First off I ought to define what I mean by ‘Self Empowerment’.
True Self Empowerment is a natural outcome of combining three different, closely-related elements: Self Confidence, Self Worth and Self Respect.
You may wonder, “Aren’t those all the same thing?”. This is part of the problem because many people use these terms as if they did mean the same thing. This confuses the issue and make true Self Empowerment harder to achieve.
Even professional psychologists sometimes use terms like ‘Self Confidence’ and ‘Self Worth’ as if they were interchangeable. In actual fact they are very different things – at least in the way I like to define them.
Self Confidence: this is about how your relate to the external world and your ability to set and achieve goals and the like. It is about knowing you have the required skills, or can learn those skills, to do a thing. It is about the thoughts, feelings and assumptions you have about what you are able to do.
Self Worth: This is about how you relate to your ‘inner world’. It is how you feel about you. As a particpant in one of my workshops once said ‘Its whether you like yourself or not’. In other words it is about the thoughts, feelings and assumptions you have about what you are worth.
Self Respect: This is about how you relate to God in whatever way that is real for you. This can include the principles or values you live by and so on. It is about the thoughts, feelings and assumptions you have about spirituality, or that which gives meaning to your life.
Self Empowerment is like a three-legged stool where each of the elements; Self Confidence, Self Worth and Self Respect are the legs of the stool. We need each of these aspects to be strong and healthy to lead a rich and full life.
If a person focusses too much on Self Confidence – which is the more obvious aspect and so tends to get the most attention – and completely neglects other aspects of themselves, this can lead to them getting out of balance. This is like making one leg of the stool longer and not adjusting the others – eventually the whole thing would tip over.
In practise this means that if a person who has a lot of Self Confidence, but who is a bit weak on Self Worth receives ‘damage’ to their Self Worth (more about that later) they will ‘collapse’ more readily than a person with strong Self Worth. They may give up on something sooner that a person with less Self Confidence but more Self Worth would do in the same circumstances.
As you can probably imagine, developing greater Self Confidence is a different process from developing Self Worth or Self Respect. More on how do develop these and to repair damage does to them in future articles….
Archives for July 2007
What do Men Really W ant? Not Needy or Clinging Behaviour
A woman friend of mine was recently complaining about the man in her life. What the complaints boiled down to was that he was not doing the kinds of things she thought he ‘should’ do. For one thing, she felt that if he loved her he would send her a phone text message every day.
Bizarre as this example may seem, it serves to illustrate one of the classic problems women run into with men. This has to do with having a set of expections and then putting pressure on the man when these are not fulfilled.
My friend’s boyfriend had started to get distant and unavailable. It turned out that she had been putting pressure on him to text her more often and I pointed out to her that this may well be the cause of him distancing himself.
As soon as a woman starts to put pressure on a man to modify his behaviour she needs to be very careful that it is about something important as she might lose him because of it. It takes a lot of effort for anyone to change their natural behaviour. The man in this example was not really inclined to send lots of text messages. Trying to push him into it would have two negative affects:
1) it turns something playful into a ‘have to’ and takes the fun out of it.
2) he would wonder what demands she would put on him next. (Don’t underestimate this one as it can have a lot to do why men will often resist even small requests for change).
It is much better to negotiate changes in behaviour by encouraging the behaviour you want. This is especially effective if you keep the following in mind:
1) It is much more powerful to ask for what you want than to complain about not getting it. “Can you please…”, sounds so much better than a whiney “You should…”.
2) It is much more powerful to praise the behaviour you like rather than complain about the behaviour you don’t like. “I really like it when you …” is miles ahead of “I hate it when you don’t…”.
Notice, please, what I am focussing on here is man’s personal styles and preferences not major behaviour problems (such as very aggressive behaviour or deep depression) which do require very clear and specific intervention.
Behind my friends expectation/demand for ‘text message every day’ was an unmet emotional need. This would come across to the man as ‘neediness’ and that is often what is behind men ‘running away’.
If my friend becomes conscious of her need and the nature of it she could then handle it much better. If she discovered that it was really a need for reassurance she could look to other ways of meeting that need either by a) meeting it herself b) accepting other forms of behaviour from the man which she would also find reassuring.
Trying to get other people to change is always a bit of an uphill battle. Better to change ourselves and then see what happens. We may find that the other person will change anyway, or that we don’t need them to change after all.
‘Needyness’ is the result of acting out needs of which we are not properly conscious. Learning to understand our own needs sets us free from needyness, because as we learn to understand needs we naturally see healthier way to meet them.
Yet, many of us avoid honestly looking at our needs in case that makes us more needy – the opposite is true! We cannot handle what we do not see and we do not see the things if we believe we dare not look at them.
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Germany leads the way in Photovoltaics
Germany seems to be currrently leading the world in the devevlopment and deployment of photovoltaic system cost effectively. This is largely due to the feed-in tarrif which guarantees a good price for electricity generated by photovoltaics.
This report Experience of the German-based performance programme makes interesting reading. Its shows a market growth rate of 25% per year with significant cost-reductions each year.
Here are links to German companies supplying photovoltaics.
What do men really want? What are you offering!
A women recently wrote to me via my free dating site to ask, ” What do men really want!”.
Well let’s have a go at answering from the perspective of a heterosexual man.
What a man wants (from a woman) all depends on the man, his stage in life and his mood at that moment. However, it also depends on what is on offer.
Men sometimes find it baffling that a woman will wear something revealing and then be offended when a guy takes time to really look at what she is showing. If a woman wears, say, a revealing top it is very tempting for a man to want to have a good look at the marvels on display. Yet, many women get offended if he does.
“Goodness”, he wonders, “She wants me to look as her hair when she spends time on it so why not the other bits too….”
Of course, I’m being flippant here. Most sensible men understand that a woman hates to be oggled. However, his basic instinct is to oggle so why encourage it if you don’t want it?
Most men, deep down, really want a healthy relationship with a healthy woman. A leading male guru, who helps men get better at dating women, says that around 80% of men who come to him do so they can win the heart of that special women when they find her. The majority of men are not wanting to get into dating as a game, but to find a life partner.
If, however, a man meets a woman who dress style says ‘I am hot for sex’ – where do you think his focus will go? Of course it might develop into something deeper, but such behaviour will tend to attract men who are mostly interested in what is being advertised – sex. And, it will tend to distort the attitude and priorities of men we genuinely interested in a life partner.
The fashion industry confuses the picture as sometimes the current fashion is to reveal a lot. This can cause a wave of befuddlement in men as they try to think with a part of their anatomy not suitable for thinking processes. “I would like to find a nice girl…oh wow… look at that hottie…hey darlin’…”
Some men are only interested in women for sex. No matter how a women dresses, or the wonders of her charm and intelligence, sex will be foremost on the mind of that kind of guy. But, that is really the minority as such an attitude tends to be – at most – a passing phase for the majority of men. However, it can be a recurring passing phase.
In dating you tend to get that for which you advertise. If a woman ‘advertises’ herself by emphasising her sexual attraction she will experience the results of that. If she downplays her sexual attraction somewhat (at least on the first date or two) and emphasises her personality then she will stand a much better chance of either attracting a man who is looking for something deeper, or of bringing that out in some of the men she meets (“Hey, maybe I ought to quit playing around and get serious with this one…”).
More on this topic later…:)
Bizarre Japanese ski slope stunt
A Japanese friend sent me this bizarre (and very funny) stunt done on a Japanese ski slope. The wall in a some kind of health spa at the top of the slope opens a ‘massage’ chair, with the naked and unsuspecting vicitim on board, is suddenly launched down the ski slope. As much as anything, it makes you wonder how on earth they got away with it.
I feel sorry for the people caught out by it though…
Japanese video ski slope stunt