[Intro] Hello and welcome to Empowered to Thrive. I'm your host Corinne Powell. I'm so glad you're here.

No matter what type of day you're having, you're always welcome. I like having you around. This space is especially designed for the person who goes about life focused on everyone else while neglecting their own needs.

The person who says yes when inwardly they want to say no. The person who is frustrated at all they do because they don't receive much in return. If that's you, I'm going to put out some great ideas on how you can change those patterns and get unstuck.

Life isn't meant to be tolerated. It should be enjoyed. So let's get to it.

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Corinne Powell: Keys to change. What are they? I'm gonna bring up three keys for change. The first one is empowerment. No one can empower us but ourselves. People can come alongside us, they can offer us a hand. They can say, I'll go with you, I'll run with you, I'll walk with you. But nobody can make us do what only we can do. 

And sometimes, in the root of what inhibits us from empowering ourselves are these subconscious ideas, the beliefs that we've inherited from our parental figures and our caregivers, from what was modeled to us that either we actually don't have what it takes, that whatever we want isn't available to us. You know, there's stories that we create based off of the experiences we have. And for instance, some of us experience time and time again, wanting something, trying for something, and not getting it, not succeeding for whatever it might be and sometimes it's because of someone else's actions. 

Consider the child who, I'm just throwing out an example, who's late to a really important event because they weren't the one driving them to the event. They were ready on time, but they weren't the one to get them there. They had to wait on the grownup, whoever that grownup is, to drive them there. If we carry this mindset that we are held back, we are inhibited because of somebody else, we won't move ourselves in the direction that we need. 

Is it true that when we were young, are there times in our life, even as a grown adult, where because of someone else's actions, the byproduct is we lose out on something? Of course, that's gonna happen. That's different than living our life through the lens, with the belief that we are not able to get ourselves where we want to go because of someone else. That's what I would call a victim mindset, which is very different than having been victimized. Because if you have been a victim of something, then I would say to that, we need to sit with that. We need to be able to grieve that. You're going to feel emotions of anger and rage and that is necessary. You're gonna feel the sadness and the loss and the grief over what could have been if. There's a process and it's a journey. And I'm not saying to bypass it.  I'm really talking about something else, that's based off of some life experiences, but doesn't need to become our identity. We can have been victimized and not be a victim. 

And so just for yourself, consider, use the journal prompts below, consider what it is that may be inhibiting you from empowering yourself. Now I'd also suggest you are empowering yourself to a degree because you're here. But there might be ways that you recognize you're sabotaging yourself. You believe that, you know what, there are things I could never achieve because of… whatever the blank, you fill it in. 

So one key for change is self-empowerment. Another key for change is self-compassion. Compassion is pivotal to connecting with our inner self, to connecting with our inner child, to really moving us along on the healing journey. With compassion, we meet ourselves where we're at. We don't shame ourselves, but we recognize we're in process, that there are reasons why we are where we are, that are the past versions of ourselves. We're just doing the best they could with what they knew. Compassion says, you fell down? Here, here's a hand I'll help you up. We don't kick them when they're down. We don't shame them. We don't bully them We offer a hand and say, it's all right. We all fall. I've fallen. And that might be us saying that to our own self. That might be us saying it to our past self. And when I say past self, you are who you are. The thing is, when we look back, we were a different age in the past. We were a different version. 

And so, because I'm a very visual person, I see these other times in the past and I see us and our version of ourselves and I just reference it that way. When I say we, because I'm talking about you and your inner child, I recognize that you are the same person. But I also see a visual in my mind's eye of a little child, that child you once were standing next to your grown self. And I recognize that that little child, needs to hear certain things. You also may need to hear them, but you may need to hear them because of an experience you had when you were a young child. And because your body stored the memory, you're still impacted and affected by whatever happened when you were young. 

You're also going to be impacted and affected by the words spoken, by the heart messages given to that young version of you. So having compassion on ourselves is a journey. It's not gonna happen overnight. If you've been a bully to yourself, if you've been the critic, and if you grew up around critical, shaming, judgmental people like I did, I understand it's very, very, very ingrained in the core of who you are. But patterns can be changed. Neuroplasticity allows us to change even the ways we think, what we believe on the subconscious level. 

So I'd encourage you to do some mirror work. You're going to, if you look in your workbooks, you'll see an example of what I mean. And I'll even be giving you an example of what I mean by that, but I'm just putting that bug in your ear. Mirror work is one of those helpful tools to growing in self-compassion. 

The third key for empowerment is mindfulness. When I think of mindfulness, I just think of this pause and taking inventory of what's going on deeper within me, noticing the sensations in my body, recognizing my feelings, and noticing the chatter in my mind, and then being able to deliberately make a choice as to what I want to do. So if I'm mindfully going to eat, I'm actually considering what I'm going for, why I'm going for it. Do I want some comfort right now? Am I actually hungry? Is what I'm choosing going to satiate me?

And am I going to pause and actually rest, sit down, relax, rest while I eat it, recognizing the food in front of me and how it's nourishing me. And that may sound like a process, but I do believe when we live mindfully, anything that seems like a process becomes organic. It just becomes natural to us. It's how we do life. It's not so heavy where we're thinking through all the steps, have to start somewhere. If we're not living in these ways, we have to start by being intentional and deliberate and actually walking through the process where we're like, yeah, all right, yep, step A, mm step B, because we have to teach ourselves. The practice of anything is done through repetition. 

So, however you want to come about change, you're going to have to be deliberate and intentional and put something into a repetitive practice. So those are three of the keys for change. Please go through it, sit in stillness. Quiet yourself within, whether that's while you take a walk, and consider the reflective questions. Do some journaling. Definitely get it off of your mind and get it down onto paper or your electronic app because if it's just up here, it's actually gonna weigh you down and zap your energy in other ways. 

The one thing I wanna leave you with is just to be noticing as you're going through your days. what is going on below the surface here? Hmm, am I feeling disempowered? Am I feeling inhibited because of someone else? why am I doing this? Do I want to do this right now? And how am I thinking of myself? How am I treating myself? Mindfulness, compassion, empowerment, three keys to change.

[Ad] Are you interested to learn more about yourself, to understand why you think and act the ways that you do? I offer a digital product, Self Discovery. It's a course that contains pre-recorded video lessons along with printable materials that will offer you more insights and journal prompts. Today's episode is an excerpt taken from that course, Self Discovery.

I hope that you'll enjoy it. And if you find it interesting and you wanna delve deeper into this subject, head over to the show notes, which will link you directly to that course, Self Discovery.

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[Outro] We've come to the end of another episode. I'm so glad you stuck around. As you consider what you've heard, what's the one thing that especially resonated with you? What's one way you can start to implement change into your life? Too much too soon isn't sustainable. Start small and go slow. Consistency is key. If you appreciate what you're hearing on Empowered to Thrive, would you kindly leave me a review and rate my podcast? It helps a lot.

I hope you'll share the episode with a friend and come back next week. And don't forget, I'm so glad you're alive.