In this last post in the empowerment series, I think it is suitable to bring it all together.  What does it mean for us to face our Goliaths with courage, to respond with compassion, to see the beauty in brokenness, to let go of control, to be driven by love and passion, to master that empowered relationship dance, and to live drama-free?  Yes, it is to be empowered, but it is also part what makes us the best version of ourselves.  All these traits of empowerment are parts of a multi-faceted diamond that, combined, constitute the empowered individual who then becomes the very best version of him or herself.

Michelangelo once said: “In every block of marble I see a statue as plain as though it stood before me, shaped and perfect in attitude and action. I have only to hew away the rough walls that imprison the lovely apparition to reveal it to the other eyes as mine see it.”

Reaching our full potential is just like this.  We have it all within us.  We simply need to focus on that full potential and chip away around it, like a sculptor with a chisel and a hammer, slowly freeing our empowered self from the debris and the confines of anxiety, superficiality, and pointless drama.  Where this analogy reaches its limit is that once a statue is uncovered, it remains there for all to see.  The best version of ourselves, however, will inevitably begin to disappear beneath accumulating debris if we stop working on living an empowered life.  It requires us to strive for it daily, and humbly accept that there will be ups and downs on the daily empowerment meter.

So what’s it all for?  What’s the purpose of empowerment?  To feel good?  To impress others?  By no means!  I will refer back to my quote from the first post in this series: ‘No man is an island’ (John Donne, 1572-1631).  We are meant to live in a society.  We need our fellow man to be able to live up to our full potential.  We need them to help us meet our needs where we are unable to ourselves, just as much as they need us to help them meet theirs.  Who we are and what we do has a ripple effect on everyone around us. 

We are like a drop of water that falls in the middle of a pond, becoming an epicenter from which ripples emanate.  Each ripple is a result of the choices we make, the words we speak, the actions we perform, be they empowering or disempowering.  Being the best version of ourselves will make us an epicenter of empowerment.  People around us will become more empowered, and they in turn will empower others through their empowering choices.

It is not uncommon to feel powerless to change the world.  After all, what can a single person do?  A lot, actually.  The grand and impressive changes take a long time to happen, some of which can take decades or centuries.  On a day-to-day basis, we can cause ripple effects of change in the world by being the best version of ourselves, that epicenter of empowerment, sending out waves that will slowly inspire people to live a more empowered lifestyle.

We could keep looking at what empowerment is and its promises, but the argument’s already been made.  We now have a choice before us that needs to be made today.  What can I do today to confront my Goliaths courageously?  What change can I make today to help me further in my pursuit of my life goals, even if it is difficult?  What can I do now that will help me master that intricate relationship dance, be it with friends or my relationship with my partner?  We have more opportunities than we can count, every day, to make empowering choices.  But start small. 

As author and speaker Mathew Kelly once wrote (I’m paraphrasing as I don’t remember exactly where I read that and therefore can’t quote it), it is better to take small steps and succeed in making the changes we need to make, than to take ones that are too big and stumble.  Stumbling is part of our nature.  We are fallible.  Still, stumbling is discouraging, and we are more likely to persevere when we see success, however small.  The important thing here is to not settle for anything that keeps us short of the best version of ourselves.  Take small steps if you must, but keep moving forward.  Like in the story of the turtle and the hare, just because we move slowly doesn’t mean we can’t finish the race.  We tend to resist change in general, but we resist small changes less.

If you feel you need to be more active, start taking short walks every day.  This one person keeps getting you on the defensive, choose to not respond or react today, but merely to observe.  Your relationship with your partner has been fraught with tension lately, start with asking for a hug or simply listen attentively to what they have to say.  Start small.  It will take many small steps to conquer that mountain we call our empowered self, but we can conquer it.

Drama promises freedom and empowerment but never delivers.  It is a never-ending whirlwind of arguments and emotional beatings that drain you of all life-giving energy.  It is like being in an escape room with unclear or misleading clues that lead constantly to drama dead-ends. 

We speak harsh or anger-inspired words thinking we will finally be heard, only to have the other person stonewall us or respond in kind.  We put the blame of our pain on others, perhaps demanding that someone fix the situation they caused us, but we never truly end up free from the aftermath of the drama.  We reach out to those who hurt us and try to reason with them, hoping for amendment or closure, only to end up on the receiving end of their aggression again.

Drama-filled relationships are disempowering relationships.  So how do we do it?  How do we break away from the drama?  It’s actually quite simple.  You walk away from it.  Responding to drama with drama is no better than fighting fire with fire.  It makes it grow.  When you walk away from it, you let it burn itself out.  Most of us don’t like the drama and we would love to put a quick end to it, but throwing ourselves into it to try to stop it is no different than standing in front of a moving bus.  We won’t stop it.  We will end up getting hurt and prolonging that dreaded drama.  We need to step off its path of destruction.

Let’s call the following the three steps of empowerment.  This doesn’t come from any book or article I’ve read, so feel free to disagree with me.

First, walk away.  Walking away from drama means to choose to not be in the victim role, even when being victimized.  It’s like choosing to be an observant rather than a participant.  If drama knocks on our door, we choose not to engage in the drama.  Can anything be worth taking the emotional beating that comes from drama?  In my opinion, it’s not worth it.  Drama is nothing but a source of interpersonal dysfunction.

Second, if we find ourselves sucked into drama, which happens to the best of us, we take the time to look within at the contribution we had in it, however small, and try to make amends if possible.  How could we have done things differently to avoid it?  There can be many reasons why we end up sucked into drama, but it’s not worth blaming someone for our reaction or our choice.  That’s a victim stance.  Blaming is to deny our own role in a situation or a problem, and by extension we become blind to the solution, or at least the aid, we can bring to it.

It requires humility and discipline to own up to our contribution to a problem, especially if we were perhaps not the initial instigators.  Once we understand what our contribution was, it’s important to make some kind of amends, be it as simple as an apology for our part in the problem.  Just be wary of taking responsibility for another’s part.  We’re not doing them any favors if we don’t let them take responsibility for their role in the drama.  If anything, taking undue responsibility will only reinforce the drama.  If we truly can’t think of any way we may have even inadvertently contributed to the issue, then perhaps there is some way we can defuse the situation.

And third, be forward-focused.  Keep your eyes on your goals and continue to work towards them.  Drama is myopic.  It keeps us in survival mode, fighting and fleeing perceived threats, thus drawing our focus towards our survival needs and away from our empowerment goals.  In order to thrive, we need to move away from just trying to survive.

So how do I know that I am not making the problem worse?  The pivotal point between being driven towards drama or away from it lies in whether we are in the Creator stance or the Victim stance, as David Emerald claims in The Power of TED.

Victims are short-sighted, focusing on immediate relief of the anxiety, but making choices that inevitably prolong and worsen the drama in the long run.  Anxiety is a survival state best suited to preserve and promote our life, but to live under its shadow long term like the Victim, it is crippling and disempowering.

The empowered person, the Creator, on the other hand, is composed, disciplined, aiming for the long run, striving to get things done well but not overly perfection driven.  Creators focus their energy where it is meaningful, kicking to the curb bad habits that get in the way of their empowering goals.  They see setbacks and challenges as opportunities to grow, unlike Victims who will see them as roadblocks that are keeping them from their own fulfillment.

Let’s remember that whenever we feel the relentless pull of drama, we have a choice to make.  We can be the Victim who will fight drama with drama, or we can be the Creator who will leave it behind, leading the way towards an empowered lifestyle and in doing so inspiring others to do the same.

When you think of an empowered person, who comes to mind?  For my part, my first thought is of someone who is witty, sharp, undeterred by criticism or others’ negativity.  Someone who will be able to jump in and pull another person out of any predicament they wandered in, willingly or blindly.  We can imagine them as some kind of modern-day super hero.  In truth, though, I know that’s not the case.  Even the most empowered among us is still human.  We cannot empower another against their will.  That kind of relationship dynamic has to be a collaboration and a choice.  It requires patience to coach the slow to learn and change, generosity to go out of one’s comfort zone to reach others where they are, and introspection and humility to keep that all-too-human tendency to slip into selfish, emotionally driven impulses.

To use David Emerald’s word in The Power of TED, the empowered person is a coach.  They lead by example, but won’t do for you what you can do for yourself.  They offer you the encouragement, the nudge and, when necessary, the means to start making those empowering choices.  They recognize that the choice to start remains with the one being coached, as does the responsibility to follow through and persevere.  They are, for their part, cheerleaders and role models.  Those who do too much for you are not empowering as they are implicitly telling you that you are helpless.

We are meant to be that coach for those around us: our family, our friends, our colleagues, you name it.  We may feel wounded or broken at times, and yet even in our brokenness, we find beauty and wisdom, pearls of compassion we would otherwise not have.  We will look at this further in the next post.

It’s one thing to coach someone needing and wanting help, but what about our persecutors (to use Karpman’s terms) or, as I like to call them, our Goliaths.  The old eye-for-an-eye adage might seem called for against those who would want to manipulate or bully us.  Perhaps indifference seems a more for fitting response.  In my opinion, the latter is closer to the truth, but still lacking.  To remain at the indifference stage seems more like seeing our Goliaths as something not worth our attention or something broken beyond repair.  There is a certain amount of indifference needed to deflect their attempts to manipulate or overpower us, but what about the individuals who engage in such behaviours?  How should we treat them?

To be truly empowered in our relationship with them, I think we need to shift from seeing our Goliaths as broken, evil people, to suffering souls seeking empowerment in the wrong way.  We need to change the relationship dynamic on our end, and call them out of their overpowering mindset.  Just as they are able to influence us, so can we influence them.  Though our ways are more subtle for lack of violence, they can be just as effective.

Instead of giving them the response they are looking for, if we set boundaries to protect ourselves and refuse to respond in kind to their tactics, we are already coaching them in the proper way to be empowered by our own example.  If we do it with grace and kindness, we are most likely to stump them as people in this role usually expect others to respond in kind rather than with compassion.  Drama inspires drama.  However, compassion and kindness can defuse many hostilities, but it takes an empowered person to do it in the face of the one being hostile to them.

“We’ve all had experience of dreading interactions with certain people.  Your cell phone rings and you release a deep sigh when you see the name pop up on the caller display.  You’re walking into the office and you see that coworker with the uncanny ability to get under your skin, so you feel like dashing into the nearest room or turning around on the spot and heading back home.  You need to tell your partner news you know won’t be well received and your head spins from explanations to potential outcomes, dread rapidly filling the pit of your stomach.

“Perhaps your experience is more dramatic than that.  Perhaps you deal with real-life bullies who undermine your self-confidence, isolate, or gaslight you.  Their very presence in the room is making you feel claustrophobic.  You feel tense and uneasy around them but you can’t quite put your finger on the reason.  These and the above are what I call Goliaths.” (beginning of the Introduction from Facing Goliath: Breaking the Bullying Cycle)

Sometimes our Goliaths are real and ruthless, sometimes they’re merely perceived.  Regardless, facing them is no easy feat.  You try to remain calm but deep down you feel a whirlwind of scenarios play out in your mind, your imagination fueled by primal emotions that fight for control.  Your heart rate responds in kind.

Goliaths present threats that trigger our survival instincts to fight or flee.  When neither option seems worth the risk, we freeze.  Think of it this way.  It’s like in the first Jurassic Park movie when they come face to face with the T-Rex who just broke out of its enclosure.  They freeze.  There’s no point trying to run for it, they won’t get far.  Fight it?  Yeah right!  So they wait until it gets distracted so they can leave.  Now thankfully we don’t come face to face with towering carnivorous dinosaurs, but our Goliaths are nonetheless intimidating.  Their voices get inside our head and back us into a corner mentally.  Then comes the tough decision: I fight (stand up to them), I flee (spend my time trying to avoid them), I freeze (take the abuse as if there was no other viable option), or I confront them.  Ideally, we would choose the latter.

Let’s not confuse confronting with fighting.  Fighting, in this case, refers to responding in kind.  Two flames don’t put out the fire, they make it bigger.  It’s counter-productive.  It ends with one Goliath standing over the wreckage of the other.  Confronting refers to the use of empowering strategies that keep the toxicity of our Goliath’s influence out of our lives and out of our heads. 

Like the image of David facing Goliath, we stick to those strategies that give us the mental upper hand.  In a contest of brute strength, David would have been crushed like a bug.  The use of his sling gave him the means to overcome Goliath before the latter could get close enough to do damage.  Obviously, I’m not suggesting violent means for handling our Goliaths.  In David’s case, his people were at war and he had no other options for handling the situation.  In our case, we need to neutralize the venom inside our Goliaths’ sting.  He will try to sting, but what is he going to do when he sees it has no effect?

The key to facing our Goliaths is to not let ourselves slip into the victim role.  Now you could tell me that it’s not like you have much choice if someone wants to victimize you and you would be right.  You don’t have much influence on what people choose to do.  You do, however, have all the power to decide if you’re going to play the victim or not.  The Victim, in the Drama Triangle sense, is the one who lives at the mercy of people, circumstances, and conditions, as though these are the cause of his woes and the source of his unhappiness.  This type of Victim has an approach of “it’s not my fault, it’s not my responsibility” to the whirlwind of bullying he feels he’s been swept up in.  He blames his Goliaths for his unhappiness and expects them or some Rescuer to fix the mess, instead of rising to the challenge himself.  As opposed to Victims, empowered individuals are Creators, to use David Emeralds’ terms, who will rise to the challenge.

One thing to keep in mind when considering our Goliaths is that we are teleological beings by nature.  We do things for a purpose.  Bullies or Goliaths do what they do to us for varying reasons, but mainly for control so they can avoid being hurt and victimized.  Problem is, their bullying actions gets them reactions that cause them to feel victimized, and so they repeat the same pattern to try to regain the upper ground and in the process continue to get the reactions, and so the cycle continues in a self-fueling loop.  Ironically, sometimes they enjoy that ongoing cycle because their actions cause predictability and thus gives them a sense of control.

So how do we step out of that loop?  In a nutshell, we mind our reactions to our Goliaths’ tactics so we don’t fall into the Dreaded Drama Triangle with them, an art that has to begin from within.  We set and maintain the necessary boundaries to stop them trespassing where they are not welcome.  We let go of all injustices suffered at their hands.  To learn more, you are welcome to read my book or buy me a coffee and I’ll tell you all about it.

We’ve all heard that life is tough.  People of every age and every creed can all agree on this one fact.  Life is fraught with challenges and let downs, sometimes taking the form of events, sometimes taking the form of people.  The good news is, they don’t determine what we will become or who we are.  This series of blog posts will focus on how to have truly empowering relationships through it all, rather than some whiny ode to why life sucks or why I’m not perfect.

The expression ‘No man is an island’ was coined by the English poet John Donne (1572-1631).  It is a belief he drew from his Christian faith, and one that is shared by Buddhism and other belief systems.  Its bare-boned meaning is that no one is self-sufficient, and so we need one another if we are to fully thrive to the fullness of our potential.  But what happens when there are those who should be part of that uplifting social network who get in the way of that fulfillment?  They single us out, isolate us, beat us down and suck the life-giving energy out of us.  What’s worse, sometimes we don’t recognize the unhealthy, disempowering dynamic until we start seeing the significant damage they leave in their wake.  Those relationships are what I call Goliaths.  To know more on that, you can check out my book “Facing Goliath: Breaking the Bullying Cycle”, available on Amazon Kindle.

The spectrum of empowering and disempowering relationships is wide.  Every relationship we have has its place somewhere on that spectrum, even the relationship we have with ourselves.  Ideally, we want to remain as close to empowering as we can.  The closer we get to the disempowering side, the more Goliaths we will meet.  Goliaths (in this case people) are individuals who try to empower themselves at our expense because they don’t know how to be truly empowered.  They seek to impose their ways and views for their selfish fulfillment.  Their tactics are based on fear and insecurity.  Though we should try to see the good in them and treat them according to their innate God-given dignity, we are under no obligation to keep them in our lives.  We do owe it to ourselves to establish and maintain boundaries that will keep them at a healthy distance physically, socially, and psychologically.

Our lives will flourish if we focus on building and maintaining empowering relationships in our lives.  Empowering relationships inspire you to greatness, lift you up when you’re down, catch you when you fall, tell you the truth in firm and gentle ways (even when it’s hard to hear).  Empowering relationships steer us away from the Dreaded Drama Triangle, towards what David Emerald calls The Empowerment Dynamic.  It is a dynamic in which every interaction seeks to empower us and others towards becoming the very best version of ourselves.

The most empowering relationship is the one that sees not only your strengths, but also the beauty in your scars.  It doesn’t judge you for that brokenness.  Rather, it sees those scars as a testimony to the resilience that carried you through the evils that inflicted them upon you.

The most empowering relationship sees your limits as an invitation to look after your well-being and, if in a position of authority, sees them as an opportunity to adapt their strategy to play to your strengths.  It may not be able to cater to every one of our needs, but it will present opportunities for us to heal and grow.

The most empowering relationship will always seek to inspire you to be the best version of yourself, helping you rise to greater heights, not in spite of past and present wounds, but because of them.

The following posts will look at different facets of empowering relationships in no specific order, like looking at the many facets of a diamond.  None can be without the others, and each brings unique beauty and integrity to the whole of the empowered person.  They will show not only what empowerment looks like, but also what it means for us as we strive to be empowered with ourselves and those who are part of our day-to-day life, whatever our vocation may be.