Feeling Empowered

Welcome to the Design Your Dream Life Podcast where it’s all about designing your life on your terms and now your host, Natalie Bacon.

Hey friend. Welcome to the podcast. How are you? I hope you are doing so well. I am so excited. We are enrolling new students into the Creator Program, which is my online business program where I teach how to build an online business. Multiple six figure business. You don’t have to have any experience with business, although most people who join at least sort of have their side gigs started.

I want to just remind you that it’s the last couple of days to enroll during this enrollment period. So if you want to join us, head on over to nataliebacon.com/creator-program. You will find the application there. I hope you will join us. I know that if you want to learn about business, you are going to love this program.

Today I want to talk with you about feeling empowered. I have been studying empowerment and feeling empowered for a little while now. I think that it’s about time I did an episode on it. So I went to Google first to give you a really good definition of it so we’re on the same page with what I’m talking about here. Empowered, and what I’m talking about, is the feeling. So you think a thought, and then you feel the feeling of empowered. So it’s always caused by your thinking. The thought is going to be something like, “I am so capable, or I got this.” It’s something that generates an emotion.

So Google said that the definition of empowered is having the knowledge, confidence, means, or ability to do things or make decisions for oneself. Another definition that I found with respect to the root word of power. When this article was describing empowerment, they looked at the definition of power. They said in both Latin and French origin, it means to be able to or to have the ability to do or act. So if you think about it just really generally, when you feel empowered you are likely to make decisions, take action, move forward.

The opposite would be feeling disempowered. I looked that up. That means to deprive of power, authority, or influence. To make weak or unimportant. I also found another definition that I liked a little bit better from the Soul Focused Group, which defined disempowered as to believe that you have no control over the outcomes in your life, and that change must come externally not from within.

So I love this definition because if you think about what I teach, it’s all about empowering yourself so that you can decide how you want to think, feel, and act in your life. Disempowerment would be the opposite where you think that you have to change your circumstances and something outside of you has to change in order for you to change or get different results. Of course, that is not true.

So why is this important? Yes, your thoughts cause your feelings. You think a thought, you feel an emotion, and hats going to drive your behavior. There are many times when we want to keep the thoughts that we have. When this happens, instead of trying to change all of your thoughts and judgement, you can accept them and say, “Now what?” And move into feeling more empowered.

So I want to give you an example of a couple. This is just made up. So in this hypothetical, the husband has an affair and files for divorce. So the wife might have a thought like, “It’s not fair that my spouse had an affair and filed for divorce.” Technically, this is a thought. It’s true that spouse had an affair as long as, you know, she can prove that. It’s true that he filed for divorce, assuming that’s also provable.

The part that makes this a thought is that she says it’s not fair. It’s likely that she wants to keep that thought. As soon as maybe you discover that thoughts create feelings and you notice that whenever you say, “It’s not fair that fill in the blank.” You discover that that’s a thought. It’s not like it all of a sudden goes away and you no longer think it. Sometimes it does, but often in the big events in our lives that’s not the case.

We say things like, “I know it’s just my thoughts, but.” And we hold onto that thought because we really don’t know. We know intellectually, but we don’t feel it in our body. We still genuinely feel something like disempowered and we’re thinking the thought, “It’s not fair that my spouse had an affair and filed for divorce.” Then we show up in our lives very stuck, very filled in his life and the drama. We don’t find our way to empowerment.

What I want to offer to you is that you can keep the thought, “It’s not fair that my spouse had an affair and filed for divorce.” Instead of feeling disempowered, you can kind of jump in your brain and talk back and say, “Okay. Yes, it’s unfair. Now what? How can I take control of my life after going through one of the hardest experiences that I never thought I’d go through?”

So you see that when your brain offers you thoughts that you find to be very true, even if intellectually you know that they’re just thoughts. The next place to go to isn’t necessarily trying to find ways to believe that it’s a thought and you should just stop thinking it. So the more that you try to stop thinking, “It’s not fair that my spouse had an affair and filed for divorce,” the more your brain’s going to kind of argue with itself.

You have what’s going on inside your brain is like a civil war. Your brain’s like, “It’s not fair.” The other part of your brain is like, “That’s just a thought.” Your other side is saying, “Yeah, but it’s true.” You kind of go back and forth, and it defeats the purpose of doing thought work at all, which is to move you forward into the most empowered place. So keep that thought. Yes, notice it’s a thought, but also notice that you’re so attached to it that the best way forward is, “Now what? How can I move to feeling empowered?”

So how you move into feeling empowered is going to look so different for everyone. That’s because depending on your life experiences, different thoughts are going to create that emotion for you. When I was researching this, all of the top posts gave examples of what to do. So what action to take in order to feel empowered. What that information is missing and getting wrong is that you don’t take action to change your feelings.

So if you take some action like you get divorced and you start dating again. You’re taking action to lead your own life in this new chapter. If you change your thinking along the way, then your feelings change. So after you get a little more evidence of how fun dating can be, maybe your thoughts are something like, “Oh my gosh. I’m actually enjoying my life so much more than I thought.” Then you feel either joy or empowered or something else. It’s not the going on dates that is creating your feeling. It’s that you now are thinking a different thought than you were thinking before.

So I just want you to consider that the fastest route to feeling empowered is actually to come up with some thoughts that help you feel that emotion really easily. I wrote down a few thoughts that I can easily feel empowered by thinking. I wanted to share them with you. A few thoughts to borrow.

The first thought is I was made for this. I love that thought. It’s a Jody Moore thought. The second thought is this is happening for me. This is one that, to me, I’ve heard a lot. So sometimes it doesn’t feel as empowering as it used to.

This is a really good point. As you do thought work and as you manage your mind, you may find that the thoughts that felt a certain way in the past no longer have as much umph as they used to. This is normal. You just grab a new thought. You know the thought is working for you if it actually generates the feeling that you want. So if you say the thought, “This is happening for me,” and you genuinely feel empowered then use it. If you don’t feel empowered when you think that, then don’t use it.

I love the thought I’m stronger than I think or I’m stronger than I realize. Or I’m so much stronger than I think. Those thoughts about my strength really generate the feeling of empowered for me.

The next thought that I love for empowerment is I always have a choice. This is a really good one if you’re feeling stuck or trapped or you’re a little bit in that victim mentality where you think that your external circumstances are creating how you feel. It’s just a good thought to take a moment, pause, and remind yourself. Okay. I always have a choice. Often, it’s not just one or two choices. It’s so many more choices that we haven’t even considered.

Next thought that creates empowerment for me is I can change, and I can choose something else. I always have a choice. I can always redecide. This is really helpful for me if my brain goes to the place of wanting to make the right decision, especially with some of the big decisions that I made this year like moving to a new state. I was really comforted by the thought that I can always redecide. Like Charleston isn’t permanent if I don’t want it to be. We can always decide to come back to Chicago. I love that. It feels very empowering to me.

The last thought that I came up with that feels really empowering to me is I have my back no matter what. Yes, I make mistakes. I can still have my own back. This one really helps me stay connected to myself and my relationship with myself and be really loving to myself. That feels empowering to me.

So think about the feeling of empowered. Think about what you think that creates that feeling. Write down a list of five or 10 thoughts that create the feeling of empowered for you. Here are some of the questions that you can ask to help you do this. So if you’re going through something, like in the example I gave about the divorce. The question to ask is accepting all of this, how can I move to empowerment? This will help you so much. It will help you stay out of the drama. It will help you stay out of feeling disempowered and that victim mentality.

Question number two, “What am I making this mean?” So if you feel disempowered and you think it’s from something outside of you. You think it’s because husband had the affair. You want to really focus on the facts, and then what you’re thinking that’s creating the feeling.

So if the facts are that husband had an affair, and you’re feeling disempowered, what are you making it mean that husband had an affair? That will give you the thought. That will help you see that your thoughts are creating your feelings. It might be something like this isn’t fair. This wasn’t supposed to happen. You might want to keep those thoughts. But keeping those thoughts, how can you accept them and then move into empowerment?

The next question to ask is, “Am I willing to be wrong here?” Sometimes we can find ourselves so attached to being right that it actually can feel very disempowered. So let’s take an example that’s really different and light. Let’s say that you want to grow your hair out or have your hair be a lot healthier. This is something that I’ve been thinking about recently.

In the past, you’ve had thoughts like, “Coloring my hair and styling my hair doesn’t effect the health of it. It hasn’t ever been a problem for me. I love my hair, and I take good care of my hair.” Then you find out that based on the symptoms of your hair, it seems like those things are no longer true. Instead of thinking that it’s something else that’s causing the problem, are you willing to be wrong about your thoughts that all of the heat and the coloring didn’t damage your hair?

So for me, if I had those thoughts and I decided that I wanted to move into feeling really empowered about taking care of my hair, am I willing to be wrong that the way that I’ve done it in the past wasn’t serving my hair? A lot of times we are so attached to being right and we want it to be something else. So it would be like, “No, I can’t be wrong about that. My hair has to be fine with all of that. It always has been. So I have to look for something else.”

So you just want to be open to being wrong. This is something that’s really helped me. Not with my hair in particular, but just in general. I’m always kind of being curious and open to being wrong. It creates so much more space for growth.

The next question that you can ask yourself to move into empowerment is,
“What can I learn from this experience?” So whether it’s something that you created or something that happened outside of you that you didn’t create. Let’s say like the experience of going through a pandemic. What can I learn from this? That will shift you not necessarily into being positive about being something that you might want to feel negative about, but it will shift you into being empowered and not being stuck.

The next question is, “What is the universe trying to teach me here?” So a lot of times when we’re going through something or something feels challenging or difficult and we feel a little bit stuck, what you can do is take a step back and ask yourself what is the homework assignment here. If I am at an Ivy League school and this is my really hard class that I’m in, what’s the homework assignment here? What do I need to learn?

The next question you can ask yourself is what is another option that I haven’t thought of? Again, we tend to get stuck in two options. I can either do A or B. Really, we have A through Z, and we just haven’t put our brain to work on all of the different possibilities. So if you get in the habit of coming up with different ideas and having 10 options instead of two, this can feel a lot more empowering.

The last question is what would my highest self do? I love this answer because even if in the moment you feel like doing something else. Let’s say you are tempted to be a little bit gossipy or dramatic, and you catch yourself. Instead of kind of acting on that urge or desire, you say, “Okay what would my highest self do?” My highest self just kind of ignores the rude comments someone made and just lets it go instead of gossiping and making it bigger. This is one you can do not just in the moment, but with any decision that you’re making or any time that you are feeling stuck.

I was thinking about feeling empowered and how that emotion has helped me so much in my life. How I’ve had the most growth in areas of my life when I’m using that emotion. I built my business on feeling empowered. That is my goal as your life coach in Grow You and as your business coach in the Creator Program. This new round of students in the Creator Program, it is my sole purpose to empower all of these amazing women to create multiple six figure businesses.

In Grow You, it is my mission and purpose to inspire the amazing women and moms in there to manage their minds. To feel empowered to do whatever it is they want to do in this life. To make the decisions, to take action, to create the results they want for whatever is next. Whether that’s career change. Whether that’s staying home with the kids. Whether that’s creating more space for rest and relaxation. It’s really not about the outcome. It’s about feeling empowered to design your dream life, which is exactly what this podcast is all about.

Ultimately, feeling empowered is about you feeling like you have the power to think, feel, act, speak, behave, connect with, do whatever you want however you want. It’s recognizing that you have the agency to think, feel, and act. That you’ve always had it. That you always can think, feel, and do whatever you want.

Now, of course there are consequences to your actions. So you’ll consider those, but that’s typically not where life coaching and my clients go to. It’s not that you’re thinking about acting in really high risk ways without considering the consequences. Typically it’s feeling disempowered or full of self-doubt and feeling stuck. Not remembering and realizing that you have agency. You have the power to think, feel, and act. When you recognize your power, you feel empowered.

Nothing in your circumstances has to change for you to feel this way. But so often we get attached to those circumstances and we forget. We forget that we are capable of always feeling empowered. When we forget that, we feel disempowered.

So the next time that you’re feeling stuck or disempowered, think about how you can get back to empowerment. Use the thoughts to borrow and the questions that I asked here. Come to Grow You and join us so that I can coach you and you can have life coaching as a tool in your toolbelt as you go on your own life’s journey and personal development quest. That’s what I have for you today. I will talk with you next week.

If you loved this podcast, you are going to love Grow You. Grow You is my virtual life coaching program where I take everything on the podcast to the next level. I invite you to join our amazing community of women and moms and deepen your own personal development. Head on over to nataliebacon.com/coaching to learn more.

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