This week we are celebrating the one year anniversary of our book, Splash! Increase Your Life’s Impact. To celebrate, I am highlighting a different part of the book each post this week. Today, I am reviewing one of our mindsets called, Empowerment Mentality.
Oh, and by the way, we have also just released our book as a Kindle eBook. Here’s the link to it, if you’re interested. Now you can read it on your tablet, phablet, phone, pad, doodad, doomiquachi, or whatever name you’ve given your device.
Back to the topic. Empowerment Mentality is a positive mindset that helps us take control over our life rather than feeling like a victim to circumstances and our situation.
From the book:
The old thinking is, ‘I have to …’, or ‘I can’t …’
The new thinking is ‘I choose to …’
When we don’t take responsibility for the choices we make, we forfeit the power to choose something different for ourselves. Therefore, there is a lot of power in recognizing our part in what we might otherwise consider to be our “circumstances.” We need to recognize our own power to make changes in our lives before we will have the power to affect changes in the lives of other people.
A big part of this mindset is to stop blaming others for our circumstances, and to accept responsibility for them instead. At some level we have chosen our current situation. We have made choices, and at a minimum we have made it more hospitable for our current situation to arise. At worse, we have outright caused it.
We have chosen to live in our neighborhood. We have chosen our profession and our current workplace. We have chosen to get our college degree, or we have chosen to not get a college degree. Some may say that some don’t have the opportunity to go to college, but if someone wants it bad enough, they will find a way. It’s still a choice. We have chosen where to spend and save our money and where not to spend or save our money.
It’s like my coworker many years ago who complained about the sandwich shop across the street. He said the sandwiches are terrible. Only… it’s a place where you fix your own sandwich. He made himself a sandwich he didn’t like and then complained about it.
The awesome news about taking responsibility for the choices that lead to our current circumstances is that we now have the power to make different choices. With empowerment mentality, we are no longer waiting for our boss, our spouse, the government, or anything else out there to fix our problems. We have it within us to provide our own solution – we are empowered.
If there are things you don’t like about your current situation, what are the choices you’ve made that have contributed to it? At this point it’s probably best to approach the question without judgment – without the answer being right or wrong, and without beating yourself up. In light of this, what new choices are you ready to make right now?
