Living YOUR Empowered Life: Honoring Your Whole Self

guest post by Michele Rae

How do you feel when you are at your best? How do you know when you are making choices aligned with your values, talents, passions and inner essence? For me, there is a feeling of peace, I am in the flow. There is clarity about what next choice best aligns with my intention to live an empowered life. I have patience, tolerance for others who do not have the same perspective as I do, curiosity and a sense of ease. How many minutes of my waking day am I in this condition? Some days there are more than others for sure!!

One of my best strategies to spending more moments feeling whole and empowered is noticing when I start to slide out of my center within. I have spent many hours in mindful reflection getting to know myself better. What are the triggers that cause reactivity and disturbs my peace of mind? I have journaled, talked to friends, and walked in the woods to help me examine and understand my often instantaneous overblown reactions.

In addition, I have become very familiar with my stress symptoms. In my body, my shoulders tense up even leading to stress headaches. My thoughts become ruminating loops, going over and over what happened or could happen. My behavior becomes more aggressive or I withdraw. Emotionally I make everything about me and feel defensive, angry and misunderstood.

The practice of noticing when we are disempowered and feel fragmented is the first step. We learn to pay attention to triggers and stress symptoms as soon as they begin to appear. I had a spiritual teacher who once told me dis-ease starts as a whisper. If I am not being observant, it becomes a tap on the arm, next a punch in the gut and eventually a brick upside the head (metaphorically speaking of course!). Notice when you start feeling disempowered and bring yourself back to your powerful center within.

We are all invited to notice when we give our power away, when someone else or an event interrupts our empowered inner experience. No one and no thing can cause us to be controlled by an “outside force” unless we are complicit by dismissing our self and allowing another to be in charge of us. Now is the time to strengthen our self-love, self-worth and self-compassion. Honor every aspect of the amazing person you are!