Sometimes mentors fall into your life. You didn’t know you needed one, but a mentor arrived at the right time. However, sometimes you must empower yourself. Take control. Search out the mentors you need.
We all need mentors from time to time. Often we need different mentors for different phases of our growth. While it’s easier today to find women’s voices and women mentors, it’s not always easy to empower yourself.
Unlearn First
The first problem for all of us, men and women, is not to learn, but to unlearn. We are filled with the popular wisdom of several centuries just past, and we are terrified to give it up.
— Gloria Steinem, American activist
Unlearning isn’t easy. Often, without even knowing it, we cling to ideas, beliefs, and misbeliefs. Those closely held thoughts often are the result of events you could not control. Empower yourself by taking your power back from the events you couldn’t control.
What You Can Control
You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.
– Maya Angelou
As a child, you have no control over what happens. Sometimes someone has smashed and beaten and reduced you and your child’s sense of self. That abuse can be physical, emotional, spiritual, or metaphorical. It can be unintentional. Too often, it is intentional. I pray that by empowering women, the empowered can nurture the damaged. And one day we can unlearn those ugly behaviors. One day no child will endure any kind of abuse.
Risk Blossoming
And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
– Anaïs Nin
Personally, I held myself and my misbeliefs of how powerless I was in a tightly closed bud until it the pain emerged in nightmares. The difficulty of the first unclenching of those delicate petals was intense.
The full blossoming took time and courage and setbacks. Eventually I learned the basics and then more and more. I continue to learn from the women around me. Sometimes I learn I agree with them. Other times I learn how I disagree with them. Agree or disagree, we can all learn from women like those quoted in this post.
Fearlessness is like a muscle. I know from my own life that the more I exercise it the more natural it becomes to not let my fears run me.
– Arianna Huffington
Find something you’re passionate about and keep tremendously interested in it.
– Julia Child
I always did something I was a little not ready to do. I think that’s how you grow. When there’s that moment of ‘Wow, I’m not really sure I can do this,’ and you push through those moments, that’s when you have a breakthrough.
– Marissa Mayer
Be Brave for One Step
Yes, those “I’m not sure I can do this” moments that you push through are powerful. Some people are able to push through from beginning to end. If you can do this, brava! But you don’t have to be brave enough to do it all at once. Be brave enough to take the next step.
Learn to recognize and appreciate what you did. Then be brave enough to take the next step. You can do it. Empower yourself.