The Empowered Wealth Journal - New Hardback
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This new version utilizes more tools, including the
Empowered Question™

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Empower the Day

Gratitude

Go B.I.G.™ is an Empowered Wealth® Concept where the acronym B.I.G. stands for “Begin in Gratitude” or “Be in Gratitude”. This concept is a reminder that at its highest levels, gratitude is about having an attitude that celebrates the learning from the past, inspires a bigger vision of the future, and encourages daily intentions. It reminds us to be aware of the positive people and things in life, thank them and appreciate them, and to go beyond that level of gratitude to find ways to contribute to the lives and well being of others without the expectation of anything in return. Gratitude puts the why in our daily activities.

Happiness researchers have found that one of the main keys to happiness is gratitude. A short meditation can give you a nice boost of gratitude—and happiness—at the beginning and any other time of day.

Think of something you’re grateful for. Let your mind rest on it and fully enjoy it. Experience all the gratitude you can for that one thing, then move on to the next thing. Keep doing this for three minutes, moving from one thing to the next. You’ll likely find that you feel refreshed afterwards. (Source: Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute)

Essentialize Your Day

Make your day meaningful. Identify three “essential” activities that will make your day the most meaningful. So often we let the circumstances of the day dictate our activities. We usually have no problem saying “no” to the “unimportant” demands. However, if we understand and are committed to doing what is essential for our own progress and meaningfulness, we can be empowered to say “no” to even the very important. “Don’t let those things that are essential be at the mercy of those things that are very important.”…Lee Brower

Intentionality

 As you start your day, be intentional with your activities and interactions. Think about who you will be meeting with; what you know about them; and, what you appreciate about them? Then answer, as a result of your meeting; “What would be important for them to know?” “How would I like for them to feel as a result of meeting with me?” and “What should they want to do as a result of meeting with me?” These questions will help set up your day.

The EW Empowering Question™

Lee Brower is a big proponent of developing an abundant mindset that engages the subconscious to assist in creativity and problem-solving. One of the tools of Empowered Wealth is The Empowering Question: Although the concept itself has so much more to it, you can begin by replacing statements that begin with “I need to…”, “We want to…", etc., with “Can I...?” or “How might we...?”, etc.

Studies have shown that this type of question—called interrogative self-talk—is effective because “asking questions forces you to define if you really want something, even in the presence of obstacles,” and so is more effective than possibly unrealistically positive self-affirmations. (Source: Ibrahim Senay, Dolores Albarracin, and Kenji Noguchi, Motivating Goal

Directed Behavior Through Introspective Self-Talk). Thus, beginning your morning routine with an Empowering Question can open up creativity and problem-solving capabilities for the rest of the day.

Capitalize the Day

Capture the Learning

In the evening, contemplate the experiences of the day. Identify at least three learning experiences—start with the positive. Positive Focus is a concept originally developed by Strategic Coach®, the program founded by Dan Sullivan. Lee Brower, in addition to leading Empowered Wealth, LC, is an associate coach with Strategic Coach. The major benefit of this focus is a shift from complaining, criticizing, blaming, and negativity to positive feelings.

Positive Focus is a deliberate exercise or tool focusing on the review of your most meaningful or impactful experiences from that day. By asking yourself “why” you are grateful for this experience, it is not uncommon to discover that what might have been perceived as a negative experience actually is transformed into meaningful and valuable learning. The Strategic Coach method then asks what further progress can be made and what specific action can ensue. While this has historically been a very productive exercise, Empowered Wealth has taken this process further to convert Positive Focus into expressions of gratitude.

By converting memories of positive experiences into expressions of gratitude, we begin to transform these experiences (and the positive emotions that accompany these experiences) into thoughts, feelings, traits, and eventually, ways of being that can endure over longer periods of time.

Activating Gratitude

Asking, “What do I appreciate about this experience?” can elicit thoughts about things, circumstances, phenomena, etc., that promote feelings of gratitude. By asking, “Who can I thank for this positive experience?”, we can identify those that we can say “thank you”.

This is an important distinction when it comes to the next step in this process: focusing on any further progress we can make in expressing Gratitude. Having a specific person or persons to thank makes this step straightforward, whereas appreciation for “things” tends to remain a private, personal experience rather than an interaction. That’s not bad; it’s just different.

Finally, we ask what small step can we take towards that expression of gratitude. We might tell someone, “thank you”. We might pray. We might be inspired to do things differently. The key is “action,” and the key to action is taking a small step.

Deposit the Experience

One self-improvement question inspired by the Strategic Coach tool called The Experience Transformer, is “Reflecting on my day, knowing what I know now, what might I do differently in the future?” Way too often, the learnings of the day are never converted into usable teaching stories that can last for generations, and consequently are soon forgotten.

Perhaps the greatest gifts you can give yourself, your children and your colleagues are the lessons that come from teachable experiences that have the potential to inspire and guide them through their own life choices.

Answering the question, “what would you do differently,” promotes the capitalization of experiences to reinforce learning and add to the meaningfulness of those experiences.

The EW Empowering Question

Ending the day with at least one Empowering Question for the subconscious to work on as you sleep is a suggestion that can unlock the power of your unconscious mind.

Advanced Tip

The four circles at the top of the Evening page for Lee Brower represent his “Essential” keys to optimize the potential of each day. He inserts the letters PMED in each circle—which represents Prayer, Meditation, Exercise and Diet—in that order. When Lee begins his day with PMED, having a most meaningful day becomes highly predictable. The circles have been left blank so that you can insert the personal reminders that would be most appropriate for you.