The importance of feeling empowered in our communities

The Importance of feeling empowered – Understanding just how important key mental skills are in enabling us to feel powerful to change our communities (and our world) for the better…

Here’s a question for you – what do Greta Thunberg, Malala Yousafzai and our Thrive Ambassador Emily Stevenson all have in common…? It’s not as grandiose a question as you might imagine. In fact, it’s a fairly simple link. Your grandma or your neighbour living around the corner could have it too. Here’s another clue: It’s an important part of being a thriving individual, and it’s something you can also LEARN… 

What’s the answer?? Well, they all feel incredibly powerful to change their communities and to change their world. And because they feel so empowered, they’re out there doing it…!

So what exactly enables someone to feel empowered to do that?

Anyone who knows a little bit about The Thrive Programme and about what mental skills we teach people, will know that your Sense of Power And Control over Experiences (SPACE) – how internally powerful (or not) you feel over yourself and your own life – is a key part of how psychologically happy and healthy you are, and how robust your thinking is. So becoming more ‘internal’ is a core skill we teach people to develop during the programme.

Those of you who have already taken one of our free online TQ (Thrive Quotient) Assessments to measure your own thinking (and get your own, personalised report) may have actually spotted that one of the 6 areas we already measure under the SPACE section is ‘community’, and it’s exactly that – how powerful you feel to make changes in your community and on the issues you’re passionate about.

Learning to develop an internal SPACE is actually hugely important in ALL areas of our lives, because it determines how powerful we feel in managing our health, wealth, relationships, careers, friendships and social interactions, our emotions and reactions, our past… The list goes on! But until you really sit and think about it, community is a huge part of the picture too, because we LIVE in communities, and if we don’t feel powerful to participate in – and shape – those communities, we are going to feel increasingly powerless in other areas of our lives too.

So how does our SPACE in this particular area, ‘community’, play out in practice?

Lets take climate change as an example. Poll results from June of this year (by polling company ComRes) showed that around 71% of Brits felt that climate change was a hugely important issue for them. In August this year, a separate poll (this time by polling company Ipsos MORI) showed concern levels on climate change at 85% of Brits, the highest it’s been since climate concern started being tracked in 2005. 

And yet despite these levels of concern, surveys continually show that we are not doing as much as we could be. Theresa May in her time as UK Prime Minister pledged to get the UK’s carbon emission levels to zero by 2050, and yet figures tell us that at the current global emission levels, we could start to see irreversible problems in as little as 8 years. Which doesn’t make our target seem quite so good!

Recycling and plastic waste is an additional problem – despite Brits’ increasing concerns about the environment, as a nation (and frankly as a world too), we are not recycling as much as we could be. In fact, a recent BBC article revealed that in 2017, Wales was “the only UK country to exceed the EU’s target to recycle at least 50% of waste from households by 2020”, having recycled 57.6% of their waste. Given that England contributes on average to about 85% of the total waste produced in the UK, England’s recycling levels of 45.2% have by far the biggest negative impact on the UK’s high annual waste levels (over 220 tonnes per year, and on the rise). Some of that is related to recycling capabilities in certain areas, but that’s not the only factor.

What are we trying to say here? Well, quite simply, that people care a lot about the future of the planet, about waste levels, recycling, plastic levels, climate change, CO2 emissions – the list goes on – and yet the national figure for action taken on those issues doesn’t appear to match those levels of concern. In other words, people really want things to change, but many of those same people don’t feel powerful to make – or initiate – changes themselves. And as a consequence, government’s aren’t under as much public pressure as they could or should be to take action themselves either.

This is why as part of our Thrive Programme Coach® Bootcamp in Devon last month, we all participated in a beach clean with our Thrive Ambassador Emily as part of her Beach Guardian work, to make an impact ourselves – however small – on the local beaches and environment we were there enjoying too. It won’t change the world, but it’s one small contribution, and the key thing to realise is that as small as these individual actions are alone, they still contribute SOMETHING, and together they add up to much more!

We can see the same patterns and impacts of feeling disempowered in your community, in other areas too. 

Let’s think about your own local area. People can talk about how lonely their street or block of flats is, but never feel able to do anything to change it, like reaching out to their neighbours or joining a local community forum. They might think that their local area is in need of some important regeneration, or stare sadly at the dilapidated local gardens that the council can no longer afford to upkeep, but never even imagine that they could start a group to go and change it themselves and take back power and responsibility for their community.

Politics is another particularly good example. People might for example have huge concerns about certain parties getting into Government, and oppose many of their policies, but won’t actually go out and vote on election day because ‘it won’t make a difference’, ‘nothing will change anyway’, ‘the same guy always gets in’, or even ‘all the parties are the same so what’s the point’. Once again, a huge desire for change, but not matched with action.  (And of course, we don’t really need to point out that if all the people that didn’t vote for those reasons actually DID vote, things would very likely change, or at least have the potential too…).

For many, it’s not simply about ‘laziness’, as people could be forgiven for assuming. It’s more than that. It’s about feeling powerless. Many people simply don’t believe that what they do as an individual will make a difference, or disbelieve that they could start a movement for change themselves, so they never do it. 

And the thing is, once somebody has that powerless attitude towards their own impact in one area of life, it trickles into others. It’s much easier with that mindset to believe that you also can’t change things in your own workplace, to change job or career, to improve your health, to turn around a relationship or marriage, to overcome many years of poor mental health… 

So what’s our advice to start feeling empowered to make a difference? What is The Importance of feeling empowered?

To use those thriving skills to start getting involved, and feeling motivated and empowered to make changes in your own community! Maybe it’s just helping the elderly neighbours down your road who can’t always get to the shops to get milk or bread, and dropping it in on your way home. Maybe it’s joining local clubs or groups that are trying to make a difference on something you are passionate, or even starting your own group if you can’t see one that exists already! Maybe it’s writing to your MP, going on a beach clean, applying to be a school Governor, or volunteering at a care home or youth club. Or maybe it’s even participating in climate change rallies, like school student – and Thrive Programme ‘graduate’ – Georgia did, even making headline news for it! (See her inspiring testimonial further down where she talks about attending the demonstration!)

As an organisation, all of us at The Thrive Programme want to empower people with the skills they need to change their lives, their communities AND their world too – and it’s therefore something we work to promote and practice ourselves too! This includes working with our Thrive Ambassador Emily of Beach Guardian on taking care of our environment, our sponsorship of KickOff@3 and the work they are doing to tackle youth knife crime, and our award-nominated joint venture ‘ThriveUp’ with development charity United Purpose – plus some even bigger and more ambitious plans in the pipeline…!

So whatever it is you choose to do, big or small, the minute you start to take action to make meaningful community changes, you will already feel more empowered 😉 

If you’d like to learn all the skills you need to thrive in all areas of your life, use the tabs at the top to find links to purchase your own Thrive Programme manual, or to find a Licensed Thrive Programme Coach® to support and coach you on your journey to thriving too! The Importance of feeling empowered.