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Empowerment

© Kelly Smith

A little kickboxing does the trick.

You know, of all the wonderful benefits that exercise can bring, I sometimes forget the most significant one in my life. Empowerment. Exercise makes me feel strong, and not just physically.

Have you ever felt angry at work when you were passed up for a promotion you know you deserved? What about regrets you might feel because you were too afraid to take a chance? Anger, frustration and fear build up inside of us every day. My set back is taking things too personally. I had a run in with someone just the other day who made wrongful accusations towards me. I was so angry and hurt by her comments that it consumed me. I noticed how much of my time and energy it was sucking out of my day and realized I needed to change it. I focused my energy on exercise first to just release some frustration by lifting weights. But then I moved on to some kickboxing. As I started to sweat and feel the burn I started to feel empowered!

Don't get me wrong here. I didn't feel like going out and kicking someone's butt. On the contrary, I came to the realization I had given my personal power away. When you take back your power it flows into the rest of your life causing you to feel like you can do anything! Empowerment helps us to accomplish our goals and conquer our fears.

Whenever I am going through an obstacle in my life I tend to feel emotionally weak. I may be wrong but I don't think I am alone. Especially when it comes to women (No ill will intended towards the male gender). As women, we are still brought up in society to be nice, not speak out because it's rude, essentially, be the people pleasers. Sure shopping and talking to our friends at the local coffee shop can help but it doesn't quite always do the trick for me. I need to take back my power. Kickboxing, biking and weight programs seem to do the trick for me. They help me feel centered, balanced and strong. Yoga can often help clear the mind and release all those negative energies as well. It can be rather easy for people to take our power away without us even realizing it. When I feel so angry I could spit, exercise can really reverse it. Could this possibly be why we see so many more women working out with weights? Granted, weight workouts are a great way to reverse the aging process because we start losing muscle as we get older. But when we feel strong physically it tends to have a psychological effect as well.