How you can empower others to be their best!
Do you feel sorry for someone who has had a hard life? And do you tend to allow such a person to get away with things you would not allow another person to get away with?
If you answered yes to either of these questions, you are not doing someone who has had a hard life any favors. You need to empower everyone you care about or love to be their best instead of enabling them to wallow in self-pity.
The difference between enabling and empowering
“Enabling” has a similar meaning to “empowering”. They both can mean to lend a hand to someone to enable him to accomplish things they could not accomplish by themselves. But “enabling” also means a bit more: it means to offer help that perpetuates instead of solving a problem.
For example, a child plays video games instead of studying for a test in school. Anyone who allows this child to stay home because he did not study is enabling a child to be irresponsible.
Dismissing a child’s drug use, drinking, bullying, defiance, or bullying does not help a child. Nor does dismissing irresponsible behavior help.
If you empower a child, you force him to face the consequences for his behavior and learn to behave better.
Empowering helps a person to succeed.
Two examples of empowering or enabling
Before I knew him, my husband would help addicts. He would pay them by the hour to work for him around his home. One of them, “John”, was an alcoholic. Although John received $10 per hour for working at my husband’s home, at times he could not pay his rent. My husband decided to pay John’s rent for him instead of giving him the money directly. After John’s rent was paid for the current month, John was taken to the grocery store where my husband bought food for him. Now that John gets Social Security Income for his disability, my husband does not pay John at all.
When my husband was giving John the money directly, he was enabling John to drink alcohol. But when he started paying his rent and buying him food instead, he was empowering John to survive.
We also have hired others to do things around our home for us. One such person was a teenager who had had a hard life. But in addition to having a hard life, he did not have a good work ethic. We did not put up with his poor work ethic. Rather, we let him know that he needs to work when he is here and he decided to quit. We refused to enable him to blame his past.
Empower others, do not enable them!
Enabling others to continue to not be their best is unhealthy . When someone in your life has any issues, force them to face their issues. Do not pity them.
You can support someone without enabling him. You can listen when he needs to talk about his past. But when he is done talking, you can tell him that that is in his past and now his life is better. That he needs to make decisions based on his current life not his past life. Or that he needs to make decisions that will improve his circumstances, not continue to hold him back from being successful.
When someone is depressed, do not enable his depression by allowing him to sit around all day. Instead, empower him to take control of his life and feel better. Encourage or require him to get up and do something each day of his life. A person cannot be depressed while he is actively engaged in a positive activity. My husband and I both suffer from depression and we encourage each other to stay active in positive ways. Staying active in positive ways does keep depression at bay.
Do not enable anyone who is unkind to others to be unkind to others. When such a person tells you that someone did something that made him angry, tell him that he is responsible for how he acts regardless of how he feels, and that he needs to be kind to others.
Parents, empower your children to cope with depression and other issues in healthy ways. Empower them to be kind to others. Set good examples for them, and tell them what you are doing and why.
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Remember that when you care about someone, you should empower him to be the best person he can be.
Empower others instead of enabling them!
Let the encouraging words in these bobbiejrae posts help you
soar like an eagle above life’s storms.
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Turn your child into a responsible adult…
Don’t let temptation crush your loved one…
Are you concerned about the violence in schools?
If you enjoyed this post, remember that BJ writes children’s books.
Her encouraging children’s eagle
near a river common core reading book
is available on Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com.
Buy BJ’s near a river encouraging eagle reading book
for a child you care about today!