“Giving other people the power to control how you think, feel and behave makes it impossible to be mentally strong” “Retaining your power is about being confident in who you are and the choices you make, despite the people around you and the circumstances you are in”.

No matter what, YOU DO YOU.

It takes power and mental strength to have the confidence to follow your own path, no matter what other people say and no matter what happens around you. That means being selfish sometimes, and choose yourself over others, chose what is right for you and have confidence in who you are and what you want.

When our confidence and self-esteem is low, we are automatically more sensitive to our surroundings, and we let everything affect us or dictate what is really only for us to choose. We take criticism more at heart, we take advice too literally, we take feedback in a negative way instead of a constructive one. We basically let everything that surrounds us, alter the course of our path. We begin questioning ourselves instead of believing in ourselves.

“There are very few things in life that you have to do, but often we convince ourselves that we don’t have a choice”. But the truth is: you have a choice in everything you do, feel and think, at any given moment. Free will. And when you realize this, when you decide that no one else has this power over you, you will experience empowerment. In the book, it outlines the benefits that you will reap from this realization:

• you will develop a better sense of who you are when you are able to make choices based on what’s best for you instead of what will prevent more repercussions
• when you take responsibility for your own behaviour, you’ll become accountable for your progress towards your goals
• you will never be pressured into doing something that you don’t want to do based on guilt trips or what you think other people want you to do
• you’ll be able to devote your time and energy to things you choose
• you’ll reduce your risk of depression, anxiety and other mental health issues

Only positive outcomes are waiting for you on the other side of choice, action and self-confidence. You literally cannot go wrong when you choose what it’s best for yourself. As I often like to say, no one can take care of you like you can. And no one ever will.