How To Empower Yourself

Empower Yourself A message from Joseph Liberti Thank you for visiting my site and for downloading the first chapter of my new book, Yes You Can: 20 Life Coaching Lessons For Self Empowerment. The e-book edition is now available in an Amazon Kindle version and a Computer/PDA version and the print version will be available in January 2009. I have also included excerpts of the Table of Contents and The Introduction to give you an idea of what’s in the book. See my blog for more information. Self-empowerment, is my passion and the focus of my teaching and coaching, my writing and my podcast. I am delighted to stimulate your thinking about empowering yourself and provide a basic description of my model and some simple ideas to try. The complete model and step-by-step method of development is the subject of my next book, The ART of Self Empowerment: Using emotional intelligence to liberate authentic self, to be published in 2009. If you would like to receive self-empowerment tips, class schedules and advance notice of the publishing of the new book, I invite you to join my Yes You Can News mailing list. Thank you for the opportunity to serve you. Your comments and questions are welcome. Best to you, Joseph Liberti

The TOC, Introduction and Chapter 1 of The ART of Self Empowerment begins on the next page……

 1998-2008

EQ At Work

888-EQWORKS

www.eqatwork.com

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Table of Contents (Excerpt) Introduction 1

The A.R.T. of Self-Empowerment: Are You Ready?

2

Embrace Adventure: Solve the Problem

3

Smile! It’s Good for You!

4

Five Ways to Deal with a Bad Boss

5

Get Back in Balance: Define Your Non-Negotiables

6

Stop Controlling: Start Trusting and Manage Yourself

7

The Search for Self

8

Getting Things Done: With the Power of Choice

9

The Audacity of Hope

10

Don’t Worry. Do Nothing. Be Happy

11

The Essentials of Self-Esteem

12

Take Charge of Your Choices

13

Be An Encourager

14

Be More Effective: Let Go of Maybe

15

Self-Esteem: Build Your Relationship with Yourself

16

Escape the Fear Trap

17

How to Find Happiness

18

It’s Simple with Intention

19

Steps to Living Courageously

20

Yes You Can … Start Over

 1998-2008

EQ At Work

888-EQWORKS

www.eqatwork.com

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Introduction (Excerpt) Hello Reader, I’m Joseph Liberti—coach, change agent, and lifelong learner—with some brief comments about how this book came to be and how to use it to your advantage A while ago, I began to do a self-empowerment podcast called Yes You Can! Originally, my intent was to provide encouragement and support to my students and coaching clients in order to help them overcome obstacles and create lasting beneficial change in their lives. Soon the podcasts attracted listeners from around the globe. To date, they have been downloaded nearly 100,000 times. Many listeners wrote to me to say “thank you” and to tell me how powerfully the messages had impacted their lives. Within this book are transcriptions of twenty of the most popular shows, rewritten slightly for easy reading. Each “lesson” includes some new ways of looking at a challenge and some good coaching questions to ask yourself, questions that will help you gain clarity and insight. Also included are practices and action steps that will help you create positive outcomes. Browse the table of contents and choose a chapter, knowing that it will be just the right focus and message for this time. Reflect on the concepts, ask yourself the questions, and take the time to listen for answers from within you. Please use the practices. Those who have tried them report great results. Each lesson also comes with my heartfelt encouragement and a reminder: Who you are is authentically powerful, totally wonderful, and capable of accomplishing virtually anything. If the question is “Can you?” the answer is “Yes you can!” Warm regards,

Joseph Liberti

 1998-2008

EQ At Work

888-EQWORKS

www.eqatwork.com

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1 (Excerpt) The A.R.T. of Self-Empowerment Are You Ready? Self-empowerment is the process of increasing your influence over yourself and your world to realize your potential for success and happiness.

Realizing Your Potential Self-empowerment is an aspect of self- a term used by Abraham Maslow and other humanistic psychology theorists to describe the human desire to become everything that one is capable of becoming. According to Maslow, people have lower order needs that begin with the necessities of life—such as food, shelter, and security—that generally must be fulfilled before high order needs can be satisfied. As a person moves up Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, eventually they will reach the summit—self-actualization. I believe, that becoming self-actualized is the curriculum of our life and the ultimate purpose for our human experience. I also believe that becoming actualized is inevitable. Whether you aggressively pursue your personal growth now or do nothing at all, sooner or later you will answer the call to learn and grow. Sometimes we are so resistant to change that the choice to learn only comes when we are in crisis and are motivated by pain.

Self-Empowerment Is a Choice As I became more and more awake during my life, I made the choice to make realizing my potential my most important goal. That is how and why I came to do the work that I do. But, it is just a choice. How about you? •

What choices are you making about you?

•

How important is it right now, for you to empower yourself, and to learn and grow to become self-actualized?

•

And if it is at or near the top of your list, how will you do it?

 1998-2008

EQ At Work

888-EQWORKS

www.eqatwork.com

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The A.R.T. Model There are many roads to self-actualization and many tools for empowering yourself. There is something for everyone, and you will move to what you need most at this time. I developed the A.R.T. Model initially by self-testing and then by working with hundreds of clients in more than 4000 hours of coaching. It absolutely works. It is a model for learning and a method for coaching yourself or others. It is elegantly simple yet profound. It is the same method I teach to clients and to the coaches that attend the EQ At Work coach certification programs. There is more to it than I can teach you in a single lesson, but the basics will help. It is important that we first talk about power.

What Is Power? When I first started teaching these concepts, I told people that the method would help them liberate authentic power. People reacted negatively to the word power because they judged it as abusive, manipulative, and controlling—an undesirable quality. I now recognize that part of that reaction comes from a fear of being truly powerful. How do you feel about being powerful? What is the power we are talking about? We are powerful when: •

We are in full command of our personal resources—our physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and metaphysical intelligence

•

We are fully awake and present in each moment

•

We are self-determining and create our reality

I notice that people are most effective, balanced and fulfilled when they are peaceful, confident, joyful and in the flow—responding spontaneously to life rather than reacting impulsively. How about you? When are you powerful?

How Do You Access Your Power? The A.R.T. acronym reveals the simple foundation for developing and expressing power: Awareness, Responsibility and Taking purposeful action.

 1998-2008

EQ At Work

888-EQWORKS

www.eqatwork.com

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Awareness Is Power Self-Awareness is the ability to recognize your emotions and your thoughts and how they are influencing your actions. What you are aware of empowers you because you have new information upon which to base your decisions. This enables new strategies of action. What you are unaware of controls and limits you. Awareness is cultivated with specific practice over time. Developing emotional selfawareness is critical to becoming fully powerful and requires that you develop emotional literacy—the ability to recognize, understand, and express all emotions, even the subtle ones, moment to moment. Self-awareness is fundamental to all other personal intelligence skills. The more self-aware you are, the more you can positively influence your own behavior. Also, the more self-aware you are, the more aware you can be of others, enabling you to positively influence them.

Responsibility Is Power Personal responsibility is a context for being in which you affirm that you are the source of your experience and that while you may not have control over others, you have absolute control over what you think, feel, say, and do. This definition is different from the conventional use of the word “responsibility,” which is generally considered to mean blame or burden. Personal responsibility is easier to say than to do, but when you combine awareness with personal responsibility, you dramatically increase your ability to influence your outcomes. One way you could say this is “You happen to the world rather than the world happening to you.” Development of this set of skills does require specific practice in decision-making and also in emotional intelligence so that you can operate more from conscious choice rather than from emotional impulse.

Purposeful Action Is Power Purposeful action is that which is consciously chosen and is consistent with your life purpose, your values, and your intended outcomes. Purposeful action makes you more powerful because all of your energy can be focused on the realization of the goals that express your full potential. Purposeful action is required to realize or make things real in your world. Awareness without action creates illusion. Awareness with responsible, conscious choice and purposeful action manifests results. Purposeful action requires that you access your sense of purpose and your values and articulate a clear personal mission.

 1998-2008

EQ At Work

888-EQWORKS

www.eqatwork.com

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Try This Now that you have the foundation model of Self-empowerment, what will you do with it? Here are some things to do: •

Make a commitment to your personal development. Or, not. Remember, you don't have to do anything. The Universe will oblige with appropriate lessons. If you would rather learn by choice and with structure, commit.

•

Adopt a model, method, and practice. Personal change is hard enough and without a method it is so easy to get off track.

•

Stick to it and get support. Work with a partner, or get a coach, or join a class, or all of the above. Support helps you see past your blind spots and accelerate your progress.

Here are some simple practices to get you started: (You will find these in my podcasts and in the following chapters) 1. Awareness: As you go through your week, notice how many times you react and what you react to. 2. Responsibility: Become aware of the choices that you are making as you make them. 3. Purposeful action: Stop and ask yourself, “is what I am about to do aligned with my values?” and, “what would be the most aligned action?”

Yes You Can! Can you empower yourself and realize your full potential for success and happiness? Yes you can!

 1998-2008

EQ At Work

888-EQWORKS

www.eqatwork.com

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