Be the Master of Your Fate: 4 Tips to Help You Feel Empowered
Empowerment is largely about being able to make your own decisions1,2,3,4,5 but it also includes using those choices to take action3 and gaining skills and resources4, while also interacting with the environment1,2. Usually, it’s about being effective and in control of your life5. Empowerment can also be described as a set of mindsets and behaviors: 1) mindsets such as under-standing yourself, including your strengths and weaknesses, and feeling a sense of self-esteem and self-efficacy; and 2) behaviors where you have influence or try to have influence and that allow you to make decisions in your life6.
Perceiving that a threat to you exists leads to you feeling more stigmatized, which leads to lower self-empowerment7,8. If you are disempowered, you will likely be passive at work, retreat within yourself, focus on missed opportunities, feel unmotivated because of the way people treated you, and produce lower quality work than people who feel empowered9. Feeling a lack of ownership and having poor communication with others are also barriers to empowerment6
If you feel empowered, then you will feel encouraged to do your job well, find meaning in your work, and be confident enough to influence your employer10. You will also be a better problem solver and cope with uncertainty better11.Feeling empowered leads to recovering 8,12. In fact, through the process of recovery, you will feel mastery and a sense of agency over your life13. By feeling empowered, you are more likely to have a higher wage and benefits, autonomy, self-realization14, more satisfaction in life15, more proactive behaviors11, and even a longer life16. It might even play a role in you being innovated17.
With all of the benefits of feeling empowered, I wanted to offer some tips on how to feel more empowered:
- Have an Empowerment Mindset and Behaviors: Identifying with a group and having a sense of community both lead to feeling empowered8,12. Being included (involved in a project and meetings, valuing perspectives), trusting, co-learning, sharing leadership, and having accessible partnership (clear communication and reasonable accommodations) also all enable empowerment6.
2. Use a Self-management Empowerment Intervention18: Start with understanding how you function and adjust. This stage is basically getting a baseline of your behavior. Then, set a goal and plan how to obtain that goal. After that, reform physical, psychological, and social structures, which means to change your thinking, actions, and environment to work on achieving that goal. Reforming could include learning new skills (such as potting and fishing), participating in religious activities, and communicating effectively. Finally, evaluate what happened and if you obtained your goals.
3. Tai Chi19: Doing tai chi will help you feel empowered. It will give you control over your breath, and you will feel empowered by doing something that is beneficial to you. It will also help you shift from feeling helpless to having a sense of control and confidence. You might even find control over your body through body awareness. Not only will it improve your balance, flexibility, strength, and energy20,21, but tai chi will also make you aware of the signals that your body gives you22, which will allow you to bring about changes in your life and improve your well-being23.
4. Take a person-centered approach: You can achieve empowerment when you communicate what you know to someone who has authority over you and when you can choose to do the things you want to do. The relationship between you and the person in authority should be24. Doing this will change the power dynamics between you and the authority figure25. Some key elements to remember with this approach is that your culture should be respected and understood, that you should have a sense of community, that your authentic participation should be welcomed, that your skill set should be improved, that you should have time and space to address barriers to empowerment (including social pressures)26.
You are always self-managing26. Empowerment is about letting others know that you are thoroughly capable of competently managing yourself. It’s about being the sovereign person that you already are.
1. Anderson (1995); 2. Rodwell (1996); 3. World Bank. Poverty Reduction and Equity: Empowerment Overview (2016); 4. Zimmerman (2000); 5. Pulvirenti, McMillan, and Lawn (2011); 6. Stack & McDonald (2018); 7. Corker, Brown, & Henderson (2015); 8. Zhang, Mak, and Chan (2017); 9. Johnson (1994); 10. Thomas & Velthouse (1990); 11. Huang (2017); 12. Chan, Mak, & Lam (2018); 13. Corrigan (2002); 14. Shogren, Lee & Panko (2017); 15. Cheung, Mok, & Cheung (2005); 16. Garces-Ozanne, Kalu, & Audas (2016); 17. Pieterse, van Knippenberg, Schippers, & Stam, 2010); 18. Musavinasab, Ravanipour, Pouladi, Motamed, and Barekat (2016); 19. Yeh, Chan1, Wayne, & Conboy (2016); 20. Fischer, Fugate-Woods, & Wayne (2014); 21. Maeda, Shen, Schwarz, Farrell, & Mallon (2013); 22. Schmalzl, Crane-Godreau, Payne (2014); 23. Farb et al. (2015); 24. McWilliam (2009); 25. Tesoriero, (2012); 26. Pulvirenti, McMillan, and Lawn (2011)
