Are YOU Empowering Your Kids/Staff?

Hello again, you amazing person, you. My name is Andy Bouget Mishko Paganon, Queen additiona Cosmo Dam. I'm Red Thunderbolt, woman of the Loon clan, a proud member of Seine River First Nation in Treaty 3 Territory in Northern Ontario. And I'm dedicated to anything to do with Canadian Indigenous reconciliation. But before I got into the reconciliation conversation, I was focused on Indigenous empowerment, sharing my mom's teachings, my life experiences, and just how I pulled myself out of poverty and domestic violence into the successful, amazing life that I enjoy now without forgetting who I am in my base teachings. That's what A Day that Changed Everything is all about. The video seminar that I am now sharing with you from for free. Over the span of three weeks last week, I shared the first five videos. This week we're looking at the second five. And today we're discussing the word empowerment, which gets thrown around like crazy. It's just been so downplayed. But it is so important in your life, in your happiness, in your enjoyment of your journey. So I figured we better talk about it.

Hello, you absolutely amazing person, you. Wouldn't it be amazing if everyone greeted us that way? If everyone was that excited to see us? I know I'm that excited to see you. My name is Sandy Boucher Mishko Paganankwe Nidishnikas Mang Dodem, and I am here once again to continue this journey with you. A journey that I've called A Day that Changed Everything. Now, whether that phrase makes you think of the day you lost your job, the day you had to say goodbye to a loved one, or the day the pandemic changed everything for you, this course is going to help, because this course is all about the things we do control and not what's going on in the outside world. Truth be told, as my dad said, life isn't easy. There's always going to be challenges thrown at us. But if we prepare, if we pack a good canoe, then it doesn't take us out at the knees and we can ensure that it's a little more smooth sailing. We're still going to have our challenges, but we'll be able to believe in ourselves and our ability to handle them. Now, today we're on video 8 and I'm continuing to talk about the Mecca Life strategy. We started with the M, which was mental awareness, what's going on in your head? And now we're continuing with the E, which is environmental awareness, what's going on in that world outside. But before I say anything else, this is Video eight and you're here. I don't know if anyone else is saying this to you, but I am so incredibly proud of you. I've said it before and I'm going to say it again. If you just keep doing this, if you keep adding to your skill set, if you keep learning, if you take the time and put in the effort to grow and become a better you, you will succeed. You absolutely 110% will. You will succeed at whatever you decide to succeed at. Remember, go over, under, around or through the roc. You will get there if you're willing and you do work hard enough to get there. But I need to acknowledge this is video 8 and you're still here. We are now past the halfway mark and I for one am so incredibly power proud of you. You and your power. So now, before I do anything else, how are you? Once again, I hope you screamed awesome into the video camera or into the computer, into your phone, into your tablet. However you're watching this and if you didn't, please stop the video, go back to the question and scream it because your spirit needs to hear it. Now, as always, there's going to be a download with this video. But wanted to ask you something else. I want you to email me. We are at the halfway mark and I am wondering, the question I am asking is which one of the teachings have resonated the most with you so far there is no wrong answer. But I'm wondering which one do you feel you really needed to hear? Which one is really helping you? It was timely. It's what you needed at this stage of your journey. So that might be the four thank yous that we started with. It might be my parents based teachings and I spent some time on that. We definitely discuss puzzle pieces, the ones we choose and the ones we don't. We talked about how awesome you are and maybe you needed to remember that. Maybe you needed an acronym that would help you to remember that and to really internalize that. Then we talked about your stars in the night sky, all those barriers that you've overcome, those medals you should be wearing on your chest. And maybe that's what you needed to realize that yes, you've had a lot of challenges, but you overcame every single one of them, making you an incredibly strong person. Or maybe it was last week's video and the flipping the coin, being starting to be conscious of am I having a negative reaction to this? Why am I having a negative reaction and how do I change it? And also the worksheet that went with last week looking at the stages of in our lives and are we carrying negatives from those stages and can we change that? Because the negative is baggage. But if we flip it to the positive, that's a teaching, that's a lesson that we can use to grow and move ahead. That's a good thing. So as I said this week, we're going to continue with the E, and that's environmental awareness. And it's looking at what's going on in the world and how it's influencing you, how it's affecting you. Now, this week's topic is near and dear to my heart. This is something I practice, what I preach, and I preach it often. We're talking about empowerment. Now, my mom would call that a fifteen dollar word, some big fancy word. My mom was the master of empowerment, but she never would have used that word because she wouldn't have even knew what it meant. So maybe that's you. Now, I have the definition up behind me because it's the definition. So I didn't want to just put it into my own words, for your information. And I'd be willing to bet before I share the definition with you, I'd be willing to bet there's someone in your life that you would love to empower, whether it's your partner, whether it's your child, or whether it's you. So think of them as you hear this definition. If you are empowering someone, you are enabling them or giving them the authority to think, behave and take control of their work and decision making in their own way. Now let's run through that again. If you are empowering someone, you are enabling them or giving them the authority to think, behave and take control of their work and decision making in their own way. Now here's my challenge to you as a parent. In my opinion, it is your job to empower your children so they can go out into the world and be empowered adults. If someone didn't do that for you, it's your job to empower yourself. You're an adult now. You can do this. If you're a boss, a supervisor, a manager, a CEO, if you supervise anyone, it is your job to empower your staff. So let's look at that. You're enabling them and giving them the authority to think. Do you do that? Do you ask your teenager what they think and honestly listen, not to criticize them, but to help them develop and understand what they're thinking on a certain topic. Do you ask your staff what they think of a new idea, or do you just Want slaves? Guess what? If you have empowered staff, you have loyal, dedicated staff. If you have slaves, they're going to be looking for freedom. That applies to if you have children, too. So you empower them and give them the authority to think and behave in their own way, to take control of their work and decision making. Now, here's two examples for you. First example is a moment and her teenage, let's say son. I had a teenage son, so I can totally relate to this. Imagine that you have now told him, you've had enough, you're frustrated, he has to go clean his room. Now, we could debate whether that's disempowering in itself, because if it's his room, maybe you should be enabling him to look after that room in his own way. Having said that, I've seen a few situations where it could be a health hazard. So then you got to put down your foot as the CEO, as the boss of the family. So you've. In this scenario, we've asked our teenage son to clean his room. If you are standing in the doorway and telling him to put this there, that's not how you fold your clothes. And that should be hung up and that should go in a drawer, and those can't go under the bed. Now, then you gotta own that you are totally disempowering your son, truth be told. But if you give him the authority to clean his room the way he sees fit, putting things the way he wants them done, putting clothes away, hanging what he feels should be hanging, folding what he thinks should be folding. Personally, folding socks, to me is a glorified waste of time. And I know a bunch of my family members just had a panic attack if they heard me say that. We're talking about empowering here. We're not talking about control. Because the one thing, especially with a teenager, they're about to go out in the world. My mom would be the first to say that as a parent, your job is to give your children everything they're going to need to be an empowered individual to, to go on after you're gone. I'm not going to be here for my children's entire journey. They're going to have to go on without me. And I take great pride and I take great comfort from the fact that I know my children are going to be fine. Of course they're going to grieve at first, but they have the skills to thrive. Now, the other scenario is the boss and the employee. If you bark out orders, if their opinion never matters, if you wanted to your way. And trust me, I like doing things my way because my name is on it. My admin assistant understands that. But the best way to organize the files, she's the expert. I'm going to ask her opinion, and 90% of the time, I'm going to go with her opinion, unless there's a reason we can't. And then I'll say, okay, but you know what? I need to be able to pull these files for this, this, or this reason. And then she adapts her answer. I hire experts, especially in the fields that I'm not an expert in. To not allow them to voice their opinion renders all of that expertise useless. Why would I do that? Remember back in the day when we were in high school and you had to pick players for your baseball team? Yeah. Pick the people that knew how to play baseball, that knew how to hit, that knew how to catch. Right. Same thing with building your team. Same thing with empowering your family. Find out what their strengths are and encourage those strengths and help them to overcome their weaknesses. That's what empowerment is all about. Now, did it work? Are you an empowered person? Empowered people. And here's the answer. One, one question. Empowered people feel in control of their life. They feel in control of their life and their future. The pandemic happened. I'm shocked like everyone else. Oh, my God, what am I gonna do? And then I quickly decided what I was going to do, including creating video courses so that you could take these courses from the comfort of your own home at whatever time was convenient to you, which means, actually, my products just got better because of the pandemic. That's empowerment. Today you need to ask yourself, what can you still do? You can still choose to eat healthy. You can still choose to exercise. Maybe you can't go to the gym, but there's a lot of ways to exercise over, around, under, or through the rock. Remember, it's just a challenge. It's not a brick wall. And even if it is a brick wall over, under, around, or through, that's what an empowered person would do. Now, there's a really good example out there. There's actually a prayer that is super, super common that speaks to empowerment perfectly. It's the serenity prayer. God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. Do you know how many years it took me to figure out that meant other people, that I don't control that all that time I sit there thinking, if only he would do this or if only she would do that, that all of that was A complete and total waste of my time and energy. Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change and the courage to change the things I can. That's where empowerment comes in, right? And the wisdom to know the difference. I do not control you. That's why I'm so excited that you're watching this video, because I didn't make you watch this video. You made that choice. You get to own that achievement. You get to celebrate that accomplishment. I'm going to celebrate right along with you. But own that. Feel good about that. That was an amazing decision. You will not own the people that your children turn out to be, but you can empower them and help them to realize that they decide the people they're going to turn into. Now, this week, I do have a very important download for you. There is an exercise. I believe it's 10 questions. And it's going to help you realize how empowered you are. Now you ask, answer every single one of them on a scale of 1 to 10. If the phrase is something doesn't sound anything like you, well, then that's a one. If it's exactly like you, you totally say that phrase. You think that way, then it's a 10 or somewhere in between. What's most important is whatever your answer is, this quiz is not material. This is not grounds to beat yourself up. We all need to start somewhere. And if you didn't even know what empowerment looked like, felt like, tasted like, how could you have been working on it? Today's the day you can start working on it. And before you start telling yourself, I could never do that, well, once upon a time, we didn't even know how to go to the bathroom by ourselves. And we figured that out. We didn't know how to walk. We landed on our tush. How many times we figured it out. You can do this. Trust me. Trust me. Life gets so much easier and so much more enjoyable the day you start figuring out and start working towards being empowered. I know you can do this. Now, we are coming to the end of this video, but I didn't want to put out one more message specifically to the parents out there. If you are a parent or one day you're going to be a parent, then you need to listen to this portion and to remember this. I get asked all the time, how do I empower my child? I want them to feel good about themselves. I want them to feel in control of their lives. How do I do that? My mom was a master of this. You have to ask them one question. And you have to ask that question as many times as you can. And it's so simple. It's four little words. What do you think? Now, I'm going to tell you a story here just to illustrate that I was a single mom for a lot of years. My kids were 2 and 4. When I became a single mom, I was working full time. It was a frustrating situation, to say the least. And often I would call my mom and say, I don't know what I'm going to do. I just want to strangle these kids. And. And before you send me nasty emails about saying that, ask a parent. We have those thoughts. We don't act on them. But there's times that the lovely little darling, not so much. I would call my mom, and when I would do that, she'd listen to me and she'd help me, you know, just let me get it out. And then she would say something along the lines of, wow, yeah, that sounds super frustrating. What do you think you should do about that? And of course, my answer was, I have no idea. That's why I'm calling you. So she would think and say, okay, well, has this ever happened before? Oh, my God, it happens all the time. The kids are driving me nuts all the time. Oh, okay. What did you do last time? Last time they were exhausted. Like, I gave them a good meal and I put them down for a nap, and they were way better after they woke up. Oh, do you think that would work this time? Huh? It might. I never thought of that. I was just so frustrated. Oh, did you think you want to try that? You know what, Mom? I think I'm going to. I'll give you a call later. Love you. Bye. Bye. That conversation played out so many times because my mom understood one thing. If she gave me the answer, it increased my belief in her and her wisdom. If she helped me figure out the answer, it increased my belief in me and my wisdom. And as I said earlier, my mom reminded us we were the only ones that are going to be around for our entire journey, that it's about time we started listening to ourselves and developing our wisdom. So the next time your teenager wants to stay up all night, instead of yelling and screaming, ask them, wow, do you think this is a good idea? You know, you gotta get up in the morning and there's chores to do and you're gonna probably feel grumpy. You're good with that. Okay, night then. Let them deal with the consequences. I watch my children stay up late and then having to go to work the next morning and putting in a good hard work day because I taught them work ethic and then watched my son come home and go to bed right after dinner because he was so exhausted I didn't have to yell and scream. Life taught him that lesson. Ask your teenager, do you think it's really smart not to do your homework? Like what? What do you think is going to happen? What's it going to be like when you go back to school? Are you going to feel comfortable with being behind the other students? Do you think that's going to increase your stress? Ask questions, help them figure out, help them make their decisions. Help them increase their belief in their wisdom. Now wasn't that awesome? I think it was awesome. And by the way, how are you awesome Again, Back it up. If you didn't say it, then back it up and do it again. Now remember, there is a download I want you to do. Download that PDF, do the exercise, but don't forget to email me. I need to know which teaching resonated the most with you. Whether it was the four thank yous, whether it was the Bates teachings, the puzzle pieces, what came next? Awesome. The stars in the night sky flipping the coin or learning about empowerment? Which one resonated the most with you? And while you're at it, if you don't mind sharing, I would know how you did on the empowerment quiz. Which ones did you score low on? And if you're interested and only if you ask because I want to empower you. If you're interested in finding learning ways to help you raise your score in a certain area, then just ask me in the email. I look forward to hearing from you. Until next time, remember, I believe in you. I know you can do this and I am so thrilled that we're on this journey together. Until next time. I love you. Talk to you soon. Bye Bye.