As an Empowerment Coach and Leadership Expert, I want to share a secret about you. You may not know it, but you are a person of power. Or, you at least have the potential to be. But, it all begins with your habits. Your habits shape your relationships, dictate your decisions, determine your progress in life, and ultimately tell the world who you are. At the beginning of each new year, many people pledge to change their habits to become more empowered people, only to fall short and relapse back to the same poor habits. As a result, those people go back to the same personas, the same negative views on life, the same routines of the past, and the same patterns of failure. The point is, to become a new and more empowered person, it is not enough to simply try to break bad habits. Instead, you have to consistently replace them with empowering behaviors, which eventually become new habits. That is what I want to teach in this piece. So, the aim of this article is two-fold. The first is to present 8 bad mental habits that powerful people simply do not have. Or, put another way, these are habits that will keep you from your power. The second is to present empowerment strategies to dissolve these habits. These habits and empowering strategies are presented below.
Mental Habit 1: The Need To Please Others:
Powerful people do not care about pleasing others. With regard to personal development and success, being a people pleaser is the kiss of death. It feels right in the moment, but it lacks integrity causes you to lose ground very quickly. Furthermore, it leads to disappointment, low self-esteem, and self-loathing. Also, people-pleasers are vulnerable to the point where they bring out the lion in even the nicest people. This ultimately leads to them being taken advantage of by just about everyone around them.
Empowering Life Strategies: The need to please others comes from two personal characteristics. The first is the fear of not being good enough. The second is the need to feel loved by others. In turn, people-pleasers aim to please others in order to gain acceptance and love. The good news is that these characteristics are easy to fix. In terms of the need for acceptance, the only person that you need to please is yourself. Also, forget about looking for love. For one, you are already loved, in great abundance, by God. Second, you will gain more love with the love that you have for yourself. Self-love is a magnet that draws people in, and will cause them to share with you, give to you, and ultimately, love you.
I am here to tell you that it is ok to say the naughty word… “no”. Someone once said to me that everyone understands that you can’t do everything, as long as you do their thing. In fact, people can be highly skilled at conditioning people pleasers to do their bidding. Well, this behavior needs to be unlearned in order for you to become successful. You must strike a healthy balance between giving too much and giving too little. The key is learning the process to find a middle ground, where giving comes from a centered and whole place. This is done by living a life driven by self-respect, integrity, self-love, and purpose.
Mental Habit 2: Having Poor or Unclear Boundaries:
Powerful people have clearly defined boundaries. Boundaries are defined as the point where your identity, your needs, your wellbeing, and your privacy begins. This is the point where no one should be allowed to cross. We all have boundaries; however, we are not always clear as to where they begin or end, or to whom we should or should not open our boundaries. In turn, this uncertainty can lead to unclear and fuzzy boundaries that ultimately lead to dysfunctional professional and personal relationships.
Empowering Life Strategies: The main point here is that clear boundaries are important for empowerment and success. Therefore, it is imperative to establish and communicate boundaries effectively to others to protect your peace, your sanity, and ultimately, your power. There are several ways to do this. First, get in touch with your internal alarm signal. Your gut will tell you when someone is encroaching on your boundaries. Next, Clinical Psychologist, Dr. Soye Zaid-Muhammad (Dr. Z.) emphasized the importance of developing “STOP SIGN” or “RED LIGHT” techniques. These are verbal or non-verbal strategies for preventing others from crossing your boundaries. These techniques are quite easy and may involve general self-focused statements like:
- I am not comfortable with that
- I need to think about that a lot more
- I need to learn more before making a decision
- I do not know you well enough yet
- I am not ready to commit to this yet
- That is not my priority right now
- That is beyond the scope of my role
- I do not think that is a good fit for me.
- I would love to, but that is not my talent
Each of these statements offers very clean and kind ways to not only establish boundaries, but also to say no. And, when all else fails, and people continue to push against your boundaries, it is appropriate to simply say “no.” Saying no is not rude, cruel, and unkind. On the contrary, it is respectful and is a great step toward focusing on your own dreams, goals, and success.
Mental Habit 3: Not Speaking One’s Mind:
Powerful people are really good at speaking their minds, with near-perfect tone and expert timing. They are really good at expressing their thoughts, to the point where they can speak truth to power. Expressing your thoughts is imperative to your success journey. Withholding from respectfully, expressing your thoughts can create negative emotions internally, which can harm your professional or personal relationships with other individuals over time. Therefore, it is important to speak your mind in order to succeed.
Empowering Life Strategies: I want to encourage you to speak up, especially on matters that are important to you or those in your care. Respectfully and honestly expressing your thoughts is not necessarily easy. In fact, it will take a lot of courage and mindful reflection on your part, which is difficult. However, as you practice sharing your ideas and speaking truth to power, you will learn and master relational management and assertive communication skills. These skills will help you to become more successful at advocating for yourself, standing up for those in need, and driving organizational vision and mission forward in success.
Mental Habit 4: Avoiding Failure:
Powerful people succeed by embracing and learning from failure. Failure is inevitable. Motivational Speaker, Author, and Former Congressman, Les Brown. once stated that anything worth doing is worth doing badly at first. He also stated that you do not have to be great to get started, but you have to get started to be great. Taken together, these two statements tell us the role that initial failure can play in our eventual success. Here are some specific ways in which failure can lead to success:
- Failure gives us information about a process that we did not previously have.
- Creates a trial and error database that can help us sharpen our approach in the future
- Failure helps us to set limits with regard to resources
- Failure helps us to streamline processes toward success
- Failure is a step forward on the journey to success
- Failure builds character
- Failure tells us where the weaknesses are so that we can get stronger
This means that it is okay to fail. In fact, any attempt to avoid failure is a sure way to avoid success.
Empowering Life Strategies: Just about everyone wants to be successful; however, many are unwilling to embrace failure. Some may attempt to avoid the painful emotions that accompany perceived failure. They may even take failure personally, believing that it is directly related to their quality as people. However, failure does not lessen the quality of a person. Instead, Failure is a critical part of any process that should be viewed as a learning opportunity. For example, if you failed at successfully opening a company you envisioned. Evaluate why you failed and notate it so you know what not to do next time. Unlearning the behavior of avoiding failure opens up the opportunity to truly embrace your mistakes and move forward on your journey. So, the next time you fail, tell yourself “suck it up buttercup, get up and try again, because I am a warrior!”
Habit 5: Letting Fear Hold You Back:
All people have fear, but powerful people push forward in the face of that fear. Fear itself is a natural human emotion, and we all experience it. What we do when we experience fear is what separates us into either people who take control of our lives. or as people who simply can neither control nor overcome the presenting fear. The difference between these two types of people is that the former has mastered the concept of coping with and control what they fear, which takes a tremendous amount of self-improvement and inner work. This requires tenacity, willpower, resilience, and courage.
Empowering Life Strategies: There are 3 proposed steps for moving past fear. The first step to controlling your fear is to understand it. It is important to understand that fear is caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain, or a threat. However, that belief may not be real, which leads us to the second step. Challenge any underlying belief behind fear. For example, if you are afraid to confront someone, reflect on why. The reasons that you come up with may not be real in comparison to the actual threat. The last step is to push past the beliefs, push past the excuses, push past the irrational thoughts, and act, despite fear. Courage is your ability to do what is necessary despite the threat, and you cannot have courage unless you move past fear.
6: Negative Thinking:
Powerful people typically think positively and are able to reframe negative thoughts, feelings, and events. When something bad happens in our lives, we tend to attribute negative meaning to it., and then we internalize it, which is an emotional trip downhill. As a result, we will not only act out internalized negativity, but will also attract more of it.
Empowering Life Strategies: The solution here is to be mindful of your thoughts, take control of our thought patterns, and reframe negative thoughts into positive thoughts. It’s what I like to think of as a “mind shift”. This shift can turn negative thoughts into positive thoughts. In this spirit, think about what your next move will be to achieve your goals, and clear the negative obstacles in your mind. Mindful thinking is key when combating negative thoughts and is important to our success.
Habit 7: Being Overwhelmingly Busy:
Powerful people are extremely busy, but not to the point of imbalance. People often mistake being busy for being productive or purposeful. In fact, many of us suffer from Purpose Addiction, a term coined by Dr. Z. He defined Purpose Addiction as the tendency to repeatedly engage in a growing sequence of purpose-driven endeavors to achieve a fleeting sensation of success. This occurs to the point where purpose addicts may experience the following:
- Chronic exhaustion or fatigue
- Task Fragmentation: Multiple incomplete or failed tasks or projects
- A sense of inertia: Often feeling stuck and unable to move forward
- Failed Investments: Incurring growing expenses with less than an equal return on the invested resources
- Overreaching Presence: A feeling of being stretched thin due to the attempt to be everywhere or do everything at once
- Chronic health challenges
- Financial difficulties: Missing bills or experiencing a shortage of personal cash flow because of whimsical investments in multiple ventures at once
- Relationship Challenges: Experiencing arguments, discord or breakups that are caused by or related to the purpose addiction
- Job Loss or Occupational Stagnation
- Occupational Flight: Repeatedly changing jobs, careers, business ventures without ever getting a foothold in any one path.
- Parallel Addiction: Escape into other forms of addictive behavior
- Credential Junkie: Having significantly more credentials than necessary for your chosen profession
Unfortunately, many people falsely feel empowered by their purpose addiction. This may be due to a common myth that being busy or having an overloaded schedule is equivalent to being a person of importance. Gaining self-value and worth solely on the basis of being busy is a dangerous and self-sabotaging behavior that leads to, if anything, a deeper disconnect from your passion, purpose, and true fulfillment. Too often, people start unlearning this behavior only after a major stressor, or perhaps after someone they love leaves them. Learning to slow down can be challenging for some people, especially those who live in overdrive.
Empowering Life Strategies: When life gets too busy, be still. Focusing on stillness, silence, and solitude, however, can be the gateway to a deeper connection with yourself. Also, focus on one endeavor until it is complete. The secrets to multifaceted achievement are to achieve the highest success one goal at a time, to win the biggest war one battle at a time, and to build the biggest empire one brick at a time.
Mental Habit 8. Looking for Your Power Outside Yourself:
Powerful people know their power and worth. At the center of a storm is an eye of serene calm. Find the steady and centered place within yourself, and stay within it as much as possible. That calm place will give you self-confidence and allow you to stay committed to your long-term goals in spite of the short-term ups and downs that life throws at you.
Empowering Life Strategies: If your well-being, peace, and happiness depend on external factors, your level of stress will be too high to successfully stay on the entrepreneurial path or any productive path for very long. Instead, try to step out of all the external events around you. You’ll be able to make better decisions for a larger good, instead of just relieving short-term stress or fear.
Here is my message to you. You are powerful, filled with promise, and unlimited potential for success. Unlearning these 8 mental habits above will assist in developing a better You for the future. Continue tracking your growth during your journey and by the end of the year, you should see incredible growth in yourself!
Dr. Sophia R. Miranda
Co-Founder of the Consultation Tower
Leadership Expert
Empowerment Coach