Tag: Empowerment

The Laws of Nature

There are certain laws of the natural world.

• What goes up, must come down.
• If you touch something hot, you will pull your hand away.
• If someone tries to harm me or someone I love, _________.

It’s only natural.

Protecting each other and ourselves is natural.  Unnecessary aggression and revenge are not what I am talking about.  However, knowing that we can, deserve to, and will defend ourselves if someone tries to hurt us is acting in accordance with nature.

Unfortunately, the laws that our society operates upon do not always mesh well with the laws of nature.  At the beginning of our classes, we sometimes hear, “I know I should defend myself but I’m not sure I can or I would.”

There is no reason to criticize ourselves for learning from the system in which we were raised.  But it is a broken system in which people learn to freeze, to consider whether it fits their self-image to hurt another person (or their image of a good woman, etc.), to consider the person’s feelings…  It’s not your fault the system’s a little screwy.  And you do not have to continue to live within that framework.

The student who once wondered, “Can/should/would I defend myself?” can learn deeply, “I can defend myself.  I will defend myself.”

Owning our inherent rights to protection allows us to live with confidence and peace.  This is what it means to be aligned with our natural selves.

Self-Sufficiency

The advice I got growing up about safety was to stay in groups and if anything happens, go to the nearest store for help.

This spring has brought out the hiker in me – and that hiker is at odds with the advice I received growing up.  I love to hike alone, and there clearly are no convenience stores nearby.  Since numerous students in our classes ask to prepare for the “hiking alone” scenario, it seems that many feel that hiking is taking a great risk.

But as I pass pleasant, quiet men and women walking alone with their happy-go-lucky dogs, I’ve been wondering why we were told to take precautions instead of go enjoy our alone time.

Somehow, we have been taught that the unknown attendant in the gas station is better prepared to deal with the situation we’re facing than we ourselves are.  In truth, he probably has nothing more going for him than having access to a phone to call the police.

Who -really- is better able to defend me, than me? After all, others may not have any skills we do not have or cannot get.  Certainly, receiving help is wonderful and speaks well of the community around us – but there is no good reason to not become experts about our own safety.  There is no reason to not feel self-sufficient.

Experts are available for two important reasons: things we cannot handle on our own, or to teach us how to handle things better for ourselves.  The more we use experts to teach us to be self-reliant, the fewer situations we will experience where we need an expert’s help for things we cannot handle.  Good safety experts don’t tell you what precautions to take; they empower you to be in charge of your own safety.

Sharing Our Stories

Storytelling is an important part of how we all learn.  So, we would do well to think about what the moral of the story is before we tell it.  When it comes to personal safety, the moral is all too frequently:

a) be scared!
b) don’t do that!
c) it could happen to you
d) there’s no way of foreseeing it/preventing it
e) you have to watch out for those people (promoting prejudice)
or f) all of the above.

One of our instructors had a couple free minutes with a class of 6th graders where the students wanted to tell stories about frightening situations they had experienced.  Since we know kids easily latch onto sensationalized tales of danger and we prefer our kids classes to be non-scary, she coached them: “And what did you do?  Did that keep you safe?  Sounds like a scary situation that you handled really well – and you stayed safe.  Good for you!”

She told the students that when they tell each other stories, they must include the parts where they were successful.  They must include what someone did to get out of the situation, how they acted to keep it from getting worse, and where they turned to for help.  People listen to your stories, she explained, and you can be their teacher instead of just scaring them.

We as adults would be smart to follow the same advice our instructor gave those students.

When I think of an interesting story I saw on the news or something someone told me, and I want to tell someone else about it, I consider,

a) does it avoid the scare-tactic points above?
b) is it actually for this person’s benefit, and if so – what’s the lesson?
c) does it provide useful information that someone can use practically?

By following these guidelines, we can be sure that when we share safety information with others – children and adults – we are helping to prepare them, not scare them.

More Powerful than Our Obstacles

It’s the time of New Year’s resolutions.  Many people’s resolutions revolve around health: eat better, exercise more, reduce stress, quit smoking or drinking.  Others seem to be more external: get a new hobby, travel more, talk with my brother more…  Culturally, many of us roll our eyes at these resolutions, either because we know they are too often unfulfilled or seem superficial.  Yet, if you look at it, almost all resolutions center around one theme: quality of life.  I deserve more.

It only seems fitting to mention another area that we all deserve:  I deserve to feel safe.  I deserve to know the answers to the things that run through my mind when I go out to my car alone at night.  I deserve to know the responses to the questions that come up when I consider the nightly news.  In fact, I deserve to have such thorough responses to these worries that they rarely cross my mind.  I deserve to know what my life could become if I lived without fear.  I deserve the improved relationships that come from being honest with myself and others about what I want.

It sounds thrilling and exciting and scary all at once for me to consider these things, even though all of this has already happened for me.  I remember what it was like before my IMPACT class considering doing these things for myself.  It can seem overwhelming.  Even good things that will make us extraordinarily fulfilled can be overwhelming.

Many of our graduates actually report that after taking the Basics course, they find things they’ve wanted to change in their lives somehow happen and the obstacles melt away.  Issues they’ve struggled with for years somehow hold less power over them now that they feel so powerful and have more tools.  At IMPACT, we know that it’s possible for everyone to be this powerful even when they don’t know it for themselves.

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