Empowerment 101

This is a guest post by Marie Noelle Marineau.

“Empowerment refers to increasing the spiritual, political, social, or economic strength of individuals and communities. It often involves the empowered developing confidence in their own capacities.”
- Wikipedia

Empowerment. You read this word everywhere and probably understand its meaning. But are you empowering yourself? Do you develop confidence in your own CAPACITIES?

If you’re still thinking about the answer, you probably don’t. Developing confidence in your own capacities is pretty much one of the basics of running your own business… and if you think you’re not running your own business but just making some money selling things you do, you got it wrong: that’s what business is!

You are the boss, the artist, the sales manager, marketing manager, the customers services manager and the PR. You’re everyone in your business. You have no choice but to empower yourself to succeed. Gain the self-confidence you deserve because you’re doing the job of at least six persons. You’re awesome!

Empowering yourself can be difficult for a lot of people, especially women. Lack of self-confidence and political, economic and social backgrounds can sometime make a huge difference in whether you will empower yourself or not. That can be changed, but it needs work.

Exercises to empower yourself

- Treat yourself as if you were a really nice work colleague or your best friend. You would be nice, you would encourage when it’s not easy, you would allow mistakes cuz’ we’re all human.

- Make a list of all the tasks you have to do in your business and associate them with a job title. See how many great positions you are filling at the moment? This should make you understand one thing: if something goes wrong you can always ask another manager to help you. But since you’re filling all of the position available, you have all the power. You’re the boss. Your decisions will be the best decisions anyone in your business could have taken and no one will argue with them.

- Make some ground rules. List all the problems or big decisions you could possibly have and think about them. Write down different way to deal with them and how you feel about each of them. Then, you should be able to see which one is the best for you and your business. Keep this sheet somewhere in case you need it someday, when you won’t be able to think straight about a real problem. Those are your rules, stick to them as long as you feel great about them.

What stops you from empowering yourself?

Marie Noelle Marineau is a soap maker, a writer and an entrepreneur. After working a few years in the hospitality industry as a desk manager and front office manager, she decided to leave everything to work from home to raise her family. She blogs at n0elle.com where she shares her thoughts on creativity, communication and handmade business. Follow her on Twitter at @noellee or on Facebook.