Empowerment Archives

Guilt and emotional manipulation

Have you ever wondered why in certain relationships you always feel like you’re doing the wrong thing? It could be a friend, family member, or partner, but you realise that you’re often feeling guilty or ashamed, even if you know you didn’t intentionally do anything wrong. Emotional manipulation is a form of control, sometimes out of fear (e.g. of losing you), or even out of love (e.g. because they want to help you but don’t know how). One of the key signs of emotional manipulation that I learnt in my previous relationship is that we should never be made to […]

Community Empowerment Lifestyle Relationships

Open up: Communicating hard things to people we love

We all have had a moment when we want to say something difficult to somebody we love but we doubt whether to open the Pandora’s box or avoid a confrontation. Especially with people we love and care about, it can be quite frightening. We are afraid that we might upset their feelings, hurt the relationship and scar something precious to us for life. However, an open communication is one of the main characteristics of a healthy relationship. Opening up to say things that hurt us, worry us, concern us or make us feel heavy is needed to live an open […]

Community Empowerment Mental health Relationships

How people flaunt their relationships to feel better about themselves.

We are in a society where romantic love is predominantly valued over all other achievements. But whether single or in a relationship, it’s human nature to try and take actions to make ourselves feel better or superior to others. I’ve been single for the past three years since letting go of a toxic relationship. When I reflect on how I feel about this, it’s probably a mixture of anxiety, hope, acceptance and relief – levelling out as a neutral energy, neither positive nor negative. However I’ve observed that depending on the environment that I’m in and who is around me, […]

Community Empowerment Inspiration Lifestyle

Letting go of fear

It seems that everywhere we look, people are riddled by fear. Fear of being judged, of voicing their own opinions (whether in line or against popular views), of living how they truly want, working the jobs that make them happy, and reaching for the life that they deserve. Essentially, we’ve become afraid of truly being ourselves. The biggest testament to this is the fear that people have of working towards their dreams. As children we had no fear – we did what we wanted, until eventually we were conditioned to believe in boundaries, limitations and the importance of meeting expectations. […]

Empowerment Lifestyle Mental health

The importance of boundaries

Often we find ourselves in situations or amongst people that leave us feeling drained, frustrated or doubting ourselves. Yet we continue to allow these people and situations to be part of our lives – maybe we feel obliged because we’ve known them a long term, or we just feel bad saying no and making someone else unhappy. Maybe we feel perversely better about ourselves by being agreeable and making someone else temporarily happier, to the detriment of our own emotional and mental wellbeing. If we continue these patterns however, we start to realise that we’re not truly making choices for […]

Business Dancing Empowerment

Nathalia Pinheiro’s dance story

Nathalia is a 28 year old Brazilian living in Sydney. She is a full time choreographer, confidence and social dancing coach, zouk-lambada instructor, dj and CEO of the Zouk Movement (an emerging dance school). She exudes such positive energy I had to ask her for an interview to understand more about her story and what makes her so passionate about what she does. “What I love the most about zouk? That I feel so sexy, powerful, and safe to surrender when I dance. I don’t get to feel like that at any other time in my day-to-day life.” With her […]

Empowerment Inspiration

How do we know if a choice is right for us?

Every day we make choices, from the moment we wake up until we’re back in bed again. Most choices are automatic, like our alarm clock setting, what we eat for lunch or dinner, or how we get to work. But sometimes, we’re faced with a difficult situation and suddenly we’re not sure what the right choice is. What’s our next career move? Should we be more serious with the person we’re dating? Is it time to move places? We call our mum, sister or friend for advice, talk about all the pros and cons and at the end of it […]

Empowerment Inspiration Lifestyle

Seven ways to cut out the crap and start living the life you deserve

Often we feel stuck in our lives yet also paralysed in making change. We’re influenced by so many factors around us, both external and internal, and we often have no idea what we want in life and what truly fulfils us. Here are seven things I wish I’d appreciated (and implemented) earlier, to cut out the crap in my life and bring me closer to my own personal truths: 1. Clean up your environment. Your external environment and particularly your home, is a reflection of your inner self. Where there is internal chaos, this often manifests into messiness, untidiness, generally […]

Empowerment Relationships

How we give away our power

When I was in a toxic relationship, over time I lost so much energy, was constantly ill from stress and not looking after myself, and no longer knew what I truly wanted for my life. The people we interact with and environments that we immerse ourselves in, impact us every day, both at superficial and physical levels, as well as subconsciously and energetically. When we’re in toxic environments, our energies are depleted and without knowing where or how to re-energise ourselves, it can be difficult to rebalance this. We may see ourselves living fairly normal lives yet constantly encountering drama, […]

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