About ten years ago, one of my mentors Dr John Demartini taught me an important concept about people.

He said that in whatever area of your life you don’t empower, someone else will come in and overpower you.

Let that sink in for a minute…

We could come up with countless examples of this dynamic playing out. Here are a few important examples to drive this lesson home.

When you “step back” in anything and take a “hands off” approach, something bad will likely “step in” and dominate or take over.

This happens to me when I step too far back, lose presence, or “check out” in some area of my life. When I do this, it’s as though I’m saying “Can someone else take over and do this?”

For instance, when a parent takes a “hands-off” approach to raising kids, kids begin to orient toward their peer culture and eventually listen to, and respect, their peers more than their parents. Gabor Mate and Gordon Neufeld call this “peer orientation” and it’s born out of an insecure relational field at home (Kids do the same thing btw if the parenting is too heavy-handed).

An extreme example is the book most of us read in middle school or high school “Lord of the Flies.” Kids just don’t have the frontal lobe development to lead other kids effectively with no good adults around. Gangs and playground bullying are other examples of adult leaderless environments.

You’ve probably heard the saying “"Idle hands are the devil's workshop" right? Same idea.

Or, let’s say you are a boss and you delegate everything to a team that has not earned the right to lead the company and has not been thoroughly vetted, the “team” will run the business into the ground.

Or how about when you own a home and you don’t attend to the regular upkeep and care of that home, eventually the home will attract mice, rodents, mold, and other issues that eventually become a money pit that is very hard to repair.

Yet another example is when you don’t attend to your financial house and keep track of your bills, expenses, debts, etc, the sharks will come in and want your money. Your disorganization is ripe for someone to take advantage of you.

Finally, when you don’t attend to your partner, their needs and desires, and you fail to put effort into the relationship together, you set the stage for an affair, breakup, growing apart, and divorce.

But why do we do this? Why do we fuzz out in so many areas of our life?

It all comes down to our values (who and what we value), and how we value ourselves.

You see when we undervalue ourselves, we allow assholes to treat us poorly. We allow people to walk all over us. We allow people to take a shit on something profound we’ve created. If we valued something magnificent we created, and ourselves, we wouldn’t allow any of this kind of bullshit in our lives.

From our children to our house to our finances, to our partnership. It’s time to value who we are and what we create and co-create.

See if this devaluing something is going on in your life right now. Notice if you are vulnerable as a result.

And then choose to do something about it.

If your finances are a mess, take one step toward cleaning them up
If your relationship is a mess, take a step to fix it
If your health is a mess, take a step to get more empowered there
If you allow people to walk all over you, your work is to value yourself more

Here’s to your personal empowerment today.

Jayson

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