Transcript
In our previous discussion we talked about differentiating between being empowered and disempowered in the moment and how that can lead to either an intentional or unintentional course (direction). Today I want to touch a bit more on how we give away our power in the moment.
There are endless possibilities of how we can apply our energy to other things than how we intend to apply it. Yet, it is interesting to see how often we justify to ourselves, and to others, why we applied energy in an unwanted direction.
It takes practise and discipline to become better at focusing with precision and intent, so you may wonder why it matters to learn the skill?
There are 2 benefits that stem from focusing with intention, and these are really what life is about.
Firstly, you need to understand that you can have a thought and that thought can evoke an emotional response. And that’s easy to demonstrate to yourself, you can think of something sad and the emotional will follow, same with thinking about something that makes you laugh and then feeling the joy. Therefore, by being intentional with your focus, you can change your thoughts and as a result influence how you feel. And who wouldn’t want to feel better if they had the option, right? This is how 2 people can look at the same situation and have completely different reactions to it, as they think about it differently, which, in turn, can diverge the emotional outcomes.
Similarly, you can look at things differently depending on whether you have momentum going while you are feeling empowered or whether you are feeling disempowered. What would this look like in an everyday life situation? When you are having a ‘bad’ morning, it is easy to add further momentum to the way the day is going, by finding more things to be irritating, or things that that you normally find to be a minor irritation becomes a larger frustration. Something as simple as the office photocopier being out of paper can demonstrate to you whether you have much momentum going in one direction or the other. So the more momentum you have in a direction, the harder it is change the direction of your thoughts in those moments.
That brings us to our second point – that the thoughts (and resulting emotions) can either be supportive and empowering or it can disempower you in that moment. And, as we eluded to earlier, these can speed-up or slow down momentum in a direction too. This is really important to grasp, as these moments are the building blocks that make up your life path. Each is essentially a step in the direction of the ‘wanted’ or ‘unwanted’. Think carefully about that – it means that you decide to have a path of wanted things or unwanted things. That’s why we say the power is in the now, because that is where you can make a decision. When we refer to being empowered or not, it is about whether you are utilizing that power to move in the direction that you intend to move in, or not.
So let’s consider what making that decision may look like in the moment. Let’s say someone says something that you think is offensive. You can influence the thoughts the you have about what they said which, in turn, will impact how you feel and, now you know, it also impacts how you empowered you are in this moment and the next. If you know who you truly are and someone says something that you would normally think is offensive, then what they say or think really loses its power, because if it is not in agreement with your true self, it becomes irrelevant. Remember, if someone is disempowered, you cannot help them become more empowered by giving up your own power in the moment. Just as a healthy physician is in the best position to help an ill patient.
Latching onto someone else’s thoughts, which are steeped in insecurity, vulnerability and therefore disempowered just take your focus, and therefore your empowerment, and therefore is power given in the direction of the unwanted. So you can hear what someone is saying, but you can choose whether you want to give your focus to that. And with practice, you can become more skilled at only giving your focus to things that you intend to give it to.
So often people would then justify why they have given up their power in the moment by saying that it is part of being a human to give our focus/energy to those things. And yes, it is what we’ve become accustomed to doing. Our work together here is not to take away from the human experience. In fact, focusing with precision is to make the human experience as fulfilling as we can. And why would we want to have as many of our moments empowered as we can? That’s the way in which we build momentum in moving towards who we really are. None of us focus with 100% accuracy and precision, but it certainly makes for a happier experience the more you do not give up your power. So don’t beat yourself up when you realise that you did not focus with precision, that was then – this is now. Choose to be deliberate in your focus going forward and practice doing so, and it will become not only easier to do so, but also become your new norm. And I promise you, the more time you spend with the feeling of being empowered, the less you would be willing to give up that alignment.
You cannot count on others to be aligned to who they truly are, and it is also not their responsibility to keep you in your aligned state. Your alignment is your own responsibility. And being empowered before you go out into the world, helps you to stay empowered, because you have momentum going in that direction. It all starts by learning to focus with intent.
Until next time, take care and remember to be kind to yourself.