Navigating Life with Ease – What Empowerment Means from a 3 Principles Perspective

Welcome. This podcast is a series of candid conversations exploring the human experience from a completely new perspective. In it, we will be diving deeply into the meaning of commonly used words and pointing you away from that old, stressful way of looking at life and towards a new paradigm. This will help you find a sense of calm, cultivate meaningful relationships, and create harmony in every aspect of your life. Here is Navigating Life With Ease with Michaela Ellis and Claire Downer. Hello. Hi. How are you? I'm good. I'm good. How are you?

Me too. Yeah, I am ready for a word.

I. I have a word for you. It's not actually my word. It's my fiance Bruce's word, because we were. And I said, oh, I need a word, and I haven't got a word. So the word that he came up with is empower.

Empowerment. You know, it's interesting because a while back, I just felt like that word is just so overused, and it's like, what other word can you use instead of empowerment? Yeah. So. And it's interesting because I didn't get the same feeling just now. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, so when I think about empowerment, it's often used in the way of, hey, let me help empower you. Let's empower. It's like someone doing it for you or positioning things to get you empowered when. Yeah, you know, I get it. Right. As coaches, we can assist someone, but it's really. It's within us. It's never coming from something outside of us. So I see empowerment as like having the agency. I was going to use the word freedom, but I'm currently unempowered about something. And it's not. It's not that I don't have the agency. It's not that I don't have the ability to do it, but I'm stopping myself just with my own crazy thinking about it, about. About the meaning. The meaning of the thing that I want to do. But empowerment. Let me. Let me just go back to empowerment. Yeah, I mean, to me, it is a wonderful word. And it's so interesting that I often see it with women. Like, when you say empowerment, I see flowers in women, which is so weird. I don't know why. Because we. We all can be empowered. We are. From the moment we, you know, arrive, we're empowered to live a life. We're empowered to express. We're empowered to do things that we're able to do, and the things that we're able to do change as we grow. You know, we first come out of the womb. All we can really do is, you know, eat and poop and pee, you know, do these very basic things and, you know, squirm. But we. We develop, and it's really kind of a. I see it. A limitlessness in that. But the whole idea of empowerment is like, you know, having this ability to be all that you want to be. To do all that you want to do, to. No, it's not the doing of it. It's having this sense that you can. Is that it? This is a really good word. Thank you, Bruce.

I mean, just. Just. Can I just.

Just come out? Yes. Yeah. Do, do, do.

When you said having the sense of being able to do it but not actually doing it, but then surely the only way we know whether we can do it is if we're doing it, you know, because we. We can have a thought about doing something and then not do it every day, in my case, like that. That. But then, yeah, empowerment sounding like almost like a thing. I like motivation that you've got to get before you can. You've got to feel empowered before you. Well, just do the thing, really. Just because then. Because then you are empowered, aren't you? If you're doing a thing. Just it. Just when you said that, I just thought, oh, do we have to be. We probably need to be doing the thing.

Yeah, I see it that we're already empowered. We're already stable. It's like. It's like having a vehicle and. And it's a. It started or it's not whatever, but the capacity, the ability for it to take you somewhere. It's already there. All you need to do is turn the key and press the go, you know, and that's kind of like we are.

We're.

We are already empowered, but it's like we've been taught to look for something before we do something. Yeah.

This is so good.

I didn't really see that before, but, yeah, being empowered, it's like something has to happen before you can just say the thing or do the thing or dream the thing and whatever. That's not true. It's like we have. We already have that. We are already empowered.

What.

What else do you see about this?

Well, as you just said, as we're already empowered, the thought that came in was. But that we believe our stinky thinking. They're like. It's like I told somebody earlier about motivation, so I don't really feel motivated. I said, what do you mean? What do you mean, feel motivated? We're always waiting to feel differently, aren't we. And then I was just in that same little packet with motivation and confidence. And like, when we say, you know, I want to feel empowered to. We don't say to do something, don't we? Well, if you're waiting for a certain feeling to act, then you might be waiting a really long time, and you might be searching for that a really long time. And actually there's just, in that moment, some thinking in the way there's some thinking that we're believing that means we just can't do the next action, whatever that might be. Lifting your arm up. It's just what I just did. Whatever it is, we believe for some reason that we can't do it because we're believing the thought that says we can't do it. But like you said, flowing underneath that all the time. I mean, I love the fact that empowerment has the word power in it because there's this energy that's never, never not there, like in the. In this conversation, in our conversation. And you speak to some kind of waiting that they're waiting for. Inspirational. They're waiting for to. To be, you know, I don't know, struck by a beam of light from heaven or something, or doing anything. And I find myself. I found myself just not waiting for that anymore. Almost trusting that, like you said, the power is there all the time.

Yeah.

Waiting for me to tap into it. Just waiting for me to get out of my head long enough. And, And. And I think to get out of our head, sometimes we just have to start doing something. Even if that's. I've got a blank piece of paper and I'm gonna start typing some words. I'll start. I'm gonna start writing something. I'm gonna just jot some things that once the momentum started, almost like, well, that's got energy, and so we then can move in a direction. Therefore, for me, action seems to be the. But action with this trust that there is, that the power is there. There's all, like you say, it's who we really are. It's. It's always. We always have access to it. And I think sometimes we just believe that we don't have access to it. We've got to wait or we've got to do a strategy or we've got to meditate for another hour. We've got to do something in order to be able to do a thing, rather than just trusting that. That. That inspiration, whatever, wisdom, that guidance, that energy to create, that creative energy is. Is always there. Never. It never goes away.

Yeah.

And we don't have to feel calm to access that. We don't have to. We don't have to be in a certain state. We just have to be present, I think, and just start.

Yeah, there is that. Starting. Yeah. Empowerment. Empowered. Yes. I remember for a very long time I was searching for.

The.

The next insight, because I did. I had some insights that seemed to propel me forward. But the insight really just shows you something you never saw before. It doesn't propel you forward. That's already within you. Ready?

So.

Wow. Okay. Yeah. This is sort of opening up a whole nother window into various things about what empowerment is really all about. And not about.

Talking. It's feeling like a falling away to connect to it. Right. Like everything else, it's already there. So what. What needs to fall away? What do we sort of need to see through first? Know that almost just know that we're okay and we've got access to whatever we need really. Whether we call that empowerment or confidence or motivation or whatever we want to call it, but that is just there all the time. And the only thing that dulls it or fogs it over is the thinking. Yeah. How do we feel when we don't feel empowered? Like that key, isn't it? Like, how does we feel in our body when we don't feel empowered? We probably feel weak. Like. And I know sometimes I'm just like, oh, I just can't bother with any of it. Odd business. I'm going to watch Netflix. I'm gonna just go. I'm just like, ugh. Can't be. Can't kind of get myself over that hump sort of thing. And that feeling in the body, not just when I'm tired, but just when you just like heaviness overwhelm, you know, that the reason we feel that way, disempowered, shall we say, to flip the word round, is because we're believing that something is taken. Take away our power. Which is probably why it's quite key. Like you said in the women's. Like I do a lot of women's networking and obviously, you know, spoken about a lot. You know, we need to empower women and. Etc. And I suspect that is because more women have more of that thinking that says good girls don't and good girls behave themselves and sit in a corner and. Or, you know, we've got. We've got a lot of inherited thinking that we're not supposed to be in these spaces, you know, business spaces or, you know, whatever positions in. Or whatever else.

Right. Or that we can't or whatever. Yeah. And like maybe men do too. Maybe, maybe I just don't hear about it as much. I don't know.

I, I agree that I've never heard that word spoken in a men's context. Feel like men go around in little groups talking, empowering each other. I just don't feel like that's a thing in the same, I mean obviously I don't know because I don't hang around in men only spaces because I wouldn't be allowed in, would I? But they, you know, well, oh, there aren't such things so much but there are for women which kind of thing really doesn't it? But you wonder then is that feeding in, is that just more thinking that women then think oh I need to be joyed up, buoyed up by all the other women in order to feel empowered. And when I feel empowered then, then I'll be able to move forward but I need to be surrounded by women and you know, you hear it all. I, I, I'm in a women's networking group and the lot, the stuff around that is that we need to do this and we need this and we, we need to add more in when actually what we're saying is that just more thinking, is it more lack thinking as well where women, we're sort of saying to women, well you need to be in this group of women because otherwise you're not empowered and you haven't got access to the same things as men. Rather than saying no, you are infinite, you don't, you just need to stop believing all that stinky thinking we find. And maybe that's kind of what happens in the women's realm and the groups and events and things that women where, you know, women are buoying, you know, encouraging each other and therefore women maybe over time believe less of that tricky thing. Just a really long way round to something that is innate and if we could, it's already there, we wouldn't need to quite so much of that buoying up and support and again chasing something in the outside that's already inside, isn't it?

Yeah, it is, yeah. It's always all there. Hey, Something came to mind when you had said about, you know, feeling disempowered and like you're getting over the hunt, you know, to get over the hump or up the hill. And, and yeah, I, and what, I kind of what, what came to mind was it's a really good opportunity if you're feeling disempower something. It's like well, is it something that you're really meant to do? Do you really want to do it? First of all, like, what are you. What are you trying to do? I know for a long time it seemed that I was wanting and trying to do things that I felt I should do. I didn't really want to do them. When I finally, like, slowed down to see, it's just like, oh, my God, that is not me. Why would I want to be empowered to do something that is not me? That is not a representation of me that feels so freaking hard and gross to do? Because it's not. Because I can't or I don't have the. You know what it takes. It's like, that's just not my way. Something that maybe that points to or may open up for someone. And don't forget that you have everything you need inside of you. You're fully powered, ready to go. Charged. Charged up.

Yeah. It's interesting because I've had something this week where I kind of got quite interested in a business opportunity and then just suddenly noticed it feeling off and. And realizing that it didn't really align very well with my actual lifestyle and the lifestyle that I believe in and what I believe in ethically and all sorts of things. And it. Yeah, that wasn't to do with not. Not almost not daring to do it. It's not that it was. It was like you said, it just. I. I just realized I'd got. I'd got excited about money. I think that's what happened. And that wowed my judgment big time. And, yeah, it was very interesting to see that kind of all falling away, really. And. And so that there's the. It's spotting which is. Which isn't it, I think, is where people go off and get a little tangled, like where it's real kind of resistance because this isn't right for us and where it's resistance because we're coming up and against a growth Ed, or we don't think we're empowered enough, or we don't think we've got access there. I think probably the only way to see that is just to slow down a bit and. And just sit with what's coming up in your body, because your mind will have just a story every which way and we'll just go round and round in circles trying to find the answer, won't it? Whereas I think for me, more and more pausing and just. Yeah, just being with my body and kind of getting a sense of what's there. Yeah, seems a better way. My mind's just got a tail about everything. Yeah.

Agree. Very good. Well done.

Bruce gets the prime. And we should remind people that they can email us and message us with words. Shouldn't we really? Yes. Not. But obviously you don't email us both because that kind of spoils the fun. Right? Email one of us or message one of us and yeah, we. We will share those words with each other.

I would love to do that.

Yeah. Yeah. That was lovely.

Yeah. Thanks, Claire.

Yeah, appreciate you. See you next for now. Bye bye. Yeah.

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