The demands of the Festive Season can overwhelm us even before it is here! Stop the overwhelm by Empowering yourself by making choices. One year and some developmental milestones later, we may want to repeat some festive activities, introduce new ones and avoid others. There is a narrow margin for the magic to turn to mayhem!
Reflecting on what happened in previous years and asking what my older children would like is the secret to empowering myself for some Festive Fun we can all enjoy!
How can you empower yourself now to feel prepared later?
Personal empowerment is taking control of your life and goals and developing the confidence and resilience to overcome challenges. One of the most effective ways to empower yourself is through reflective practices. These practices help you gain self-awareness, evaluate your experiences, and make positive changes in your life. In this blog, we’ll explore the power of reflective practices and how they can lead to personal empowerment.
What Reflective Practices can you do now to feel empowered for the upcoming Festive Season?
Reflective practices encourage you to pause and contemplate your thoughts, feelings, actions, and experiences. They can take many forms, including journaling, meditation, mindfulness, and self-assessment. The common thread among these practices is the opportunity to gain insight into yourself and your life.
The Benefits of Reflective Practices
1. Self-Awareness: Reflective practices help you understand your emotions, values, beliefs, and motivations. This self-awareness is a cornerstone of personal empowerment, enabling you to make conscious choices and align your actions with your authentic self.
2. Clarity and Goal Setting: You can clarify your values and priorities through reflection. This clarity is essential for setting meaningful goals and working towards them purposefully. Empowered individuals have a clear sense of direction and purpose in their lives.
3. Emotional Regulation: Reflective practices can improve your emotional intelligence. By understanding your emotional responses, you can manage them more effectively, which is crucial for building resilience and handling adversity.
4. Learning from Mistakes: Reflecting on your experiences, especially your mistakes, allows you to extract valuable lessons. An empowered person doesn’t shy away from failure but embraces it as an opportunity for growth.
5. Increased Self-Esteem: As you gain a deeper understanding of yourself and make positive changes in your life, your self-esteem and self-confidence tend to improve. Empowerment is closely linked to a strong sense of self-worth.
How can you do it?
1. Set aside time to answer the questions on the handout here. Writing down your thoughts, experiences, and feelings can help you identify patterns and gain insights into your life.
2. Find a quiet, comfortable space where you won’t be easily distracted. This will help you focus on your thoughts and feelings.
3. Be patient even if it is challenging at first. It can be challenging to self-reflect.
4. Stay open-minded and be curious about why things may or may not have worked in the past. This is not an exercise to judge yourself but to better understand.
5. Take action: Now that you have reflected on it, what changes will you make to this year’s Festive Fun? Empowerment comes from the action you take as a result of your reflections.
6. Need to reach out? If you found reflecting on previous Festive Seaons challenging, speaking to a professional such as a coach might be helpful.
Click here for a printable download with prompts to help you unpack your procrastination, or contact me for a free 15-minute consultation to see how working with a coach could help you with your procrastination.
This article was written by our partner coach, Elrika Erasmus, director of Coachmind Consulting. Elrika is a qualified and registered Practitioner Psychologist and ILM Level 7 Coach. She applies psychological expertise to coaching frameworks when consulting as a Coaching Psychologist – and helps her clients build their success stories. You can contact her at elrika@coachmind.net. or via her profile page.
November 1, 2023
