More and more lessons coming my way this week. Spirit has me eliminating so much that has been cluttering my life. I’ve made decisions over the past week that really feel good for me and have allowed me to step back into an empowered place in my life. I was wondering if I would ever get back here. Well, actually I knew I had never left that space. I just allowed other thoughts to come in and distract me.
It took me many years of my life to realize what it meant to be empowered. So often, I would leave a conversation and say “I should have said…”. Over time, I found my voice and said what I needed to say, when I needed to say it. What an amazing process that is when you can fully stand before someone and speak your truth.
Finding the empowered voice is, in itself, empowering. Many people are seeking it and many are moving toward it. What I encountered this week when speaking with someong was a small misunderstanding many have in finding their voice. The first step is speaking your truth. What is it that you need to say, for you, not against someone else. An example of this might be to say “I need to move away from this relationship, for me. This is not about your actions or behaviors or who your are. I just need this time, for me, for self-growth.” Wouldn’t it be nice if that conversation ended right there and you could walk away? Unfortunately, it doesn’t usually end there. You may feel like you are being hung out there to dry in the silence or the noise, and that is where we begin to back pedal, get angry or frustrated that no one is hearing us. Guilt comes in oftentimes and we end up right back at the beginning feeling like we should never have said anything.
Where we often have the misunderstanding of the empowered voice is to think that others will agree with us and see the situation from our point of view. The empowered voice is not about getting others to do what we want them to do. It’s not about them agreeing with us. The emphasis is about us putting our words out there and….here’s the big lesson….not being impacted, positively or negatively, by whether they hear us, agree with us or do as we want. When you are truly empowered, there is no expectation of action, reaction, or change on the part of the other person (see the blog earlier this week on Expectations). When we can speak our truth and feel the empowerment of that action alone, that is enough.
This isn’t something that will come all at once. Take small steps on small situations and that will lead to bigger steps in bigger situations. Say what you need to say, without any expectations of anything coming from it, just because you need to say it.
“Truth only reveals itself when one gives up all preconceived ideas.” — Shoseki