Powerfulness: what I want for all women in the world

I recently attended Joanna Martin’s Shift Speaker Training for the second time. And this time, for the very first time, I fully embraced what I want for women in the world.

Joanna shares her presentation secrets i.e. how to be a better speaker on stage that she describes as her ‘7-Shift Effective Presentation Formula’. She talks about being plugged into your passion, your fuel, your fascination, your big why. She asks “What do you wish for everyone in the world?” and then invites us to walk around the room (around 80 people) introducing ourselves to people with what we want for everyone in the world.

“Hello, I’m freedom”

“Hi, I’m creativity”

“I’m independence”

“Hello, lovely to meet you, I’m empowerment“.

When Joanna first asked “What do you wish for everyone in the world?”, I thought to myself, “I’d better say ‘confidence’ as I’m about The Confident Mother.”  Then I got brave. I encourage my clients to do this all the time. I felt the fear and did it anyway!

I introduced myself as ‘powerfulness‘. Powerfulness, not confidence, not empowerment. I was the only ‘powerfulness’ that I met that day. I met lots of ‘freedoms’ and ’empowerments’, but nobody else wanted powerfulness for everyone in the world.

I recall a conversation with my coach, way back when, when I was exploring my purpose, using the same exercise I use on Back to Work Confidence. The first part of my purpose “I have an inner strength and confidence that allows me to nurture and inspire women to … ” has never faltered.

But I was stuck for ages (months even), on what I want to inspire women to do or be. To make effective decisions? To have confidence? To make decisions with confidence or with ease? I’ve always known I want to inspire women to take action …. but I want them to feel something else first when they take that action.

I hesitated to use the word powerful. Yet really, that’s what I wanted. I wanted women to feel powerful. I wanted women to have more than confidence. I wanted them to have something bigger, deeper, more powerful.

A few months ago, after a networking lunch, I talked to branding specialist, Jenny Andersson. In our conversation I shared how I want women to feel confidence, but it’s more than that, I want all women to feel powerful. When she browsed my website, she responded “Well Sherry, you need to do something different because there’s no mention of ‘powerful’ or ‘powerfulness’ anywhere on your website“.

I thought back to a conversation with my coach … I’d always shied away from the word ‘powerful’. For me it had connotations of aggression and force. I associated powerfulness with dictatorship, which is about as far away from my leadership style as you can get. (Unless you talk to my husband, of course).

Slowly, gradually, I’ve been sprinkling ‘powerful’ and ‘powerfulness’ dust around my website.

And then finally at Joanna’s Shift Speaker Training, I took ownership for ‘powerfulness’. I acknowledged that ‘powerfulness’ is what I want for everyone in the world. The people I most care about are women.

For the purposes of this blog, I looked up the dictionary definition of ‘powerfulness’ and it’s everything that I want for the women in this world:

n. possession of controlling influence

Tomorrow I’ll share how other women define ‘powerfulness’. What about you? What does powerfulness mean to you?

If you like this, you’ll love my online class on how to Unleash Your Inner Confidence next week. You can sign up here.