Your creative business relies on you. Thus, when you feel ineffectual, your business suffers. For your life and business to thrive, you must learn how to empower yourself as a woman and an entrepreneur.
I believe that self empowerment is necessary for everyone. However, for one reason or another, self empowerment seems most difficult for women. Society expects women to nurture others first. Many women feel that they always have to put other people’s needs before their own.
I disagree. Whether it’s your children, spouse, boss, or someone else in your life, remember that they are not more worthy of your energy than you are. It’s time to empower yourself as a woman and a business owner and bring your unique light to the world!
What is Self Empowerment?
Empowerment is the act of choosing to do what is best for yourself and prioritizing your own needs and growth. This doesn’t mean that you don’t care about those around you, or that their needs have to be forgotten. On the contrary!
When you empower yourself, you bring your own unique energy to the table and you are able to serve those around you more fully and honestly.
Embracing your personal power means that you accept the responsibility to care for yourself and to grow.
Once you commit to this decision, you will find that your stress levels decrease, your relationships are more fulfilling, and your business is better aligned with you and your purpose.
The secret to empowering yourself as a woman and entrepreneur is in your habits. Change your habits and you change your life. There are 7 important habits you can change today to empower yourself and your creative business.
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1. Fix Your Mindset
Your mindset is your habit of thought. If you habitually think empowering thoughts, you will find empowerment. And one of the most powerful things a person can do for themselves is mindset training.
Most of us are not hard-wired to seek growth.
Why?
Because growth means change, and to your subconscious mind, change could mean danger. Rather than put yourself at risk, your subconscious mind wants to keep you in a safe little bubble of complacency.
However, your conscious mind knows that change is not always a bad thing.
In fact, we see change do amazing things for other people every day, and so we naturally want a piece of that success for ourselves. Your conscious mind wants to learn new things and grow and facilitate self empowerment.
So, what happens when your subconscious mind and your conscious mind don’t agree?
You can end up with a self-defeating mindset that sabotages your efforts before they have really even begun. And once this happens, your subconscious mind will use those failures as proof that your negative mindset was right after all.
How To Fix Your Mindset
To overcome this destructive cycle, recognise this self-sabotage for what it is and work to change those self-defeating, scarcity-perpetuating thoughts into empowering thoughts. This takes practice and is very hard to do on your own.
To empower yourself as a woman and entrepreneur, you have to change your habits of thinking and that takes time. So get started as soon as possible.
There are several books that I recommend for beginning your mindset journey. “Awaken The Giant Within” by Tony Robbins, and “The Success Principles” by Jack Canfield are my two favorites.
If you are really committed, you may even choose to work with a therapist or mindset coach to begin shifting your defeating thought patterns into empowering ones.
2. Start with a goal, not a limitation
How you start will determine how far you go.
Starting any endeavor with a goal instead of a limitation is one way of rejecting the negative and self-limiting thoughts that will undoubtedly arise when you decide to do something new and great for yourself.
Start your journey by thinking about what you want to accomplish by seeking self-empowerment and growth.
Do not start off by thinking about how many obstacles you will encounter. Those obstacles are there for you to overcome at a later date, not for you to worry about from the beginning.
To empower yourself as a woman and business owner means you must focus on your objectives and what you hope to accomplish.
Many of us let the doubts and negative possibilities stop us from ever really getting started, and this is a mistake. You can’t succeed if you don’t begin. And the only true failure happens when you give up and learn nothing.
If you need more guidance on how to set goals that truly motivate you, check out my Goal Setting article here.
3. Discover Your Passion
Why do you do what you do? Why is it important to you?
To discover your passion, you must reveal the driving force behind what you do. You may enjoy your business, but passion comes from understanding the deeper meaning behind it.
You may have started writing because you felt you had great ideas and great stories in your head that you wanted to share. But what is it about those stories that make them so exciting? What is the deeper message that you want to bring to the world through your writing?
Or you may enjoy painting with oils because of the quiet moments and the feel of the canvas. But what is it about your paintings that make you excited to share them with the world? Is it the feelings they provoke, or the vibrancy they bring to a room?
What do you want to contribute to the world around you and why is this contribution important to you? Discovering your why will help you discover where your true passions lie. Your passions will become your compass to guide your creative business to new levels.
Deciding to empower yourself as a woman and an entrepreneur means embracing your passions and using them to the fullest.
4. Work with your energy, not against it
Many self-help gurus will tell you that if you want to be productive, you need to get up at 5 am every morning to start your day with purpose.
I’m not one of those gurus.
I have always hated getting up at 5 am, and this is one of the few pieces of advice that I am going to tell you doesn’t work for me. My brain wakes up at about 9 am and then gets another boost at about 8 pm, after the kids have gone to bed.
Maybe this will change when my children are older, but for now, I’ve learned that fighting this cycle and trying to force myself to go to bed early so I can get up before everyone else is a waste of time. I end up lying in bed, staring at the ceiling for several hours and waking up exhausted and cranky.
When I try to force myself to change my schedule anyway because that is what I have been told I “should” do, I only last a few weeks. In those weeks, I end up gaining weight and getting sick. Every time.
So, instead, I’ve learned to set myself up to do my best work when my energy is naturally high, and plan to take my breaks when my energy is naturally low.
Your Unique Energy Flow
Maybe 5 am works for you. If you love mornings, then go you!
But you can still empower yourself as a woman with purpose even if mornings don’t agree with you. Some of you will come into your greatest energy at 11 am, or 2 pm, or later. There’s nothing wrong with that.
Take a week or two to listen to your body and pay attention to your natural energy cycle.
When you learn what your body’s innate energy flow is, set yourself up to work with it rather than against it. Do your most important and most creative tasks when your energy is high. Plan for breaks and less immersive tasks when your energy is low.
If there are tasks that must be done at a certain time, regardless of how you feel (like getting the kids ready for school), then prep everything you need during your “high energy” periods so you can get through it without as much effort.
Then, get your butt into your office or workshop in time to take advantage of your next energy peak.
5. Prioritize your health
Paying attention to your natural energy will also help you become more aware of your overall health.
It’s easy to focus so much on getting work done and accomplishing goals that we forget to check in with ourselves and how our minds and bodies are doing. But you can’t be at your peak, mentally or physically, if your body isn’t healthy.
If you don’t make time for your health, then your health will force you to make time for it later, whether you or your business are ready for it.
To truly empower yourself, you need to make your health and wellbeing a priority.
Schedule in exercise and take reflective moments to assess your own wellbeing and health. Get regular medical check-ups, talk to a therapist, schedule in self-care days and take your health seriously.
Empowering yourself is all about being intentional about your life, and your health is a big part of that. I have another article about the importance of Self Care For Creatives that I recommend to all creative entrepreneurs.
6. Never Stop Learning
Many of the most influential people on the planet have one important thing in common – they never stop learning.
No matter how smart you are or how much work you have already done on yourself and your business, there will always be more to learn.
Not only that, but many of the things we subconsciously resist doing are the things that scare us. We fear the unknown so we don’t market our business like we should, or leverage social media, or follow a responsible budget.
If we just took the time to learn how to do these things, the tasks that scare us wouldn’t be so unknown and scary any longer.
Keep Learning
There are so many ways to gain knowledge in the world today.
I love reading books. Books are like the culmination of a person’s whole life and learning experiences condensed down into a shortened powerhouse of information!
But even if reading isn’t your favorite thing to do, there are plenty of other options. You could listen to audiobooks, watch online tutorials, take a class, or attend a seminar.
There are tons of learning opportunities out there for you, and what’s even better is that many of the individuals who are offering the information are doing so because they love to share knowledge and see others succeed!
So, to empower yourself as a woman and a creative business owner, invest in your learning.
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7. Employ the Compound Effort Principle
I just told you that I love books, and one of my favorites is “The Compound Effect” by Darren Hardy. I encourage anyone serious about personal growth and empowerment to read this book, but I’m going to give you the quick and simple version here.
To bring true power and positive change into your life, you don’t need to take giant steps or make big, extravagant adjustments.
You simply need to make minor changes every day that will lead you towards your intended outcome. These small positive choices build on each other, or “compound” to bring significant results.
For example:
If you want to get into shape but have a hard time getting out there and putting in an hour of exercise each day, then commit to doing just 10 minutes a day instead. 10 minutes doesn’t seem like a lot, but that’s the point.
A 10 minute workout isn’t nearly as daunting as an hour, but it’s still better than the nothing you are doing right now. Over time, those 10 minutes per day will add up and you will have burned hundreds of calories over time that you wouldn’t have otherwise.
This principle also works great in other areas of your life. Do you have a hard time saving money because there never seems to be enough? Start by putting aside just $1 per day. After a month, raise your savings to $2 per day.
Commit to small changes every day if you want to see lasting results. You don’t have to start big to empower yourself. You just have to start.
Conclusion:
Your personal power is important to happiness and success in life and in your creative business.
When you commit to taking care of your own needs and prioritizing your growth, you safeguard your unique energy and enable yourself to offer more to the people and activities that matter most to you.
To empower yourself as a woman and a business owner, you don’t have to make huge sweeping changes, you just have to practice a few new habits.
These 7 practices will help you jumpstart your growth. Empowering yourself isn’t selfish or complicated. Your unique power is within your grasp right now!
What steps are you going to take to start empowering yourself and your business? Let me know in the comments!
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Your tip on working with our energy instead of against it resonated so much for me. A few years ago, I would force myself to wake up at 6AM everyday and felt MISERABLE, unproductive, and out of tune with myself. Especially as women creative business owners we need to honor the different phases of our cycle, so thank you for bringing this up!
I’m so glad this was helpful to you! I’ve tried working against my energy before too, and it just doesn’t work. It’s time we learn to honor ourselves and our own energy. Thank you so much for commenting! 😀