By Angie Martell
Throughout my life, I have wondered what empowerment was. For a long time, I believed that empowerment was the process of increasing the capacity of individuals or groups to make choices and to transform those choices into desired actions or outcomes. But empowerment is more than that. Empowerment isn't controlling the other or having your own way. It isn't living in the world of should, ought to, need to, have to, and must.
Each of us has a sacred nature and incredible powers. Yet, we refuse to believe in ourselves, we secretly feel unworthy of the great gifts of love, wisdom, and abundance, and sometimes we feel our souls dimmed and our spirit lost.
“ Empowerment isn’t controlling the other or having your own way. It isn’t living in the world of should, ought to, need to, have to, and must.”
As a holistic legal practitioner, I am aware that many clients have experienced profound traumas in their lives. It is estimated that more than 70 percent of the population will experience one or more traumatic incidents in their lives. Some people re-live these traumas over and over, causing them to lose connection with their true self and nature and remaining bound to these past traumas. Instead of transforming these wounds into sources of wisdom and strength, they remain in the pain of the trauma. Only when they can move away from the cycle or cycles of trauma and retrieve the lost part of their soul can they be free.
FINDING AND LIVING YOUR TRUTH
It’s who you become not what you do that changes the world. What are you passionate about? What gives you great joy to do? Are you being authentic? Are your thoughts and actions in alignment? Are you doing things because you should or ought to or need to or have to or because you must? Who are you, what are your gifts, strengths, and belief systems? Do you bringing honesty, integrity, and compassion back into our personal and business relationships? Do you use your creativity to envision a happy and healthy life. Are you keeping your power or do give it away by allowing other people to define reality?
“Only when they can move away from the cycle or cycles of trauma and retrieve the lost part of their soul can they be free.”
Empowerment is living your truth. Whatever that may be to you. It means finding the strength, the endurance and the love to face any challenge that life brings you to and to use it to expand your understanding and compassion for yourself and for humanity. For many of us, empowerment can only come when we live our truth, speak our truth, rid ourselves of our self -imposed fears, and believe and love ourselves for the truly splendid people we are.
Empowerment is one of the roads toward enlightenment. What would your life be like if you could stop fighting what you came here to learn and do, and instead welcomed and celebrated it? The life you lead is about the choices you make. Conflicts and problems are not going away until you take responsibility for them and decide how you divert the negative energy and inject positive energy into your life and find balance and harmony in your life.
“Are you keeping your power or do give it away by allowing other people to define reality?”
I believe that we are at the end of a dysfunctional cycle of human consciousness, and it is time to change, because if you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. Stay tuned for my next blog – Transformation and Planting the Seeds of Change.
Angie Martell is an attorney, mediator, and Reiki master with the law firm Iglesia Martell in Ann Arbor. She has a general practice that specializes in holistic law, divorce and family law, mediation, criminal defense, estate planning and elder law, LGBT issues, business law, and employee rights.
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