Discovering the Five Phases of Personal Empowerment

Posted on September 23, 2021 by Elizabeth Fischer, One of Thousands of Career Coaches on Noomii.

The year 2020 has been a lot of things, but one thing it certainly has not been is ‘the year of subtleties’. There has been no nuance to the series of extreme events that we have all been subjected to experiencing. And it is these events that have sparked different patterns of behavior that lead to my discovery of the Five Stages of Personal Empowerment©.

The first intriguing pattern of behavior involved the infamous national craze of millions of Americans loading up their carts and hoarding stockpiles of toilet paper. Not because the symptoms of COVID19 warranted it, but because millions of people had simultaneously dropped to the base of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs overnight.

Unless you’re particularly progressive in the bathroom and prefer the use of bidets, toilet paper means having a clean bum. And having a clean bum means having good hygiene. Which is something people instinctively feared not having when faced with the uncertainty of being locked down in our homes for months on end in the middle of a deadly pandemic

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Abundance vs. Scarcity Mentality
When you find yourself suddenly prioritizing what Abraham Maslow categorized as ‘Psychological Needs,’ more likely than not, you are also experiencing scarcity mentality. I say this because, if you are prioritizing the most fundamental needs over everything else, then you are probably facing circumstances that have prompted you to operate from a place of fear.

As we all move through life, there are only two possibilities for which mentality we are subscribing to. The options are binary. You are either subscribing to scarcity mentality, or abundance mentality. Scarcity mentality is rooted in fear. Conversely, abundance mentality is rooted in gratitude and hope.
Understanding the difference between these two mentalities is critical to understanding how you can move from one mentality to the other. It’s worth mentioning that focusing on Self-Actualization Needs, which are located at the top of pyramid of Maslow’s Hierarchy, requires abundance mentality.

These two mentalities also serve to inform our personal beliefs. For instance, you are either someone who believes there is an abundance of wealth, opportunities, connections and love in this world, or you perceive those things to be scarcely available to you. Believing there is abundance of those things translates to there being enough to go around and serve us all. Or, you are someone who believes that there is good reason to be afraid of not having enough to go around in terms of wealth, opportunities, love, and any other of the other universally applicable needs you can find neatly packaged in Maslow’s Hierarchy.

The Stages of Grief
There’s one other neatly packaged modality which has become particularly relevant during 2020 and directly inspired my discovery of the Stages of Personal Empowerment. That is the Five Stages of Grief, first identified by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross. I have always had a great deal of admiration and gratitude for this particular framework for two reasons.

The Five Stages of Grief
The first reason being that from a design perspective, the Five Stages of Grief are a thing of beauty because they so elegantly outline what otherwise feels like very messy and convoluted process to experience. Simply knowing what each phase of grief entails actually helps you better navigate it with a sense of direction. The Five Stages of Grief really serve as an emotional roadmap for arriving at the intangible destination of acceptance — the final stage of grief.

The second reason I have such an affinity for this framework, is that knowing the stages and being able to self-identify where you are currently at in the grieving process is immensely validating and grounding. This of course, is a welcome contrast to an otherwise extremely unsettling, disorienting, and generally uncomfortable, if not painful, process.

The ability to accurately label our emotions, regardless of what those emotions may be, is in itself empowering.

It is empowering because it is practicing authenticity and self-awareness, which is extremely liberating. Additionally, the ability to see the progress we are making as we move through the Stages of Grief is what fuels hope, and hope is what helps us arrive at acceptance.

It’s worth noting that again, just as we saw with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, in the Stages of Grief there is a clear progression from fear-based emotions (shock and denial) to hope-based emotions (acceptance). So again, we are seeing a transition from scarcity mentality advancing into abundance mentality.

The Discovery
As I was watching millions of people across the globe experience different phases of grief as a response to the pandemic, and then again as a response to the relentless injustices faced by the Black community, a question showed up for me. That question was, “Why do we have the Stages of Grief neatly outlined, but we don’t have the Stages of Personal Empowerment?” Both are complex and deeply emotional journeys, but only one has a roadmap.

I sat with that question for a few days and intentionally did nothing with it. I’ve noticed over the years that sometimes our unconscious wisdom is what we need to call on, rather than always deferring to our conscious critical thinking. There’s a reason why the phrase “sleep on it” exists.

Precisely three days later, it hit me all at once. It was one of those hurry to find a pen and paper moments. For the third time now, in the Five Stages of Personal Empowerment, you will notice a clear progression from scarcity mentality to abundance mentality. Just like in the Stages of Grief, I’ve identified each Stage of Personal Empowerment by the primary emotion that you feel at that phase and then I’ve described what experiencing each phase looks like.