By Prime Star 
Personal empowerment is the recognition that we have some choice and can create meaningful change in our lives if given a little coaching. Dreaming big is one thing; planning the execution of dreams into tangible reality is another. The course leads towards self-discovery, tuning the mindset, and learning how to be equipped with skills that can help address various situations in your life. This article is about how to turn your potential into something, which helps you grow and make you happier.
Planning For Barriers
Personal empowerment is the process of becoming more aware of your own life choices and taking control of your life. However, empowerment is understanding your abilities and restrictions to help you build the confidence necessary to reach for goals. Empowerment does not happen overnight, it is a continuous process of work, reflection, and adjustment.
Personal empowerment is essentially self-awareness. That means knowing your values and what is important for you to get. It also means acknowledging the parts of your life in which you feel helpless or paralyzed and actively doing something about that. Gaining better self-awareness will help you learn about your barriers and how to address each of them.
The Importance of Mindset in Your Journey to Change
MYTH: Mindset has nothing to do with personal empowerment. The growth-oriented mindset is known for making an individual progress. This way of thinking forces you to embrace difficulties, and become better; with every failure and every attempt.
Conversely, a fixed mindset can greatly hinder empowerment. This mindset tells you that your qualities are fixed and immovable, ultimately discouraging you from taking risks or trying something new. Cultivating a (more) growth mindset is an inevitable step to turn your potential into streaming action, the best you can do is to shift slowly from fixed mindset-ish thoughts towards growing ones. And how it means busting through your limiting beliefs, not being resistant to change, and being more open-hearted when opportunities arise.
How to turn that Potential into Action.
It takes intention and strategy to make something out of potential. So, here a few action taken steps to help along the way:
1. Set Clear Goals
To begin empowering yourself, you must establish clear and attainable goals. These are goals that should be specific measurable and in line with your values. When creating the goals, it should be split into smaller weekly tasks. This will make the task feel less daunting and keep you encouraged as you carry on.
This could mean researching which skills you need to work on for career progression, attending conferences and networking with your peers or joining a special interest group. If you just take those small baby steps over and over, sooner than later the momentum will start to shift in your favor.
2. Develop Self-Discipline
The discipline itself is being on task for your goals, no matter what gets in the way. It is fundamental for any form of personal empowerment as it ensures that you will be constantly pushing forward and working towards your goals.
To cultivate self-discipline, begin by establishing rhythms around your daily commitments. This could mean taking time every day to work on your goals not getting distracted and holding yourself. The longer you implement these little practices into your routine, the more habitual they will become, thus easier it is to follow through and reach those goals.
3. Build Resilience
How in the world are some people so damn resilient? This is a critical component of feeling empowered because it allows you to face challenges head-on with resilience and determination.
Focus on Solutions: Having a positive mindset & finding solutions rather than focusing only on the problems, is an effective way to build resilience. This means seeing obstacles as a chance to learn and grow, not making the same mistakes, and never losing sight of where you intend to go.
4. Seek Support and Feedback
One does not become empowered by avoiding others. You must be seeking help and feedback from others as you move toward your goal. This may mean seeking out mentorship, being part of a group or just calling up some friends and family.
Feedback also helps in personal improvement. It allows you to see what you need to do so it will provide wonderful insight on where should put more effort. Actively seek feedback. You will then make data-driven decisions and can continuously improve in your endeavours towards hitting the top.
5. Take Action
The final but the most crucial process in the transition of mere potential to actual action is action, of course. This means doing many things that are difficult for most people, things that are likely to fail. Please bear in mind that empowerment is not the same thing as being relieved from the possibility of experiencing failure; it means that the concept of failure is not to be despised because it can serve as the stepping stone to success.
It also means that we take the action not only in response to something or acts as a reflux of an event. Opportunities do not look for you: you have to seek them. This may entail coming up with extra tasks to apply for at the place of work, engaging in a new business venture, or engaging in a new sport. If you work on something with determination every day, then one day the fear and the skills to do it, would be achieved.
Powering Through Obstacles to Empowerment
There are a few different types of obstacles you can hit on your way to personal empowerment. Obstacles like self-doubt, fear of failure, or external issues such as lack of resources and support. Some lend-a-hand approaches keeping in mind the said challenges are:
1. Address Self-Doubt
The worst barrier to empowerment can be self-doubt, which keeps you from taking chances or following your dreams. To fight self-doubt, you have to prove your limiting beliefs wrong and change them with positive affirming thoughts.
You can do this by drilling positive self-talk into your head. Rather than dwelling on what you cannot do, reflect upon your strengths and prior successes. Close your eyes and see yourself accomplishing whatever it is you desire most because this visualization will help to give us the confidence we are after.
2. Embrace Failure
Failing is just a part of learning, and should be looked at as an opportunity for growth– not some devastating blow. If you fail, do not forget to think about why this happened and what we can change in the next attempt. When you accept failure as an insightful learning opportunity, your ability to get back up and try again increases tremendously.
3. Leverage Your Strengths
Using your existing strengths is another way to overcome obstacles. Lean into your strengths and look at how you can leverage those. This could be things like outsourcing something you suck at, or conversely finding an opportunity that utilizes your innate gifts.
This is a distraction, and by focusing on your strength you will be able to increase confidence and hence success.
Conclusion
Personal empowerment, therefore, is a lifetime process of development of self, learning or education, and doing. Here, one is encouraged to set goals, create discipline, and personal values, build strength of spirit, seek assistance, and take the right actions to make the potential to reality.
Do not forget that at the end of the day, the concept of empowerment is not about getting a job, a promotion, or any other worldly accomplishment; it’s about taking charge of one’s life. It is making that which is meaningful to us, and thus attaining a notion of purpose. With positive thinking and the right action, you are in a position to turn your potential into performance and thus make life what you want it to be.
FAQs
1. What is personal empowerment?
Personal empowerment is the process of taking control over your life, identifying strengths and limitations you have, and setting goals to improve those limits. Includes becoming self-aware, adopting a growth mindset, and building resilience.
2. What does it take to master self-discipline?
Learning to build self-discipline means having a routine based on your goals, being free of distractions, and taking responsibility for everything that happens from then. Self-discipline is the result of consistency and commitment.
3. How does mindset affect us to empower ourselves?
Having an open mind rather than a fixed mindset is vital to give us the strength to not give up when things get hard. Having a growth mindset challenges us to not be scared of failures and instead to welcome testing ourselves because learning is inevitable and it leads to knowledge and solutions. Speaking to a coach can help us harness a positive mindset and feel empowered.
Ghulam Abbas 
Mr Jackie