Personal Empowerment is about getting in touch with your personal power, your ability to see what goals you want to achieve, belief in your own abilities to make it happen, and taking smart action. As a hypnotherapist, I have not found a more effective tool for personal empowerment than hypnotherapy.
Just to be clear, personal empowerment is not about wishful thinking or feeling superior.
Personal empowerment is getting familiar with your own powers of choice and resilience, so that you can use them to accomplish the goals you find meaningful.
Personal empowerment is not guaranteed, even with hypnotherapy, as merely feeling empowered isn’t the same as actual empowerment. As noted by George Mason University researchers Lauren Cattaneo and Aliya Chapman, in their paper “The Process of Empowerment,” (published in the October 2010 edition of the journal American Psychologist), true personal empowerment comes when the feelings of empowerment are met with informed action.
Consider this example: Gwen wanted to start a business for a number of years, and while she felt that she had a lot to offer her clients, she was getting stuck at every step of the process. Thoughts kept circling in her mind: she was no good at selling, she had no idea how to make a website, she wouldn’t know what to charge, and she wouldn’t be able to handle the inevitable rejection. She didn’t feel that she had what it took to start a successful business, so when opportunities fell into her lap, her fear and uncertainty sabotaged them – she wasn’t getting back to people timely, she didn’t push her comfort zone or take calculated risks. Her business never got off the ground. She felt weak and incapable and her results were in line with what she felt.
Contrast Gwen’s plight with the example of Grace. Just like Gwen, Grace wanted to start a business for a number of years as well. She too, felt that she had something of value to offer her clients, and also like Gwen, had no particular skills or knowledge in selling to clients, making a website, setting rates, or handling rejection. But what she did know was that her odds of success were lowest when she felt weak and incapable.
Grace sought the support of a hypnotherapist, who helped enlist her subconscious mind in the pursuit of her goals. Through hypnotherapy, her attitudes and motivation began changing in positive ways. Instead of thinking “I’ll never succeed at starting a business,” she began thinking “Why not me?” She reasoned that if she wanted to start a business, she had a right to try.
She got in touch with her unique strengths and capitalized on them.
Grace realized that “selling” was really an opportunity to “serve” her clients, and with this new revelation, she no longer feared or dreaded it. Over and over throughout her hypnotherapy sessions, her mind opened to reveal her inner resourcefulness. She found opportunities often and could act on them because she believed that failure was only temporary feedback. Gwen’s business became a success, not by instantaneous luck of course, but by Gwen’s steady application of her personal power.
She took empowered action and achieved her goals.
Why is hypnotherapy so effective for issues around personal empowerment? Simply because empowerment comes from first nurturing a change of mindset (one of hypnotherapy’s strong points). Hypnotherapy gains access to the subconscious mind, to the areas of the mind where memories are stored, and ultimately where the disempowering beliefs we’ve learned reside.
A professional hypnotherapist can help identify what it is about a situation that makes you feel lousy and weak. We can help enhance your desire for positive change and help you stay motivated to act in ways that will leave you feeling (and acting) empowered. What’s more, we can help with the issues of self-sabotage, the fear of success, and the exposed feeling of “being seen,” (among others), should they rear their ugly heads in the process.
So if you find yourself more like Gwen than Grace, ask yourself when you first accepted the idea that you were limited, small, ineffective, or weak.
And decide for yourself that personal empowerment is a birthright, and start taking action.
Becoming empowered doesn’t mean that you’ll become a millionaire or a celebrity; instead, it shows that being shackled by internal issues doesn’t have to be permanent.
If we’re not happy with our present situation, we have the power to begin choosing differently.