What is empowerment and how does it help?

The process of self-empowerment, or empowering others, is to offer the belief that they have control over their situation and options. It allows them to seek and find new opportunities, try new things and develop trust in themselves and their capabilities.

Empowerment allows you to recognise and eventually use your resources, find the right opportunities and improve your situation and future lifestyle.

Increasing your autonomy allows you to self-determine what you want and can do, and what you choose not to attempt or achieve, too. It works for individuals, but also whole communities who need to see new options, new ideas and new ways of helping themselves. Informed choices and more effective decision-making can only be beneficial.

Feeling empowered is very powerful if you haven’t felt that way before. Perhaps you have felt repressed, restricted or never realised there were other options available to you.

This is what education does - it helps you to see new ideas and theories, try them out and find what works for you. Reading and speaking to other people, finding out about them and their experiences, means you have other options already to hand.

Personal power is important to extract the best from your life, to exert your freedom of choice no matter how limited the options might be. Even just changing your response to an awkward or unpleasant event can help you feel better and more powerful, even if you can’t actually improve your circumstances for now.

If you have ever felt powerless, then this is something huge. This may be especially true for someone with limited life experience, or someone navigating new cultures, new people and unfamiliar places. Empowerment is freedom to choose, freedom to act and freedom to stay put if you want that.

But knowing what is out there for you is the key. That empowerment alone is helpful and impactful.

Empowerment and learned helplessness

Psychological research into learned helplessness has explored how people and animals may come to accept a difficult or painful situation when they believe they have no control over it. Even when another option becomes available, it can be hard to move towards it if you have learned to believe nothing will change.

Being stuck in a job you hate, feeling unable to make changes or relying on beliefs developed in the past can leave you feeling powerless to do anything. But all it takes is something different - a different outlook, action or thought - to begin creating change.

People can change, grow and improve their situation, and coaching is one tool that can offer this opportunity if that is where you are.

Empowering people is about motivating them to embrace change and personal growth, developing new ways of being and living, and doing things even slightly differently. But first, you have to see that there might be alternatives and then choose the right ones for you.