Roger Ewing's Blog

Empowerment, everyone talks about it, but few know how to get it.

By Roger Ewing

In author Rod Serling’s 1950′s television series, The Twilight Zone, ordinary folks suddenly found themselves in extraordinary, usually supernatural, situations. The stories would typically end with an ironic twist that resulted in the guilty being rightly punished.

Mr. Serling opened each show with a brief prologue that always concluded with this line, “There’s a sign post up ahead, your next stop The Twilight Zone”.  The television show was dependent upon our hunger for drama and capitalized on our need to experience moral balance in an immoral world.  The victim was rescued, the persecutor punished and the rescuer rewarded.  Isn’t this how it is supposed to be?

Vast opportunities become available to us when we no longer accept the role of Victim or Rescuer in our human interactions.  The path to empowerment does not cross anywhere near the drama triangle.

The drama triangle (see my previous 3 part series Avoiding Drama in Business and Personal Life) is where effective communication and mature problem solving goes to die.

There’s a sign post up ahead, your next stop, Empowerment

Where then do we go to obtain this elusive Empowerment?  The answer to that question, of course, lies within each of us.  Once we have freed ouselves from the addictive nature of drama, we can make mature plans, realize our dreams and accomplish the greatest of goals.  Empowerment is a high octane fuel that will work for anyone. It will work for Mother Theresa, Ghandi, even Hitler. Empowerment, it seems, has no conscience.

The power of the three “C”s

Commitment is the promise of accomplishment not yet realized.  Great leadership to ourselves or others involves single-minded devotion to an ideal.  An uncompromising attitude of achievement, no matter what the personal cost.  Gandhi’s threat to starve himself to death if the fighting between Hindus and Muslims did not stop is a prime example of this thinking.

The power of commitment resides in each of us and can be used to accomplish our dreams and goals regardless of how great or small they may be.

Capable individuals, when committed to a course of action, will follow through with effective behavior designed to actualize the goal at hand.  Empowerment is a non-exclusive quality.  To actualize our desires we must be capable of performing the activities necessary to accomplish the goal.  For example, if free climbing a vertical rock face is your goal, you must have the necessary training and the gear to accomplish the fete.  Without it, you might be left hanging.

Cognizance involves taking responsibility for an intellectual decision.  Our decisions must be based upon knowledge, awareness and observation.  If I am having a bad day and I determine the only solution available to me is to jump off the nearest bridge, I am not making an intellectually correct decision.

Sounds simple, what’s the catch?  To be empowered we must possess all of the three “C”s, every last one of them.  Missing only one will deprive us the power we need to succeed.

Commitment, Capability and Cognizance work together to make self actualization a real result.

Without one ingredient, the system will collapse.

Welcome to the land of Empowerment.

Copyright © by Roger Patrick Ewing, all rights reserved.