Empowerment is when a person has power and control over their own life. Do you relate to any of the below list of achievements?

1. Setting goals
2. Mapping out career/study/travel paths
3. Finalizing budgets
4. Creating a plan
5. Setting a deadline
6. Sticking to the plan daily
7. Achieving your target
8. Sense of accomplishment or victory

If you relate to any of these (not necessarily all), it means you have things under control. This is a very ideal-world and simplified example of what empowerment feels like.

In reality, empowerment also consists of the following list of challenges;

1. Demystifying your mind about what you want, to begin with
2. Overthinking and stressing over how to achieve that goal
3. Charting out path, cancelling it, getting frustrated when you can’t stick to it, re-doing it all over again.
4. Budget constraints and financial stresses
5. Not meeting deadlines set and failing attempt-after-attempt
6. Ultimately, reaching a point where you just give up.
7. Facing a sense of hopelessness and failure.

The dictionary wouldn’t call the above as part of “empowerment” because these are labelled as signs of failure. When have failures been the end of a journey, though? It is out of failure that we finally chart out success. Yes, sometimes there are multiple failures.

So, why am I including this under empowerment? Because ultimately, it all boils down to how we decide to pick ourselves back up and restart the entire process. The second list of 7 challenges is not the end, it is the beginning and the middle and the in-between process towards completing the 1st list of 8 achievements.

What we have normalised is the list of achievements only. We really need to normalise the challenges as well. It is ok to undo and redo and reset our life. It is absolutely ok to fail.

True achievement is when we don’t lose focus. We may need to change the goal also, not just the challenges towards the goal. But that doesn’t mean we failed. Because we can maybe come back to the original goal later in future – more prepared, stronger, more determined, with more confidence. It all depends on how much we want something.

Life happens to us all. Disappointments are part and parcel of living. What we want desperately today, might not be as important tomorrow. What matters is we treat ourselves with respect and love and not feel dismayed at failures – big or small. We need to be in tune with our personal energy to understand when we need to take a break and recuperate. Listening to our mind and body daily. Be aware of the signals we receive from the slight aches and pains and fatigue. Ignoring these and pushing ourselves out of our limit is only going to lead to wellness issues. Both physical and psychological. It is very important to listen to the mind and body and stay in tune with them.

Recoup, realign and reinvent during the break. Come up with a new approach.

What matters is we have something to keep us going. Hobby, career, family, friends, health, social work – something. Anything. Which drives us every single day. That which makes us get up in the morning and energizes us to achieve it.

Because when we have nothing to keep us going, is when we need serious help.

As long as we know that we have dreams and goals to reach, we are on the right path. Everything else that happens in between is just – LIFE!