The source of all your power is within you; it always has been and always will be. It doesn't come from someone else, from the company you work for or the environment you live in or from the world around you. It comes from your connection to yourself, your True Self. For some, this is stating the obvious. For most of us, we have lived our lives not even knowing it was possible to be disconnected from our True Selves. And yet it is…all the layers of fear, doubt, insecurity and unworthiness build up over time and come between the person we are living as and the person we are at the core of our being.

When you peel away these unwanted layers to unearth your soul, you find the purest energy: love. Love is the most powerful and beautiful energy we can unleash – upon others and upon ourselves. And yet, so often in business I hear leaders today say they do not want to use the word, “love.” Do you want to know why? It’s because they are afraid to look weak.

How ironic, when love is the greatest power of all.

True love for this country and the freedoms it stands for was the wellspring that our Founding Fathers used to ignite a revolution. Joan d’Arc's love for and faith in God was the beacon that drove her to save France. Overflowing love for the sick and impoverished led Saint Teresa of Calcutta to care for and heal so many of the poor. And deep love for humanity in all its colors is being unleashed around the world today as the people of this planet stand up for justice. 

The planet is going through a transformation right now.
We all know this; we all feel the winds of change.  There is one thing each of us can do as leaders to affect this change: unleash love. Stop suppressing love and putting walls around it out of fear that you’ll look weak or it won’t be reciprocated. You are a leader. The world is looking to you to lead.

Start by loving yourself unconditionally. Unearth your True Self and share You with the world. Watch how it transforms your ability to lead others – the shift is bound to be noticeable if you’ve been holding back.
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Choose to raise the vibration of love in your life. It’s as simple as making the choice. If you think this sounds ridiculous, ask yourself what you’re really afraid of.

At this point in the history of the world, I don’t think we have anything to lose by unleashing love. Do you? Now is our time to “rediscover fire;” to use it to build a better world; to 'set the world on fire' with light and love. It will take all of us to lead the way.

Photo by Michael Fenton on Unsplash

If you’re like me, you light up when you discover TRUE leadership in the world: leaders whose vision invokes a higher purpose and who have a passion for their work that is pure and infectious. St. Joan of Arc is a perfect example of an indomitable spirit on fire with purpose, as are Martin Luther King, Jr. and Gandhi. And then there’s Malala Yousafzai, whose personal mission and orated letter to the abducted Chibok schoolgirls represent some of the most inspirational courage I’ve ever witnessed.
 
What each of these leaders has in common is deep-seated self-empowerment.

The simple truth about empowerment is you cannot be truly empowered without a strong foundation of self-empowerment. While there are a plethora of empowerment programs in the world today, many of which are aimed at women, the vast majority of these programs serve to give people something outside of themselves: access to economic resources, training, skill-building, a broader network, mentors, sponsors, and even inspiration. But these critical resources are ineffective without a foundation of worthiness, value, and an intrinsic belief in oneself.
 
Because, you can give someone limitless resources, but they will have no effect if the person stands in their own way due to fear, lack, self-doubt, unsupportive thoughts and beliefs, or underlying feelings of unworthiness.
 
The truest empowerment comes from within.
 
During the last few years my “volunteer life” focus has moved to helping leaders and entrepreneurs awaken their inner empowerment and let go of everything they have (unwittingly) allowed to get in their way. What I didn’t realize early on is just how pervasive it is for humans to stand in our own way. Even a simple principle such as focusing on what you DO want – instead of what you DON’T want - has a profound impact in your success. Yet, how often do we say, “What I don’t want is…” What happens when we do this? We get more and more of what we don’t want. Because all our brain can see is our focus on that which we don’t want…it cannot discern our preference to not have it; it just focuses on it.

This is huge.

So, to be a leader that truly lights the world on fire, whether in your family, company, community, or the world at large, it all starts by looking deep within yourself for the source of your purest personal power, and then removing the blocks that have built up over time. Think of it like this: the way we dig deep within the earth to find the most valuable diamond, and then remove everything around it to access its beauty.

That diamond deep within us? Self-empowerment that gets its source from self-awareness and love; it all starts here.

Photo by JewelersTouch.com 

I read a blog post that was written just in time for International Women’s Day by a woman who said in her effort to be Superwoman she had gained 50 pounds and was crying herself to sleep almost every night. She said she had decided to quit, to hang up her cape. And she made it sound like a very noble thing to do, encouraging other women to do the same.

Her blog post made me incredibly sad. Women have always been a force for positive, transformative change and for good in the world. The thought of us hanging up our capes and quitting seems unimaginable.

What I realized in reading this woman’s heartfelt post – and I truly did feel for her – is that many women have an old belief system that drives their understanding of what it means to be Superwoman, a woman who elevates her life in all of its facets and who plays each role she chooses with great purpose, courage, and poise. There seems to be an old belief that it involves doing everything for everyone else while making ourselves the last priority. This belief system is fueled by the notion that being Superwoman is achieved through utter self-sacrifice, instead of self-love and nurturing.

The reality is, women do not gain 50 pounds and cry themselves to sleep at night when they are connected to their True Selves, living in alignment with their True Purpose, immersed in their heart energy which empowers them to act from a place of love instead of from fear, resentment, or guilt, and nurturing themselves intentionally with love and positive consciousness. This is what being Superwoman is truly all about.

It is about being all of the woman you were created to be. It was never about trying to be someone you're not, or about losing yourself on your way to being a hero to everyone else.

It requires putting your own oxygen mask on first (full of love and actions and thoughts that are in your higher good and support you) so you can go out and love others more, from a deeper and truer place, fully living your soul’s truest wishes.

When we as women understand this, it becomes clear why being Superwoman is more important than ever, and why it’s so crucial that we support each other being all of who we were created to be! Because so many of us have become disconnected from our True Selves by listening to the messages of society, the media, celebrities, insecure friends, social media or to old belief systems that lay deep within us that tell us we are supposed to sacrifice ourselves in order to prove our value and worth. Many of us have lost faith in our ability to bring our truest wishes to life and we’ve forgotten the path that our soul purposefully placed us on long ago, because we’ve made choices that put others first instead of feeding ourselves the oxygen of life.

So many of us are trapped in the old belief system that putting others first makes us better women. How is that possible? If we were created by God (or whichever higher power you believe in) to be all of who we were divinely created to be, how can sacrificing this be what God wants for us? We all know the truth…that truly and unabashedly loving and caring for ourselves first makes us infinitely more capable of loving and caring for others more! By connecting to our souls and awakening all of who we are, we become infinitely more powerful than we ever dreamed possible. We’ve just lost sight of these truths.

It’s time in history for women to give ourselves permission to be all of who we were created to be! It’s time for us to stop waiting for someone else to give us permission or to grant us power. And it’s time for us to support other women who are ready to be all of who they were created to be, instead of allowing jealousies and insecurities to lead us to put other women down. Instead of feeding drama, gossip or negativity. Everything we need lies within us. It’s source is our divine soul.

We have the gift of being able to raise our feminine energy that empowers us to create fully, to let go, to nurture, to follow, to trust and to believe with our hearts. It’s the part of us that allows us to feel and unleash our intuition. It’s the part of us that millions of women suppress in an effort to succeed in a man’s world by living solely off our masculine energy, without realizing that by doing so we are living as half of our True Selves; that by doing so we are not fully whole. Without realizing that once we raise our feminine energy to equal our masculine energy and are completely whole we can accomplish every goal, every dream, every wish. We have the opportunity to raise our heart energy, our courage (because courage comes from the word heart in Latin!), to live more in our hearts and less in our fears.

After all, isn’t that what Superwoman would do? Act from her heart and not from fear?
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Our truest wishes lay ahead of us…let’s go bring them to life by honoring our True Selves in every moment!

True empowerment comes from within each of us as individuals. It comes from giving power to ourselves by awakening what already lies within us.

I believe one of the most unsupportive beliefs about empowerment is that empowerment is given to us by other people; it implies we must wait for it to be given to us, or search for the right person to bestow it upon us. This mindset is actually disempowering as it places us at the mercy of others.

This has a very negative spiral effect. Most women don’t consciously see this happening, but when we wait for someone else to give us power, we then unwittingly find ourselves waiting for validation and acceptance and a sense of worthiness as well; because if we had all of this to begin with, we wouldn’t be waiting for anything.

The daunting truth is that I cannot give you power. No one can. I can give you a title or a position with implied authority, and I can give you permission to make certain decisions on my behalf. But if I give these to you then I am able to take them back, so it’s not actually power that I am giving. The power is mine all along.

To be powerful you have to choose to BE the power that already lies within you. This starts with seeing it within you, even if all you see is a tiny essence of it, and then allowing your power to awaken within you.

From there, you have to KNOW your power. This means not just seeing and acknowledging the power within you, but feeling it in every cell of your body. It shows itself in how you feel and know you are worthy of creating the life your soul desires for you, in how you are meant to make a difference in the world, in knowing that you matter just by being you – your truest self.

Because it is only through the BEing and the KNOWing that you can then ACT with power. This is when you choose to take action. This is when you choose to decide what you really want for you, and what is in the higher good of your Higher Self – the part of you that is loving, good, and kind, not angry or resentful or jealous or insecure or negative, and then you take action and go for it. This is when you choose to speak up and let your voice be heard, which is when you begin to influence and lead others.

What is it about this truth that is genuinely daunting? That it means ultimately each of us must take responsibility for our own empowerment, and this is not easy. It is so much easier to just tell ourselves we have to wait for someone else to give it to us. To take responsibility for our own empowerment means we have to go to work on what blocks us from BEing our power and KNOWing our power and ACTing our power: and that is fear.

Sometimes it’s fear of failure and sometimes it’s actually fear of success. Sometimes it’s fear about what others will say about us or do to us. Sometimes it’s just not seeing how we can possibly overcome the societal, cultural, economic and political roadblocks that are in our way globally as women.

And all of this fear is understandable. The fear within us builds up silently during the course of our lives, and the global roadblocks are real and often quite terrifying.

This is why I believe empowerment is a choice. When we choose to release the fear – to acknowledge it and work on moving through it and past it – we are taking the first step. This, alone, awakens the power within us, setting us on the path of BEing and KNOWing and ACTing the power that already lies within each of us, given to us by our Divine source.

Let’s choose to empower ourselves. I’m ready. Are you?

​Photo is Lao Tzu Quote 3 by HartwigHKD.