It's already end of May. Can you believe it? May 2021 is when I started my wonderful journey as BeYou_BeeHappy. It all started with the first post about positive self-talk and the book "Coffee Self-Talk" by Kristen Helmstetter. 'til today I think it's an amazing book. Eye-opening and great start into a more positive self-talk routine.

Did I have a plan where this journey was going? Honestly, no.
I had the idea of learning about optimism, self-love and self-talk, mental and physical health,... and along my way I wanted to encourage others.
In todays society it is east to live life hectically. Constantly running after the next thing we need to do. But forgetting to pause and enjoy life while we live it, to pause and proactively check on our physical and mental health, to pause and enjoy a moment of silence...
I like to scroll back through my old posts and everything that I learned about since then, the connections I made through this journey, and to see the progress that I have made personally.
Each step I took lead me to more things to explore, books to read, new accounts to follow that gave inspirations, new things to try and learn.
So with the end of last year my topics got broader but less deep, because there was so much I wanted to cover. Of course I also experimented which content got good feedback from my audience to guide me. I challenged myself to get out of my comfort zone and show more of me too. Started making reels to spread my message, trialed with lives and I had a lot of fun. The interaction with the people, puzzling the short videos together and seeing good feedback. Not that it was about numbers, but it felt great to see that my work got seen and received mainly good feedback. Until I posted this reel about Eldoa:

I couldn't explain why it went viral but it did. Check those numbers out. Totally insane for an account with 900 followers. Weeks went by and still every time I opened the account, I saw more shares, likes, comments, a huge follower increase.... My goal was to reach about 1K followers by the end of 2022. Well, December 28th the account had 9,690 followers. So I exceeded my realistic goal by 969%. Insane!
At first I was so hyped up and proud of myself and of course kept doing what I was doing. Until I saw the consequence for the content posted afterwards. That one reel kept getting tremendous feedback for 3months, everything else? The amount of people seeing or interacting with it plummeted. I tried to ignore it at first, as it wasn't about the numbers. But then since December 28th the follower count went down constantly ever since.
And though the journey wasn't about numbers, yet it was discouraging to keep going while seeing that on an average I lost 15 people each week. Just in comparison, before the reel on average I gained 15 followers within 3 weeks. But even that aside, not even 1% of the followers saw my content. Not that they didn't like it, it simply didn't get seen. Over 9000 followers but a post got seen by not even 100 people. It just didn't make sense to me. (Noticed yet that I am an engineer and like numbers? 😁)
So, I continued posting until March but got more and more frustrated. Kept trying to post different things, try new things and yet nothing changed. People kept leaving whether I posted or not posted. It was clear that I needed a reset. When Matt was so kind to ask me for an interview to talk about my journey in February, it actually was just what I needed. It opened my eyes to the fact that I lost my way. I lost my focus. So I tried to find it again, but I felt like I couldn't see the forest for the trees.
During the next weeks I tried to reposition myself. Why did I start this journey? Where did I want to go with this?
I started this journey for personal reasons. My pathway out of a tough time to a better mindset, more compassion towards me, awareness,... And one day it just clicked.
Self-Compassion
+ Self-Awareness
+ Self-Mastery = Self-Empowerment
There it was. New focus, new strategy, new setup. Empower me, while empowering others through my accounts. 🥳🥳🥳

I kept reading about Self-Empowerment, it's meaning, it's tools, it's fundaments and yes, it fit. It was the common theme throughout research, so it's time to tighten it.
Here a small overview as more about it will follow:
SELF-EMPOWERMENT
It's the practice of intentionally taking actions to be in control of your destiny. Important part of it to become aware of yourself and your weaknesses and strengths, to grow self-confidence and value your own self-worth, but also to take actions to master yourself by consciously taking actions to achieve your goals.
Therefore Self-Empowerment consists of the 3 columns: Awareness, Compassion and Mastery.
Awareness
The first column is about identifying and understanding ourselves - our values, ability & skills, strengths& weaknesses and goals. It means to identify who we are now and also who we want to become and ultimately develop a plan on how to get there. But always by being mindful and listening to ourselves.
A big key factor I read about is to also shift the performance-oriented mindset, which is very common in our society, to a growth-oriented mindset. This mindsets allows us to grow and takes the fear of failing. Because failing means that we tried, learned from it and will do it better next time.
Compassion
This second column is about our own self-love and -acceptance. It is important to take care of our mental and physical health. Being kind to ourselves while still challenging ourselves is the key to success.
The mental health therefore includes for example being mindful about our inner voice. Positive Self-Talk has an incredible impact. Building confidence in ourselves with a positive attitude allows us to grow. Even through failures or tough times, because we know that we can make it through.
Mastery
Last but not least, the third column is all about how to take actions. Because if we want to reach our goals and become the future selves that we envision, then we must consciously take actions. No-one will come and do it for us. Simply imagining it, makes it a dream. Actively working for it makes it a vision.
There are many tools supporting self-mastery. Some examples are building healthy habits, time management, and positive mindset/ attitude.
Are you ready to learn more about it? Let's go!
Be you! Be Happy!
Yours, Susi
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