Tag: empowerment

Empowering Discussions

A Yardstick of Quality

Impower You

“Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.”  Steve Jobs,  Apple Computers.

This quote sticks with me because it rings so true. I see so many people living in ignorance and poverty because the only excellence they see is the pretend world of movies and TV.   How do some rise above this attitude and “move up”  out of ghettos and abuse when others never try?

People are a riddle to me and knowing that is what keeps me from getting mad at every little bad pass, rude remark or angry confrontation.  How can you judge someone who has had a completely different story as yourself?  The next time you get mad because someone is slacking off or repeatedly being a jerk consider the possibility that is they way they were raised. Then you can decide whether to give them tools to better themselves or to simply walk away.

It is always YOUR choice to excel. What length of quality will YOU be?

🙂

Empowering Discussions

My First Book Is Published!

Impower You

YAY!! I am so excited to finally have published my first book. This journey has shown me that life is wonderful again!

The book is titled “I Am More Than Just A Girl; Empowered. Informed. Equal.” and gives young women information to make educated decisions about their lives. The book is interactive and includes topics like respect, confidence, self defense, sexual assault and domestic violence. There are fun projects, journal pages and exercises for girls to empower themselves and lean about euqality.

Preview my book here, http://www.bookemon.com/read-book/150828 and if you know any young women ages 14 or older or parents of a girl, please share the book with them.

Empowering Discussions

LYBD is BACK!

Impower You

LYBD, Love Your Body Day is celebrating 14 years! NOW, the National Organization for Women hosts LYBD each year to support women in loving their bodies and not feeling bad because they are not skinny enough or tall enough, or because they don’t have perfectly perky breasts or perfect skin.

So it’s that time of year to climb up the mountain (or your roof) and holler at the tops of your lungs “I LOVE MY BODY THE WAY IT IS!” If you are not interested in yelling from a roof or feel like you would attract trouble, than how about saying it while you stand naked in front of a mirror?

Why shouldn’t you love your body anyway? What’s not to love? You use it everyday, so that’s one very important reason to love your body right there.

Your body is unique and helps differentiate you from pod people. See, yet another reason to love your body!

Another reason? You only get one body, so you best start loving it before it’s gone.

You can decorate your body however you want, with tattoos, piercings, hair color and a good old dash of Vitamin D that brings a flush of color!

Oh my, so many reasons to love our bodies. I bet you can think of a reason to love your body.

Do you love your sparkling eyes, your loving smile, your feet, your nose, your knees, your strong legs, your soft arms, the shape of your face? WHAT DO YOU LOVE ABOUT YOUR BODY?

Answer that question with one part of your wonderful body and then keep adding until you love every single tiny cell that makes your body as beautiful on the outside as your strong loving soul on the inside!

Today is the day to start loving your body for the rest of your life. This is YOUR year to love love love your body. The next time you see a advertisement of an airbrushed woman or celebrity on TV, remind yourself that you LOVE YOUR BODY the best.

I spent years hating how much taller I was than all my friends. I hated my uneven eyes, my huge feet, my chubby stomach, my frizzy uncontrollable hair, my gigantic nose, my crooked teeth, my thunder thighs, my scars. Basically I spent hours each day feeling sorry for myself and hating myself in the ultimate pity party.
Change didn’t happen over night. Eventually I got used to being tall because I went out more and met other tall people. I started enjoying life by hiking, playing tennis, riding my bike and anything fun outside. I love to move, which keeps in good shape and while my stomach is still flabby and not even close to a six pack I stopped caring. I feel healthy. I eat better. My thighs may indeed be thunderous, but I don’t really care. I have other realist issues in life to deal with like losing my best friend and figuring out how to make an income off of my art. I am no longer spending hours in front of the mirror crying about how ugly I am or wishing that I was as pretty as an actress or model. Most days I don’t even wear makeup. I prefer to enjoy my day instead of fussing over how my make up looks.

Loving my body has made me happier, it has given me loads more time to do other stuff and I am constantly stopping people from berating their own looks. We are all beautiful, we don’t all need to look the same. We can be chunky, we can be skinny with no curves, we can even naturally have a “popular” body, it doesn’t matter. It’s what we do with our bodies that will create a life worth living.

Don’t sit around with friends and diss your bodies in a spirit of being equally unattractive. When you start to complain about your body stop yourself. Compliment yourself and your friends instead, even if you only whisper. If you want to change something about your body, please do your research first. Cosmetic surgery is dangerous. Putting implants in your body can cause health problems and death. Extreme unhealthy dieting will just make you sick and it probably won’t last. You and only YOU are in control of your body.

LOVE YOUR BODY TODAY AND EVERYDAY!

“This post is part of the 2011 Love Your Body Day Blog Carnival”
🙂

Empowering Discussions

So Far

Impower You

I am on a never ending quest for knowledge because I am very curious, I enjoy learning new information and hope to better myself along the way.

I also hope to empower others so they can learn more and thus have more options in life. The world we live in is always beautiful. Look around and see flowers growing out of a gutter drain for some proof. It can also be cruel, frustrating and downright ugly at times. We must all make a choice to live a certain way and to find or create beauty. We owe it to ourselves and future generations to respect and treasure what makes our lives worth living.

I created a website to share what I have learned and to empower all people to be the best version of themselves. http://mpwru.webs.com is a combination of peaceful actions that we can take to improve quality of life for all people no matter where they were born, what they believe or what actions they have taken that brought them to their current situation. It is not useful to judge others harshly until you have walked in their shoes. Even then, we all relate to the world differently so it’s difficult to say you know how someone else feels.

What have you learned recently that helped you and can benefit others? Please leave a comment. 🙂

Empowering Discussions

Respect and Confidence Go Hand in Hand

Impower You

I originally wrote this for my empowerment website. You can see that here: http://mpwru.webs.com

Respect for yourself is necessary for a fulfilling life. Self respect cannot be bought or forced, but it is within your grasp. What exactly does it mean when people say “Believe in yourself”? Obviously you are a real living person and you don’t need to believe that you exist. What we should say is Believe in your ability to accomplish your goals. Trust your instincts, listen to that voice in your head that says maybe what I want IS possible. It may be far out of reach at this moment, but it won’t always be so far from actually happening. Confidence is not much different than self respect. You basically need one to have the other. If you are confident in your abilities than you will respect yourself. On the other hand if you don’t have any faith in your abilities than you probably feel more loser than superstar.

This shouldn’t be news to you, but doing something amazing takes skills, hard work and patience. Miracles, angels, luck, karma, coincidence; they all happen occasionally to help us achieve our goals, but we cannot rely only that to get us where we want to go. Ask any successful person about their life and they will tell you of struggles, failures, days, weeks, months or years when everything went wrong. Still they persevered, believed in their ability to accomplish what they wanted and did not listen to the voice in their head that says they could not do it.

Accomplishing a goal that is important to you will give you a great dose of self respect. When you respect yourself it is easier to respect others, because you can see the greatness we all possess and know first hand that what you once thought of as lofty dreams can become your reality.

There is probably a greet deal that you have already accomplished. If you can speak, read, walk and feed yourself than you have achieved what we call basic skills. However there is nothing basic about these skills. You did not learn to walk in a day, you crawled around for about a year and learned from trying until you could stand up and put one foot in front of the other. Apply this same principle to all of your goals and respect the process you must go though before you can achieve anything.