International Women’s Day 2017 has just passed – on that day, we recognized and celebrated the power of women by touching on empowerment.

The first simple rule of success in empowerment is SELF. Place yourself in front of the mirror, and recognize that success is all about you. Only through you and your own efforts will you gain success in empowerment. If you see failure written all over your face, you are right. If you see success on your face, you are right as well. This is because only through yourself can you gain success.

We often hear people talk about why they cannot seem to achieve the goals they set because there are too many uncontrollable external factors. Why is it always easier to convince oneself that the fault is in others?

Think about every time you used your index finger to point the blame at somebody else. You forget that there were at least three other fingers pointing right back at you.

Success and failure starts with self. If we understand what we truly want, we will find ways to make it happen. Pauline Kael, a 1950s film critic, author, and writer for The New Yorker, once said, “When there is a will, there is a way. If there is a chance in a million that you can do something, anything, to keep what you want from ending -do it”.

Before you do anything, understand that without self-coaching to encourage you to pursue self-learning, you will never have self-improvement – which will lead you to self-leadership and ultimately self-actualization.

Once you get to self-actualization, you will already have achieved success in self-discovery, self-reflection, self-realization, and self-exploration. Having said that, if you decide not to do anything but sit around and wait for somebody else to lead you to success, not only will you not grow, you will also slowly but surely slip backward and eventually result in self-destruction.

Noticed how everything is linked to self? I did not use the words he, she, they, or them because achieving success  is all about self-empowerment – and how badly you want it. Do not simply talk about it or wait for someone to give you that power. Do something about it now.

Visit the Ultimate Balance Consultancy page here to find out more about Kim’s work.

^{This post was first published on Kim Underhill Linkedin and has been reposted on Connected Women with the permission of the author. 
Edited by Michelle Sarthou
Image credit: Shutterstock}

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