The Human Factor

“Drink from the chalice!” her voice boomed as she pushed the vessel toward me.  There I sat starring at a beautifully ornate gold goblet that had what appeared to be steam running over the sides.  I took the chalice into my hands, my heart was pounding in my chest, and I could feel the eyes in the room on me as I raised the goblet to my lips.  I could not stop the thoughts rushing through my head about how fortunate I was to have the opportunity to drink from the same goblet and the same potion that gave people like Nefertiti and Cleopatra and many others their great self-confidence.  I tipped the chalice and felt the cold liquid inside rushing toward my mouth and then came a piercing noise… startled I jumped… and sat straight up in bed.  I reached over and pushed the snooze button.  Laying back down I tried desperately to get the dream back; to no avail.  This is when I began my quest for answers to what was weighing so heavily on my heart and mind.  With much determination, I set out to bring to light the remedy that leads to sustainable, genuine high self-confidence that the greatest leaders in history have possessed.

When researching great leaders of the past, one of the characteristics that they exemplify is self-empowerment.  When we think about great leaders, they are people who have a center of power not from the material things that they have gained and triumphs they have made in their lives, but a power that seems to come from within their core and radiates outward.  This power is generated by the feeling of self-efficacy.  We too are able to supply ourselves with everything we need to keep us thriving by voltage of our own power.  This energy comes to us as a result of accepting complete responsibility for everything that has happened in our lives; past, present, and future.  This step can be a very difficult one for us to accept.  We are typically raised to believe that many of the things that occur in life are beyond our control.  When we change this belief to a new understanding of how everything that has happened in our life had occurred because we allowed the circumstances, then we are placing the power of choice and ultimately our destiny within our control.  This means that both the positive and negative experiences have happened as a result of choices that we made.  Even with the negative outcome we have had, the power was ours by the choice we made.  Knowing this grants us complete power over our past, complete power over our present, and complete power over what happens in our future.  This results in a sense of total self-empowerment.

Authentically self-assured leaders have mastered the art of self-forgiveness.  The acceptance of responsibility over our life circumstances naturally breeds feelings of guilt over what we should have done differently.  This guilt could hold back our newly found sense of self-empowerment.  Additionally, it is the main reason why many are resistant to accepting this level of responsibility. Leaders that are secure with themselves exhibit freedom from this self-confinement.  Forgiving ourselves for decisions and actions that we have made in the past frees us from the anvil that was weighing us down.  Forgiving ourselves means understanding that when we made decisions or took action in a way that we are presently perceiving as negative, we did it based on the experience, knowledge, and abilities we had in that moment.  We should make ourselves conscious of the fact that we cannot possibly hold ourselves in a state of guilt for what happened back then based on the experience, knowledge, and abilities we presently have.  We need to take solace in knowing that we did what we had to do at the time based on the best of what we possessed in that moment.  This results in the releasing of guilt and the loosening of the ropes that confine our feelings of self-empowerment.

Leaders with great inner strength understand that there have been no negative experiences in their past.  This is an immeasurable conversion that takes place which shifts our thinking from seeing some of our past as being negative to having been constructive.  We shift this pattern of thinking because we now comprehend that without having had these beautiful and perfect experiences, we would not have become the person we are today.  Every experience has given us a golden gift that as a result has made our lives richer.  These gifts are the lessons that we have attained from each and every experience we have had.  Therefore, the lens we looked through to see some of our past as regretful now changes to a lens which has a clearer vision filled with gratitude for all of our experiences and lessons that have created who we are.  We become whole-heartedly appreciative for where we have been, what we have in our lives, and who we have become.

The antidote that was the answer to sustainable, genuine high self-confidence had revealed itself.  I had been on a journey that took years… discovery after discovery.  I realized that what I had been developing along the way for myself was in fact self-empowerment, self-forgiveness, and self-gratitude.  It was then that I came to an awakening:  the combination of all of these creates self-love.  This self-love is the potion that fills the golden chalice.  Once we have a complete and whole love for where we have been, what we have done, and for the person that we have become we are awakened to a love that resides in the core of our being and illuminates outward spreading light to all those we encounter.   Self-confident leaders have this virtue and it attracts others to them.  We want to know what these leaders know, we want to be where these leaders have been, and we want to be around them because when we are, we feel good.  Now it is your turn.  Drink from the chalice and go forth, living a life of love that beams with extreme self-confidence.

© Debi Hebel 2009, All Rights Reserved