By Carol Hansen Grey 

During my Personal Empowerment workshops one of the questions I ask participants to share is their definition of empowerment.  These participant definitions form the basis for moving forward together through the rest of the workshop. 

My definition of empowerment:

Empowerment is having the confidence and seizing the opportunity to be the true expression of who we are at all times in all situations.

Some of the answers given by participants in my workshops

EMPOWERMENT IS:

• The God-given talent I have to help myself and other move forward and embrace life.
• Feeling the fear and doing it anyway -- walking through the fire of fear.
• Sharing my love of life
• Being focused and living in intention
• Being open to Spirit to make a difference in the world
• Having total control over my thoughts and ideas
• Not being restricted by fear or doubt
• Embracing discipline
• Freedom to speak my voice with confidence and wisdom
• Power that comes from within
• The power to create your own path
• Moving toward a vision with grace and confidence
• A vibration Empowerment is living in harmony with oneself
• Connecting with your true gift and expressing your true self
• Opening ourselves to bring our song to the world
• Staying receptive, being open and letting go of limitations
• Stepping over the threshold to realize we can do anything
• Overcoming our fear of freedom
• Our ability to easily move into action or tap into the stillness that comes from within

The Personal Empowerment Workshop

Using the participant generated definitions of empowerment, workshop attendees are asked to identify and share with the group an event or a time in their lives when they felt most empowered.  I then ask each of them to connect with their bodies and to feel where that empowerment resides.

We then go deeper and share an event or time in their lives when they felt totally disempowered.  Again I ask participants to identify in their bodies where the feeling of disempowerment lies. In this way, participants are given a tool they can use to recognize a feeling of disempowerment from body-signals

From that place participants are then guided in using the seven steps to personal empowerment to move from a place of disempowerment to empowerment, paying particular attention to their bodies throughout the process.  We explore each step, how to use it and why it is an important step leading to personal empowerment.  

NOTE: These cards are available from Open Heart Press

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