CIO was excited and proud about seeing automation come to life in their landscape.Her reaction to seeing many of our innovation projects, as well as our workspace itself, was thoroughly rewarding, and a testament to all we have achieved. She requested us to bring our innovative work and processes to everything we do with her team in a similar space, and even that we help them establish a similar presence for their company in the valley!This is a sentiment I've often heard from clients who've visited our 12,000 sqft space here, that has seen 2200 visits over its ~27 months; clients where we saw much faster than average revenue growth following their visits. So, as I look back on the three years as CEO, what brings me the most joy is the new roads that all of you have traveled, the new frontiers that all of you have enabled.From embracing the new ideas in education, teaching ourselves Design Thinking like no one else ever has, learning AI, new development processes, and more, to applying these learnings via Zero Distance, a one-of-a-kind program of massive grassroots innovation, powered by education, by the amazing Zero Bench, and by your creative confidence.With 16500+ ideas generated, 2200+ of which have already been implemented, ZD is proof that innovation need not be the domain of a chosen few in some elite department, but is the prerogative of us all; proof that the extraordinary within each one of us can indeed be unleashed. To complement this grassroots innovation, we've launched 25+ new services that contributed 8.3% of our revenue last quarter, up from zero in April 2015.And our own new software business is now at 1.6% of revenue.Our AI platform, Nia, now with 160+ scenarios deployed at more than 70 clients, is helping drive both automation within the company, and breakthrough new business scenarios outside.Beyond new services and new software, we've ventured into new horizons, from our startup fund's investments in promising new businesses, to the work we've done in the last 3 years in local hiring around the world, especially in the US, to the exemplary and inspiring work our US foundation has done in bringing computer science education and a culture of making, to the masses.

And I am proud of how we have upheld our values, our culture, our integrity, whilst we have gone about this massive transformation.I am proud of how our Board has worked, tirelessly, selflessly, these past quarters, despite intense, unfair, and often malicious and personal, criticism, in not only upholding our standards of governance and integrity, but also indeed raising these.None of our successes would be worthwhile for a moment, if this was not the case.

I was, and remain, passionate about the massive transformation opportunity for this company and industry, but we all need to allow the company to move beyond the noise and distractions.

Back in May 2014, when I first met many board colleagues, I thought of the road ahead as a road for the next 33 years of this iconic company. For Infosys is more than a company: it is an idea, a dream, a pioneering possibility.Back then I thought, just as I do today, that the time ahead called for a company that could show the way to a digital future, a future where our humanity, amplified by automation and software, would unleash our creativity, our imagination, to construct great worlds of our futures, and would do so powered by education, by our timeless value of learnability.Such an Infosys, whilst staying true to its core, to her values and timeless principles, would shine the light in an altogether different context, a different reality. Such an Infosys would be one where an individual's entrepreneurship, ability to imagine and create, ability to learn, and to amplify themselves with software, with AI, would create a greater whole. Rather than an overarching system enabling the people, the people's agility and imagination would create a greater system. Three years later, we can clearly see that the seeds of this idea have taken root and are growing, into beautiful new flowers and plants, and I see no reason why these cannot continue, and help shape our company's future.

For sure this journey has been a difficult one.No one, especially me, thought it would be easy.Transformations are hard to begin with.A massive transformation, of such an iconic institution, with such groundbreaking achievements behind her, would be even tougher, and the exponential rates of change all around us, further amplified by geopolitical matters, would add that much more headwind.But all this was known, and clear, and in many ways added to the calling that I felt.For as the legendary architect Daniel Burnham said, "Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir man's blood."

But after much contemplation I have decided to leave because the distractions, the very public noise around us, have created an untenable atmosphere. I deeply believe in creating value in an atmosphere of freedom, trust and empowerment. Life is too short to engage in battles of opinions in the public, these add no value, take critical time and focus away from the business, and indeed add more to the noise, to the eardrum buzz, as I wrote to you a few months ago. The founding principle of the strategy I laid out for our renewal was personal empowerment, working in an entrepreneurial environment.I need this for my own work as well.Steve Jobs, in his famous commencement speech at my alma mater, said:

"Your time is limited, don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma, which is living the result of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other opinions drown your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition, they somehow already know what you truly want to become."

I now need to move forward, and return to an environment of respect, trust and empowerment, where I can take on new lofty challenges, as can each of you.

As Steve Jobs said, I must follow my heart and my intuition, build my buildings, give my givings, and do something else. Over the next weeks and months, I look forward to working with the Board and management to create a smooth transition, and simultaneously staring into the great unknown, and to doing something great, something purposeful, for the times ahead. And also to spend some time with my loved ones.I've been away from home far too often and far too long.

As I completed my three years recently, many people asked me if I have any regrets. This question is more apt today and the answer is a clear NO. Not for a second.However difficult the noise of the last several months has been, I wouldn't trade our time together for anything. I would not give up the experience of seeing the gleam in your eyes as you described a new idea, invention, or contribution. You worked on these confidently, without reward, without arrogance, showing exactly the kind of creative confidence that David Kelley talked about in Design Thinking - a wonderful thing to witness.

I am deeply grateful for the immense support and love I've received from all of you, from our worthy clients for whom we do our life's work, and by our shareholders across the globe.I am grateful for your trust, confidence and friendship, and am thankful to our team of amazing leaders, who will help lead our company to greatness.To my first Infoscion colleague and trusted friend Ranga, who enabled us to achieve the things we achieved, to the amazing Ravi, a pocket of passion and energy and execution excellence, to the calm and steadfast Mohit, who introduced me to the band of brothers and lived it, day after day, to the larger than life Rajesh, with his great heart and big laugh, to Binod, a veritable bulldozer brother with his broad shoulders and broader smile, to the one of a kind Ramadas, the architect and protector of our magnificent campuses with his indomitable spirit and world-class excellence, to the always smiling Deepak who helped live the strategy, to Krish and the best HR team in the world, especially the extraordinary Richard, Nanju, Shruthi and their amazing team for helping to carry out some of the craziest and most amazing people initiatives, to Inderpreet, a new voice to the team, a voice of calm, strength, integrity and a stability that far belies the little time she's been with us, to Jayesh and our entire finance team for their dedication, their impeccable meticulous integrity and world-class excellence, and especially to my partner, friend, and pillar of strength, Pravin, who carried all the load in the world, with a smile, impeccable integrity and the most amazing grace, and will now lead you to the next phase of our company's growth.To Zaiba, Bala sir, Nagaraju, Hari and many others for making it possible for me to be me and to do my work, to my Palo Alto family: Sanjay, Abdul, Navin, Ritika, Barbara, Tao, Vinod, Shabana, April, Sudhir and others who have stood by me and have given up so much to be a part of this journey and contributed so much to it, and indeed to thousands of Infoscions who've made it all matter.I am thankful to Sesh and our entire board for their unfailing support and confidence in me throughout this journey.

Together we have achieved a lot.Even in the midst of all of the distractions, even as the tendency was to return to the familiar, we still managed to persevere and make wonderful progress. We have laid the foundation for the next 30 years of Infosys, and I feel deeply proud to have worked alongside all of you in sowing the seeds that will return this company to the bellwether it once was.As you've all often reminded us, Infosys is no bigger and no smaller than any of us, the people, the Infoscions.You are the ones that will take Infosys to the next 30 years and beyond.As I think about the time ahead, for all of us, I can only see us powered by a freedom from the known, of renewing ourselves to thrive in the time ahead. Each one of you has vindicated my deeply held belief that people are capable of doing more, achieving more, being more, than they ever imagined possible. So, keep pushing yourself to do better at whatever you are good at, but also learning to do things you have never done before, indeed, nobody has ever done before. I know I will be doing the same.

The Board, Pravin, and I will communicate additional details as we move forward in this transition, and meanwhile, we continue our work as is. I wish all of you the very best in your journeys ahead.

V

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Infosys' Sikka's resignation letter: 'I now need to... return to an environment of respect, trust and empowerment' - Khaleej Times

August 22, 2017

BY SIMON KESLEP

The ability to help others is not about gaining recognition because one needs to be passionate about what he or she does in their dream job.

Aspiring 23-year-old Eileen-May Kehena Murepe, who hails from Kikori in Gulf Province, is one of those young Papua New Guineans who has the passion to help others.

My desire to help people and give back is entirely driven by the lack of development and provision of basic and essential services in the rural areas. I come from one of the most remote places in PNG and I know the hardship my people are going through, Ms Murepe said.

As a young Papua New Guinea, Ms Murepe strives to impact the lives of others by doing what she is passionate about.

Ms Murepe had a glimpse of the employment world when she was an intern at Mineral Resources Development Company, 7 News Sydney, Australia, and Oil Search Sydney, Australia.

She is not so much a job dreamer as she is interested and passionate about a lot of things.

I would take any job that enables me to help my people of Kikori, especially the women, where gender inequality is rampant, Ms Murepe said.

Asked how her dream job would encourage other young Papua New Guineans to strive in their respective walks of life, she said her dream job would possibly be her passion.

My passion would encourage and inspire people around me to pursue their passion so they will enjoy and love doing what they do, she adds.

Ms Murepes educational journey has brought her into contact with a lot of amazing people that she tends to look up to. She thinks anyone who inspires you in any way is your role model and so she has a lot of role models.

My parents are my role models because they have proved that from nothing and through hard work and sacrifices, you can be somebody and you can make something for yourself, she said.

Some iconic role models that Ms Murepe also feels inspired by are one of Americas earlier presidents, Abraham Lincoln and talk show host, Oprah Winfrey for women empowerment and giving back to the people.

She also feels inspired by British actress, model and activist Emma Watsons fight for gender equality.

Ms Murepe is currently studying at the University of Papua New Guinea as a communication and arts student. She has keen interests in photography, video, events planning, community work, volunteering, leadership and advocating mainly in women empowerment, gender equality, equal distribution of wealth, childrens rights, entrepreneurship, travelling and adventures and enjoys reading books on crime and investigation.

As a young woman keen to make a difference in her community, Ms Murepe was not happy with how the results of the 2017 National Election, especially without a woman in the 10th Parliament, which meets for the first time today.

She posed the questions: What happened to the female population of voters? What happeneed to supporting each other?

The National Government has been urged to engage proactively with the business sector and community to provide and enable policies to successfully deal with challenges that they are currently encountering.

Papua New Guineas economy is in a strong position compared to similar economies around the world, Prime Minister Peter ONeill said in Parliament yesterday.

The Government does not really know how many people live in Papua New Guinea as there had only been estimates.

The National Government has been urged to engage proactively with the business sector and community to provide and enable policies to successfully deal with challenges that they are currently encountering.

Papua New Guineas economy is in a strong position compared to similar economies around the world, Prime Minister Peter ONeill said in Parliament yesterday.

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Helping others is not about personal gain - POST-COURIER

By Anuranjita Kumar

Technology has come to play a vital role in the lives of many and has significantly shaped consumer perceptions, behaviours, and preferences. Technology is driving a host of disruptive innovations lately, also aided by the interesting demographic changes witnessed globally. Initially, driven by the younger populations of the world, the uptake of digitisation is slowly spreading far and wide sans boundaries, sans demographic or age barriers. On the other hand, evolving geopolitical equations are also shaping the world significantly, giving rise to newer opportunities. Yet also, in some cases, raising unforeseen barriers.

These are just a few things adding to the complexity of the environment businesses function in. It demands leaders to be nimble in evaluating the emergent situations and making prompt decisions. 'Speed to market' is critical to the success of organisations today. It allows them to reach their clients faster with better products, offers and services ahead of their competition and also being able to stay on their toes to constantly evolve these very products and services, sometimes even on the go, to give business as well as the stakeholders an edge.

Previously, major changes or transformations have been led by the executive teams of the organisation. The new realities, however, require organisations to be more agile by adopting the concept of distributed leadership. In order to deftly respond to market changes and exceed customer expectations, organisations need employees across locations to promptly make important decisions that impact 'speed to market'.

This calls for organisations to leverage 'individual leadership' which, simply put, means individuals who are ready to take decisions and hold the courage and integrity to not only stand by them but also bring with it the conviction to drive others to rally and succeed. No longer is leadership confined to the traditional definition of 'people management'. The 'individual leadership' concept inspires organisations to develop the leadership ability of its employees regardless of their work location, or position in the hierarchy. It aims to build the capabilities of employees across levels through the levers of empowerment and engagement.

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Personal leadership to give cos competitive advantage - Times of India

These are of course the standards related to transport systems including aircraft, buses and coaches, ferries, taxis, trains, trams, light rail, motor rail, rack railways, and other rolling stock, and are formulated under the Disability Discrimination Act (1992).

The review, which began in 2012, recognised a number of areas where improvements could be made, with one of the recommendations being to develop accessibility guidelines for a whole-of-journey approach to public transport planning.

The resulting guideline which was recently published in draft form by the Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development is The Whole Journey: a guide for thinking beyond compliance to create accessible public transport journeys.

Comments were sought with regard to the guideline, the period for which has since closed. The guideline is therefore subject to change further the Departments assessment and implementation of any feedback gained.

The guide states that it has been "designed to encourage policy makers, planners, designers, builders, certifiers and operators to think beyond compliance and the physical and governance boundaries of services and infrastructure, and to focus instead on peoples accessibility needs across their whole journey."

The report acknowledges that Australians reporting a disability represent 18.3 per cent of the population, and that numerous previous reports and studies continually identify that people with a disability are more likely to experience social and economic disadvantage. Access to public transport is identified as a key factor in creating opportunities for personal empowerment, social inclusion and participation. A key factor in reducing dependence on families, friends and taxi services, and to participate actively and independently in the community be it for recreation, training or employment.

In addressing the identified gaps in the Whole Journey, the guide identifies eight key stages and elaborates on strategies, solutions, technologies and opportunities as they relate to each stage. The points below are offered as summary of some of the items and solutions raised.

Pre-journey planning

Journey start and end

Public transport stop/station

Public transport service

Interchange

Return journey planning

Disruption to business-as-usual

Supporting infrastructure

The guideline can be downloaded here

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Accessible Public Transport: The Whole Journey - Sourceable

REDLANDS >> The role of women in government and female empowerment is driving Caroline Irvings passion for getting involved.

The Redlands East Valley High School senior spent much of her summer learning about women in influential roles as a participant in American Legion Auxiliary-sponsored programs in California and Washington, D.C.

The programs, known as Girls State, are dedicated to developing leadership skills, confidence and action-based understanding of the government process to give young women a lasting foundation for success, both personally and professionally, according to the programs website. Caroline, 17, said her interest in politics and government began at a young age.

Her biggest inspiration is Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a woman she has idolized since the age of 8.

It was back when the Notorious RBG campaign was going on, Caroline said. I was enticed by it and thought, I think Im going to check out what she stands for.

Ginsburgs long track of court success and the personal battles she has overcome inspires Caroline to pursue her long-term goal of working on the preservation of ecological diversity in South America.

Caroline represented REV at Girl State in late June after receiving a nomination to attend the mock government camp.

There, she ran for higher office and was elected as the camps lieutenant governor.

At the end of the week she learned she was one of two girls selected to attend the national camp in late July.

The nomination came as a surprise, Caroline said.

It was awesome and one of the craziest experiences of my life, she said. It changed my life.

Back at REV, Caroline is heavily involved in mock trial and speech and debate. She hopes to continue to develop her passion and love for politics and government after she graduates. And she hopes to inspire others to get involved, as she was inspired by Ginsburg.

I hope I can bring the role of leader, friend, mentor and (advocacy for) female empowerment to REV, she said. I want to be (an example) to other girls that as a senior I am not afraid to be outspoken and hope it becomes more normal and less taboo.

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Redlands East Valley student represents city at state, national Girl State mock government camps - Redlands Daily Facts

Speaking at the inauguration ceremony, Graa Machel said the forum will help to establish networks among women with a common interest in developing their countries using pan-African ideas. (Gallo)

The Women Advancing Africa (WAA) Forum launched this weekend in the Tanzanian capital Dar es Salaam with a call on women to take centre stage in Africas economic liberation. The forum is an initiative of the Graa Machel Trust and celebrates the critical role women play in development. It will also provide a platform to showcase womens leadership and how that can be used for social change and economic transformation. Suzgo Chitete was at the launch.

The platforms launch attracted nearly 300 professional women from across Africa, representing business, politics, law, civil society, and media. Speakers at the forum said that the political liberation achieved decades ago is not good enough for Africa to move forward, and therefore there was a push for what they are calling the second liberation with a focus on making the continent economically independent.

Speaking at the inauguration ceremony, Graa Machel said the forum will help to establish networks among women in the region with a common interest in developing their countries using pan-African ideas.

Our networks are rooted in each country where we are represented. We believe that any social, cultural and economic transformation has to be driven by women in the context of the country they belong to, but a country alone is not enough. Hence, we encourage sub-regional cooperation, explained Machel.

She said the choice of Tanzania as the host of the event was deliberate, as the country was a sanctuary of early African liberation struggles. Machel said the delegates came to Tanzania to pay respect to the East African countrys role in achieving African liberation, and to embark on a second liberation which will set the continent on a path to economic independence, with women as central drivers of change.

In her opening address at the conference, Tanzanian vice-president, Samia Suluhu Hassan, commended the initiative saying ideas shared there could help inform policies and bring about gender parity. She agreed with other speakers that it would be a mistake to ignore women in pushing forward Africas transformation agenda. The Tanzanian deputy leader, who is also a member of the UN High Level Panel on Womens Economic Empowerment, made a personal commitment to support women in her country in any way to ensure their effective participation in the WAA forum.

Tanzanian vice-president Samia Suluhu Hassan

Governments should provide an enabling infrastructure which seeks to promote gender parity. May I also call upon all of us here to ask our governments to take into account the implementation of [the United Nations] sustainable development goals for faster realisation of economic empowerment, especially for women, Hassan said.

The four-day event hosted several specialised discussions covering topics like agribusiness, energy and extractive industries, cross-border trade, financial inclusion, technology, and media in the context of changing the narrative on womens representation.

The discussions highlighted varied opinions, with some participants blaming men for monopolising power during the independence movement, thereby marginalising women. Other participants felt lessons could be drawn from the first stage of political liberation to succeed in the second struggle for economic independence.

Appearing on a conference panel, Hadeel Ibrahim, the executive director of the Mo Ibrahim Foundation, stressed that the second liberation struggle needs to have an inclusive feminist agenda.

The first liberation was about gaining power while the second one is about empowerment. This liberation should aim at inclusiveness for marginalised groups while adhering to good governance, where everyone is treated with dignity regardless of gender, said Ebrahim.

The former president of the Pan-African Parliament, Gertrude Mongella, thinks that independence was achieved due to unity of purpose among nations, and that same spirit of unity should help to make the second liberation a success.

Male speakers at the forum also supported women taking a driving seat in the economic transformation of Africa. Studies have shown that investing in women has economic benefits because the global GDP can expand by $12 trillion. In sub-Saharan Africa alone, the GDP can expand by $300 billion, which is three times the amount of foreign aid to the continent, explained Sangu Delle, a Ghanaian entrepreneur and chief executive officer of the Golden Palm Investments Corporation.

Reporting by Suzgo Chitete, images by Gare Amadou

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Africa's second liberation will be women's empowerment | News ... - Mail & Guardian

ATLANTA, Aug. 16, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --Seasoned business leader Lisa Morgan Mosley, Founder of 212 Degrees Coaching Services,has announced the release date for her new self-help and personal growth book titled 'Expressions of Empowerment: An Introspective Guide for Personal and Professional Success (Volume I).' The book will be released on August 30th and will be available for sale on Amazon. With decades of experience in the corporate world, Lisa is known in the industry as an innate sales strategist that capitalizes on company's objectives, and this book is a reflection of her lifetime of engaging personal and professional experiences.

"Empowerment is a key to success, and this book is my effort to share insights of professional and personal success," said Lisa Morgan Mosley, the Author of this inspiring book. "This is the first volume and I look forward to future stories of enlightenment with additional volumes to follow," she added.

This book by Lisa is all about positivity and self-development to meet professional and personal goals in life. According to the reviews, the author has candidly shared her experience to fight negativity and hurdles through a positive sense of growth with motivation. Lisa's background clearly demonstrates that she is an experienced leader in multiple disciplines and a talented motivator and mentor who receives high praise from clients and peers alike for her teaching skills.

About Lisa Morgan MosleyLisa is a renowned American Business and Career Growth Coach with over 25 years of experience and a Master's Degree in Organizational Management. She is the Founder of 212 Degrees Coaching Services and an effective leader in such companies as Apple, AT&T, and FedEx. Lisa also developed curriculum and taught Sales and Marketing Research at Gwinnett Technical College. She is a graduate of The Coach Training Academy and credentialed through the Certified Coaches Alliance (CCA), a member of the International Coach Federation (ICF), and also a member of the National Association of Professional Women (NAPW).

To preorder your copy on Amazon, please visit: http://bit.ly/ExpressionsBook

Website 212degreescoaching.com

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SOURCE 212 Degrees Coaching Services

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Lisa Morgan Mosley Has Announced The First Volume Of 'Expressions Of Empowerment' - Markets Insider

NEW YORKIt was around 10 am on a sun-drenched summer morning, and James Altucher, perhaps, the worlds least likely success guru, was packing his worldly possessions, about 15 items, into a small canvas carry-on bag.

If I were to die, my kids get this bag, Altucher said sardonically as he packed away his laptop, iPad, three sets of chinos, three t-shirts and a Ziploc bag filled with $4,000 worth of $2 bills (People always remember you if you tip with $2 bills, he said), and departed a friends loft.

A few months ago, the boyish 48-year-old let the lease expire on his Cold Spring, New York, apartment, and dumped or donated virtually everything he owned, more than 40 garbage bags of sheets, dishes, clothes, books, his college diploma, even childhood photo albums. Since then, hes been bouncing among friends apartments and Airbnb rentals.

Its not that he is down on his luck. Several of the 16 books he has written, including his 2013 personal-empowerment manifesto, Choose Yourself, continue to sell briskly. His weekly podcasts, The James Altucher Show, featuring interviews with notables as diverse as Ron Paul and Luther Campbell of 2 Live Crew and Question of the Day, with Stephen Dubner, are downloaded about 2 million times a month.

Altucher is simply practicing what he preaches. Over the last half-decade, this former tech entrepreneur, venture capitalist and financial pundit has reinvented himself as a gimlet-eyed self-help guru, preaching survival in an era when the American dreamthe gold-embossed college diploma, the corner office, the three-bedroom homeseems like a sham. So one by one, he has shed all of them.

I have ambition, he said, to have no ambition.

In the past 25 years, income has gone down for the 18- to 35-year-olds, student-loan debt is at an all-time high, Altucher said over a lunch of zucchini pancakes at a Russian restaurant in the Flatiron district. We had $3 trillion in bailout money, and income inequality got higher than ever. People feel like they were scammed.

While there is no shortage of anger and confusion about the supposed waning of the American dream, what makes Altucher stand out are his Cassandra-like conclusions.

College, he says, is a waste of money. Although he graduated from Cornell, Altucher argues that the college degree is becoming a costly luxury in a world where millennials feel like debt serfs and entry-level professional jobs are scarce.

In a 2012 self-published book, 40 Alternatives to College, he argued that young adults could travel the world, educate themselves online and start a business with the same $200,000 they may spend on college.

Investing the money with even a 5-percent return would offer greater financial benefit over the course of a lifetime, he wrote in a blog post.

Similarly, he believes homeownership is a rip-off foisted upon unwitting citizens by a $14-trillion mortgage industry.

Its a total scam, he said in an online interview. Nobody should put more than 5 percent to 10 percent of their portfolio, their assets, in any one investment. But when people buy a home, they go crazy. They put like 50 percent, 60 percent, 70 percent of their net worth into this one investment. Its illiquid, so when times are hard, you cant sell it.

And he think stocks are a racket. Its a fierce worldview that is rooted in Altuchers own roller-coaster life.

In the 1990s as a young Silicon Alley start-up whiz, Altucher made millions with a web-design company, Reset Inc., that counted Sony and Miramax as clients.

Soon, he and his wife at the time, Anne (they divorced in 2010), were living in a 5,000-square-foot loft in TriBeCa that he bought for $1.8 million and spent another $1 million renovating. He felt flush enough to take a helicopter to Atlantic City, New Jersey, on weekends to play poker.

The lavish lifestyle did not fill his emotional void. Nobody should feel sorry for me, he said. I was really stupid, but I thought I was dirt poor. I felt like I needed $100 million to be happy. So I just started investing in all these other companies, and they were just stupid companies. Zero of these investments worked out.

As his fortunes collapsed, he was forced to sell his apartment for a $1-million loss (it was after the attacks of September 11, 2001).

To reclaim his wealth, he set his sights on the stock market. He read more than a hundred books on investing, and eventually wrangled a job writing for James Cramers site, TheStreet and, later, The Financial Times. Before long, his trademark hairdo, which looks like carnival cotton candy spun from steel wool, was a familiar sight on CNBC.

But his fortunes crumbled once again during the financial crisis that began in 2008. The hedge fund he started ran out of gas, various start-ups withered, writing gigs dried up. With few options open, he decided to chronicle his failures on a personal blog, which he named Altucher Confidential.

I just said, Ive made every mistake in the book: Heres what they are, Altucher said. To Wall Street friends, he seemed like Howard Beale, the anchorman in Network who had a meltdown on-air.

Instead of touting the latest hot mutual fund, he wrote posts, like 10 Reasons You Should Never Own Stocks Again. (Reason No. 1: Youre not that good at it.) He confessed thoughts of suicide.

Financial people were like watching a train wreck in real time, Altucher said. I had friends I hadnt talked to since high school call me and say, Hey, are you OK?

He soon discovered a sizable audience of people whose own dreams had just gone down the sinkhole. They, too, were looking to claw their way out.

The No. 1 search phrase on Google that takes people to my blog is I want to die, Altucher said.

By writing candidly about his own triumphs and flameouts, Altucher shows readers how they can succeed despite their flaws, not because of a lack of flaws, said Tim Ferriss, author of the best-selling 4-Hour self-improvement series. This is hugely refreshing in a world of rah-rah positive-thinking gurus who are all forced smiles and high-fives.

It helped that Altucher, despite his biting views on topics like college, maintained a positive tone. I am an optimist, he said. Theres a great novel from the 1960s by Richard Faria called Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me. Basically, Ive been down on the floor so many times, I know now that I can always bounce back, and it gets faster each time.

His philosophy is, perhaps, most clearly articulated in Choose Yourself, which he summarized over lunch like this: If you dont choose the life you want to live, chances are, someone else is going to choose it for you. And the results are probably not going to be pretty.

His fans swear by him. One reader, Beck Power, recently wrote an essay on Medium about how he inspired her to ditch a frustrating job to start her own online travel business. I dance in my underwear, she wrote. I dont have panic attacks anymore.

A talk he gave at a London church last year drew about 1,000 people, and fans have organized Choose Yourself meetups in cities around the world. On LinkedIn, where he publishes original free essays, Altucher has more than 485,000 followers and is ranked the No. 4 influencer, after Bill Gates, Richard Branson and Mohamed A. El Erian, the financier and author.

Altucher, in fact, disputes that he is a guru in the first place. I am not a self-help guy at all, he said.

Advice is autobiography, he added. I only say what has worked for me, and then others can choose to try it or not.

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Why this self-help guru only owns 15 things - Business Mirror

By Natario McKenzie

Tribune Business Reporter

nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net

Prime Minister Dr Hubert Minnis said that youth entrepreneurial empowerment will be a major focus of his administration, while urging the private sector to be "bold and imaginative".

Dr Minnis, who was speaking at the recent launch of the Bahamas Striping Group's Investment Group funding arm, said: "Youth entrepreneurial empowerment will be a major focus of my administration as we see this as a means of tackling some of our long-entrenched problems in our urban areas such as unemployment, crime and social anomie."

Dr Minnis applauded the efforts of the striping group, while noting there are countless examples of young individuals who have ideas to start a business enterprise but who have nowhere to turn to find the necessary funding to advance their proposals. "They are unable to obtain funding through the established commercial banks and quite naturally they would not have the connections or the knowledge to obtain private financing. And so what happens, the dream is deferred, and the dream dies. Needless to say, this leads to personal frustration and social explosion."

Dr Minnis also stressed that the private sector must expand. "One of today's realities is that the private sector must expand. It must be that sector of our economy that must be bold and imaginative. We know that the public sector is already overburdened when it comes to creating new employment and so any opportunity that the private sector has to expand and create new employment should be welcomed," said Dr Minnis.

He added: "Our economy needs small and medium enterprises to grow and become successful. More often than not, these are the companies that employ those who are marginalised and who may not fit into the conventional mainstream of employable skills. But the market place must find room for such young men and women, and often the best way to do this is allowing such persons to do their own thing."

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PM: Youth entrepreneurial empowerment to be 'major focus' of ... - Bahamas Tribune

The Women Advancing Africa (WAA) Forum launched this weekend in the Tanzanian capital Dar es Salaam with a call on women to take centre stage in Africas economic liberation. The forum is an initiative of the Graa Machel Trust and celebrates the critical role women play in development. It will also provide a platform to showcase womens leadership and how that can be used for social change and economic transformation. Suzgo Chitete was at the launch.

The platforms launch attracted nearly 300 professional women from across Africa, representing business, politics, law, civil society, and media. Speakers at the forum said that the political liberation achieved decades ago is not good enough for Africa to move forward, and therefore there was a push for what they are calling the second liberation with a focus on making the continent economically independent.

Speaking at the inauguration ceremony, Graa Machel said the forum will help to establish networks among women in the region with a common interest in developing their countries using pan-African ideas.

Our networks are rooted in each country where we are represented. We believe that any social, cultural and economic transformation has to be driven by women in the context of the country they belong to, but a country alone is not enough. Hence, we encourage sub-regional cooperation, explained Machel.

She said the choice of Tanzania as the host of the event was deliberate, as the country was a sanctuary of early African liberation struggles. Machel said the delegates came to Tanzania to pay respect to the East African countrys role in achieving African liberation, and to embark on a second liberation which will set the continent on a path to economic independence, with women as central drivers of change.

In her opening address at the conference, Tanzanian vice-president, Samia Suluhu Hassan, commended the initiative saying ideas shared there could help inform policies and bring about gender parity. She agreed with other speakers that it would be a mistake to ignore women in pushing forward Africas transformation agenda. The Tanzanian deputy leader, who is also a member of the UN High Level Panel on Womens Economic Empowerment, made a personal commitment to support women in her country in any way to ensure their effective participation in the WAA forum.

Governments should provide an enabling infrastructure which seeks to promote gender parity. May I also call upon all of us here to ask our governments to take into account the implementation of [the United Nations] sustainable development goals for faster realisation of economic empowerment, especially for women, Hassan said.

The four-day event hosted several specialised discussions covering topics like agribusiness, energy and extractive industries, cross-border trade, financial inclusion, technology, and media in the context of changing the narrative on womens representation.

The discussions highlighted varied opinions, with some participants blaming men for monopolising power during the independence movement, thereby marginalising women. Other participants felt lessons could be drawn from the first stage of political liberation to succeed in the second struggle for economic independence.

Appearing on a conference panel, Hadeel Ibrahim, the executive director of the Mo Ibrahim Foundation, stressed that the second liberation struggle needs to have an inclusive feminist agenda.

The first liberation was about gaining power while the second one is about empowerment. This liberation should aim at inclusiveness for marginalised groups while adhering to good governance, where everyone is treated with dignity regardless of gender, said Ebrahim.

The former president of the Pan-African Parliament, Gertrude Mongella, thinks that independence was achieved due to unity of purpose among nations, and that same spirit of unity should help to make the second liberation a success.

Male speakers at the forum also supported women taking a driving seat in the economic transformation of Africa. Studies have shown that investing in women has economic benefits because the global GDP can expand by $12 trillion. In sub-Saharan Africa alone, the GDP can expand by $300 billion, which is three times the amount of foreign aid to the continent, explained Sangu Delle, a Ghanaian entrepreneur and chief executive officer of the Golden Palm Investments Corporation.

Reporting by Suzgo Chitete, images byGare Amadou

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Africa's second liberation will be women's empowerment - The Daily Vox

San Diegos homeless crisis is growing worse by the day. Yet as more are living on the streets and fewer in shelters than ever before, some, including Michael McConnell who recently took to the Union-Tribunes opinion pages (Why the Housing First approach is a practical solution for homelessness, Aug. 4) argue that the best approach to solving homelessness is to outlaw any program that doesnt fit his particular recipe for success.

As someone who has served the homeless for more than 25 years, solving homelessness for thousands using a very different approach, it is hard for me to not take his criticism personally. Its even harder not to call it out for it narrow-mindedness.

Homelessness is a complex problem with causes spanning the criminal justice system, mental health, substance abuse, family support, human connection, and other social and economic forces. Other innovative and replicable program models that work shouldnt be kept out of the picture.

In his commentary, McConnell makes many mischaracterizations, claiming that progress in solving homelessness is jeopardized by ill-informed politicians and agencies. But what he gets wrong most of all is that no one is calling for an end to Housing First. Instead, what some are asking for is a simple request to include other high-performing results-driven approaches in our homelessness policy.

Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Vista, deserves praise for courageously taking the lead to request Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson look at how Housing First impacts vulnerable populations families and children and how other approaches can work in tandem to overcome poverty and homelessness. He should be commended for taking action to prevent homeless programs across the state from being forced to shutter their doors, thanks to the new misguided guidelines.

At Solutions for Change, our programs our based on a 25-year personal empowerment and accountability model that puts the hard-to-serve homeless to work and is funded almost entirely by the private sector and social enterprise. Our approach adopts a completely unique model focused on a permanent solution to homelessness, not just a band aid of temporary housing.

Over 18 years, weve successfully led more than 850 families and 2,200 children out of homelessness and back on their feet. Yet, thanks to the misguided requirement that any homelessness program follow Housing First to be eligible for federal funding, weve been forced to walk away from as much as $600,000 in grants and our 40-bed family center now sits empty because Housing First rules require that we abandon our drug free housing and scrap our workforce training in favor of no-strings-attached optional programs.

When McConnell and other Housing First allies assert that their model works, theyre not talking about solving homelessness and its root causes. His goal is to getting people into permanent taxpayer-supported housing. They then offer Family Option Study as proof that families benefit from Housing First, but fail to mention how the very study also demonstrates that families in these programs experienced only temporary success because issues like employment, mental health and substance abuse were poorly addressed for the long haul.

Our approach uses work, education and employment to transform those experiencing homelessness. The families we help like this approach they want to be supported, empowered and treated as valuable and capable. Central to this effort is a healthy and drug-free living community focused on keeping kids safe. Good programs like ours with a track record of success shouldnt be shut out of the system.

This issue is about more than housing: Its about saving the lives of kids and ending poverty and dependency. We know that the large majority experiencing homelessness can develop job skills, obtain work and pay for their own housing. We must do better than coldly pushing families and children into homelessness and insisting on only utilizing one way of solving homelessness.

The number of chronic homeless in the top four cities (New York, Los Angeles, Seattle and San Diego) has spiked with no signs of abating. McConnell and the Housing First advocates say that providing housing, supporting sobriety, training for employment and engaging the root causes of homelessness is outdated, ineffective and wasteful. Whats ineffective is choosing to punish homelessness programs based on their approach, rather than on their results.

Homelessness reaches far beyond any single cause and our homeless policy should be big enough to support more than any single solution.

Megison is president and CEO of Solutions for Change.

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More than one way to address San Diego homeless crisis - The San Diego Union-Tribune

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Claire Saenz is a SMART Recovery Facilitator for SMART Recovery. It is an addiction recovery service without a necessary reference to a higher power or incorporation of a faith, or some faith-based system into it by necessity. Those can be used it, but they are not necessities. The system is about options. In this series, we look at her story, views, and expertise regarding addiction, having been an addict herself. This is session 1.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen:When it comes to the experience of addiction, what were your addiction and particular substance of choice?

Claire Saenz: My substance of choice was alcohol, which was coupled with an eating disorder and an anxiety disorder.

Jacobsen: What were the thoughts that ran through your mind as you were working to combat the addiction, to stop using the substance(s)?

Saenz: I was highly motivated when I decided to stop drinking, so my primary thought, initially, was that I was going to quit or die trying. I felt determined, but also extremely vulnerable because giving up alcohol meant that in many essential ways, I was giving up my sole coping mechanism.

Jacobsen: How did SMART Recovery compare to other services?

Saenz: Other services I used in my recovery were AA, individual therapy, and pharmaceutical treatment of my anxiety. I found SMART similar to AA in that it is also a peer support group. I found the social support aspect of both programs helpful. SMART was drastically different from AA in almost all other respects, however, and much more like the individual therapy I received.

SMARTs philosophy is one of personal empowerment rather than reliance on a higher power. The use of stigmatizing labels such as alcoholic or addict is discouraged. Direct discussion (cross-talk) among group participants is encouraged. Sponsorship is not part of the program. Group facilitators are not professionals, but they are trained in the SMART tools and meeting facilitation skills, and they are expected to adhere to a code of ethics.

Finally, SMART recognizes that recovery, while a process, is not necessarily a permanent one. While participants are encouraged to attend meetings for a significant time period and to become facilitators to pay it forward, we do not view recovery as being a permanent state. Instead, we achieve a new normal.

Jacobsen: What were some of the more drastic stories that you have heard of in your time as an addict, as a recovering addict, and now as a SMART Recovery facilitator?

Saenz: For the reasons mentioned above, I dont refer to myself as an addict or alcoholic, recovering or otherwise. If a label must be applied to my state, call me a person who has recovered from an addiction to alcohol.

As far as drastic stories, they fall into two categories: the carnage of addiction itself, and the carnage of one-size-fits-all addiction treatment where the one size is the twelve- step approach.

The carnage of addiction is simply limitless. I have lost dozens of friends and acquaintances to addiction-related causes, from organ failure to overdose, to suicide.

At one of my first AA meetings, I spent a few minutes talking to a nice young man who went home that night and hung himself. I know multiple people who have lost spouses and children to addiction. It is a dreadful condition that takes the lives of fine people, and the solutions we currently offer, as a society, are breathtakingly inadequate.

In terms of the consequences of one-size-fits-all treatment, it should come as no surprise that in a world of individuals, there will never be an approach to any physical or mental condition that will work the same way, or as well, for everyone. And yet for years, we have prescribed the exact same treatment to everyone with an addictive disorder.

Worse, what passes for treatment is often nothing more than expensive indoctrination into a free support group (12 step programs, themselves, are free)and if the patient fails to improve, the prescription ismore 12 step. Of course, this isnt working. The shocking thing is that we would ever expect it to work.

Jacobsen: How has religion infiltrated the recovery and addiction services world? Is this good or bad? How so?

Saenz: Twelve-step programs, which form the basis of most traditional treatment, are religious in nature. Adherents sometimes claim otherwise, but courts in the U.S. have nearly universally disagreed on that point.

As one jurist put it, The emphasis placed on God, spirituality, and faith in a higher power by twelve-step programs such as A.A. or N.A. clearly supports a determination that the underlying basis of these programs is religious and that participation in such programs constitutes a religious exercise. It is an inescapable conclusion that coerced attendance at such programs, therefore, violates the Establishment Clause.Warburton v. Underwood, 2 F.Supp.2d 306, 318 (W.D.N.Y.1998).

Because they are religious in nature, such programs may not be the best choice for, and certainly should not the only option given to, atheists or individuals with an internal locus of control.

Beyond that, the religious atmosphere of the programs can, and sometimes does breed an environment where seasoned members of the program become almost like gurus, given an almost clergy-like status and an inordinate amount of power over newer and more vulnerable members. Sometimes this power is used to exploit. The classic exploitation is sexual13th stepping is a common euphemism used to describe the practice of veteran members manipulating newcomers into engaging in sexual relationshipsbut emotional and financial exploitation can happen as well.

But the most tragic consequence of the infiltration of religion into addiction treatment is not, in my view, the religious aspect per se but the fact that the focus on that approach excludes all others. The real tragedy is that people are dying because they are never even told of other approaches that might help them.

In my own experience, 19 years ago when I sought treatment for my addiction to alcohol, I was told that the only option for survival was to become an active AA member. Being the rule follower I am, I did exactly that. I spent the next nine years of my life going to AA meetings and attempting to fit my fundamentally humanist worldview within the confines of that program.

I eventually found this impossible and left the program. In the aftermath of that, I had to re-examine every thought and belief I had developed in the time I had been abstinent to determine whether those thoughts and beliefs were my own or had been implanted during my AA years. I found this an extraordinarily painful process, in many ways as painful as quitting in the first place.

When I found SMART Recovery and realized that it had been possible, all along, for me to have received social support in a manner that honored who I was a person, I cried. I thought not only of myself and all the pain Id gone through because I wasnt told of other options besides AA but of all the others who had experienced the same thing.

This would be equally true regardless of the specifics of the treatment being offered because there is no one approach that is right for everyone. The real tragedy is the pain that has been caused, and the lives that have been lost, because one approach has become too dominant.

Photo Credit: Getty Images

Scott Douglas Jacobsen founded In-Sight Publishing and In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal. He works as an Associate Editor and Contributor for Conatus News, Editor and Contributor to The Good Men Project, a Board Member, Executive International Committee (International Research and Project Management) Member, and as the Chair of Social Media for the Almas Jiwani Foundation, Executive Administrator and Writer for Trusted Clothes, and Councillor in the Athabasca University Students Union. He contributes to the Basic Income Earth Network, The Beam, Canadian Students for Sensible Drug Policy, Check Your Head, Conatus News, Humanist Voices, The Voice Magazine, and Trusted Clothes. If you want to contact Scott: [emailprotected]; website: http://www.in-sightjournal.com; Twitter: https://twitter.com/InSight_Journal.

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Claire Saenz, Looking in the 'Mirror' and Seeing the Self - The Good Men Project (blog)