Knowing exactly what steps to take to feel more empowered as a woman can be confusing.
While there are many ways to feel empowered as a woman, this article provides you five concrete methods. Better yet, these steps to feel more empowered are either free or extremely low cost. No matter where you are right now, you can feel more empowered by practicing these steps!
What does it mean to be empowered?
Oxford languages defines empowerment as “the process of becoming stronger and more confident, especially in controlling one’s life and claiming one’s rights.”
This is personally powerful work. Becoming more empowered is also world-changing! Each woman that feels stronger and more confident has a tremendous ripple effect on this world. Take a moment to think about what you would do if you truly believed in yourself.
There are probably some meaningful changes you would make if you felt strong enough in your life.
Small steps towards feeling empowered
If you don’t feel empowered as a woman, it can seem overwhelming on what steps you should take.
However, the good news is: Lasting change happens in baby steps.
To truly become more empowered, you just need to commit to small changes. At first, you may not yet feel more empowered. But as you stick with it you will discover: Becoming empowered happens really slowly – at then all at once.
When you stick with what makes you more empowered as a woman, the change is inevitable. You will, over time, become more confident and stronger.
What Makes You Empowered as a Woman Strategy #1: Care for your financial health
Self-care involves all aspects of yourself. You can care for your physical, your mental, and your spiritual. All of this is helpful. Yet learning how to effectively manage your finances is truly empowering.
Few things are scarier than not having enough money to cover costs or emergencies. Becoming more empowered around money takes time but is worth the effort. It is so empowering to know you have your back.
For years, I felt out of control when it came to money which was overwhelming. When I was terrified of checking my bills and constantly acquiring overdraft fees, I felt out of control.
But as I began to take control of my financial health, I felt more grounded which is truly empowering.
Suggestions to care for your financial health
My first step was to work with a debt consolidation company as I couldn’t get ahead. The interest I was paying on my credit card debt made it impossible to pay off my card with the income I earned. This really hurt my self-esteem.
When I worked with a consolidation company, they reached out to my creditors and negotiated interest rates that allowed me to pay off my debt. It was an incredibly empowering day when my credit card debt reached zero.
If you don’t have credit card debt, this is great. Other steps you may take are to identify ways to build wealth. Tori Dunlap with Her First 100k and her book, Financial Feminist: Overcome the Patriarchy’s Bullsh*t to Master Your Money and Build a Life You Love, are amazing resources to manage your finances.
You may also become more empowered by negotiating your salary when starting a new job. Alternately, you may negotiate a promotion with a meaningful pay raise to become more empowered.
What Makes You Empowered as a Woman Strategy #2: DIY projects
Growing up, I bought into the capitalist lie that what I could purchase would be higher quality than what I can make. Yet, this is not true.
Learning how to provide for yourself is incredibly empowering.
Firstly, you save money with DIY projects. This money can then be spent to pay off debt and build wealth. This is doubly empowering.
Next, you allow yourself a chance to cultivate skills. You may not be an expert when you first start creating items yet over time, you discover how capable you are. This builds confidence!
Finally, when you DIY products, you feel accomplished. You may discover the reality that what you create can truly be better than what you can purchase.
Suggestions for DIYing
Understandably, you may be short on time. Luckily, you can start small towards DIY.
Simple ways to become empowered by doing things for yourself include cooking. Even if you only have time for one meal a week, cultivating culinary skills is empowering. It’s truly one of the best feelings to go out to your favorite restaurant and realize you could easily replicate your favorite dish!
This builds confidence and saves money.
You may also decide to start doing it yourself by learning to sew. Or you may prepare your self-care beauty products, like face masks, by yourself. I love taking household items like honey or turmeric and creating affordable face masks. It’s amazing how effective and cost saving these DIY masks are and I feel excited they have less impact on the planet since I create less waste.
What Makes You Empowered as a Woman Strategy #3: Practice Yoga
True empowerment requires you to feel fully embodied. That is, to feel like you are completely here in your body.
Sadly, trauma can impact your ability to feel fully present and in your body. This experience is inherently disempowering.
Yet, research shows that having a yoga practice helps heal trauma. Yoga allows you to both feel present and alive within your body. This sort of awareness helps you cope with your feelings in a more empowered way.
Also, feeling alive in your body helps you feel real – and just as important as anyone else. This cultivates confidence in your authentic self.
Suggestions to Practice Yoga
Yoga can seem intimidating at first. This is completely understandable. Yet, in practice, yoga is simply about connecting breath with movement. A certain move will correspond with an inhalation. The next move is for your exhalation.
This is a grounding, mindful practice that is about connecting with yourself rather than flexibility. Yoga, in time, changes your relationship with your body. You begin to appreciate your body for what it does for you rather than what it looks like.
A free and wonderful resource to practice yoga at home is Yoga with Adriene. She has many videos ranging from just a few minutes to hour-long classes.
If you feel nervous, simply allow yourself to watch some videos without pressuring yourself to participate. In time as you practice yoga, you will feel more empowered by your ability to connect with your breath, slow down, and deepen your poses.
What Makes You Empowered as a Woman Strategy #4: Grow Your Own Food
Most Americans are worried about climate change. When you feel worried about an issue of such importance, it can be easy to feel overwhelmed.
Feelings of helplessness may creep in as you wonder what you can do to help the planet. Helplessness and anxiety, while understandable, are disempowering.
Instead, you can feel more empowered by noticing the ways you can help. You can contribute positively to the environment. The changes you can make are meaningful and truly can change the world.
One way to have a positive impact on the planet is to grow your own food.
Suggestions to Grow Your Own Food
Admittedly, there are some initial costs to gardening for items such as soil, pots, and seeds. You may be able to find some low-cost gardening items on resources such as Trash Nothing. Also, many local libraries, have seed libraries where you can acquire seeds for free. It’s empowering to identify such resources if gardening costs are a barrier.
It’s also empowering to provide for yourself nourishing food. There is nothing more rewarding than eating something you grew for yourself. You also see the mutually beneficial relationship you have with the Earth which is empowering. You see how truly supported you are always.
Gardening also helps the planet. You help by reducing transportation costs by eating the most local possible. Also, if you choose to compost to create your own rich soil in the future, you reduce the amount of methane gas being leaked into our atmosphere. Methane gas is produced when foods break down in landfills and it’s more damaging than carbon dioxide to our planet.
If you don’t have the time and/or space to garden, you can feel more empowered by growing an herb or two in a window. It’s really exciting to have your own fresh basil, or rosemary, that you grew to throw into a dish!
What Makes You Empowered as a Woman Strategy #5: Strength Train
Women sometimes avoid strength training. This is due to fears of bulking up at times. Other times, navigating the weight machines at the gym can seem intimidating. (I felt this way for years!)
Yet learning how to get comfortable with strength training is empowering. It may sound cheesy but often, becoming literally stronger makes you feel mentally stronger.
It’s a major confidence boost to be able to lift weight that you previously couldn’t. Those trips from the grocery store become a lot less taxing when you can lift more! You can accomplish more tasks independently when you are stronger, and this is empowering.
Also, if you don’t always feel empowered, you probably feel anxious at times. However, strength training has been found to reduce anxiety.
Furthermore, research shows that strength training improves self-esteem. Confidence requires you like yourself.
Suggestions for Strength Training
The truth is human bodies require muscle training to remain healthy.
Yet, there is no need to overdo it. Research shows that you simply need 30-60 minutes of strength training to reap the health benefits.
You can do this at a gym. If you have the resources to do so, you may benefit from working with a personal trainer. I currently am and have discovered it’s like therapy for my relationship with my body.
Or you can do so at home. If you don’t want to purchase weights, there are many exercises that can build strength with just your body. This includes yoga and Pilates.
Youtube is a great resource for free strength building workouts you can do from home.
Becoming More Empowered as a Woman is Life Changing
If you don’t yet feel empowered, you can start changing this with small steps today.
A great way to become more empowered is to commit to just one of these strategies at first. Sustainable change only occurs with commitment. But small steps, over time, lead to great change.
When you feel more empowered every aspect of your life improves. This includes your mental and physical health as well as your financial health.
Furthermore, your relationships improve as well as you practice empowering self-care. These steps allow for greater self-love which is the foundation for all healthy relationships.
Finally, if you are dating, being more empowered enables you to stay grounded. With the ups and downs of dating, you will be able to feel confident in your worth and not settle. When you are empowered, you know it’s better to be single than to be treated poorly. And when you are empowered you know alone doesn’t mean lonely.
About The Author, Krystal
Krystal Mazzola Wood, LMFT is a practicing relationship therapist with over a decade of experience. Currently, Krystal sees clients at her private practice, The Healthy Relationship Foundation. She has dedicated her entire career to empowering people to heal from unhealthy relationship processes. She does this by teaching the skills and tools necessary to have a life filled with healthy and loving relationships.
This passion led her to write her best-selling books and create courses. Her books, The Codependency Recovery Plan: A 5-Step Guide to Understand, Accept, and Break Free from the Codependent Cycle and The Codependency Workbook: Simple Practices for Developing and Maintaining Your Independence have helped many people heal.
Her third book, Self-Love Made Possible: The 5-Step Guide to Stop Being Your Own Worst Enemy and Become Your Own Best Friend will be released late 2022. To be notified of its release, please join the waitlist here.
Her course, Confidently Authentic: Stop People Pleasing and Start Being True to Yourself, provides the skills necessary to have a healthy relationship. This course features over a year of relationship skills you would learn in therapy. Students share this course has been “life changing.”
Each week, she answers your relationship questions from a place of expertise and compassion. To submit your relationship questions, please DM her @confidentlyauthentic.com or you may send an email to krystal@confidentlyauthentic.com to submit your question.