The SWEET Empowerment Hour

There are five stages, levels, or states of awareness that have been used to help determine the insight and prognosis of others. They also have served to help contextualize someone’s presentation, as well as to help us, clinicians, better understand where someone is coming from, put things into perspective, and allows us to better meet them where they are at, which we call at SWEET, Leveling (as in, being on a level playing field).

The First Level of Awareness is known as Suffering, which, in turn, is characterized by a sense of victimhood, disempowerment, and externalization. Our goal is to help someone at this First Level of Awareness evolve to the Second Level of Awareness, a state known as Empowerment.

There are several principles to help someone reach this state.  There is also a set of strategies, which significantly enhances the likelihood that someone attains the Level of Awareness of Empowerment.

This set of strategies is summed up as the SWEET Empowerment Hour, and it entails having the first hour of the day being committed to as protected time.

Regardless of what Level of Awareness someone may be at, using one’s first hour and distributing twenty minutes to each of the following three endeavors can create a powerful response in their lives.

1. Body: 20 minutes: Twenty-minute duration for exercise is the typical minimum recommendation, and the moment our body moves, our brain, the command center for our body, also moves. The benefits of physical exercise abound and it is common knowledge that symptoms of depression, of anxiety; in addition to difficulties with stress, with self-image, or self-esteem improve considerably. These are only some of the many benefits of this intervention.

2. Spirit: 20 minutes: Our Spirit is a part of our mind. We have a part of our unconscious mind that follows a blueprint derived from our genetic make-up, from our experiences, mediated by the process of epigenetics. That part of our unconscious mind leads to symptom formation, defense mechanisms, and while this is all part of the mechanism of helping us survive, this mechanism of survival prevents us from moving to the next Level of Awareness. After all, the state of suffering is us being “stuck” in survival mode.  It keeps us safe by preventing us from trying new things, from taking risks, rather, keeping us to live very small and safe lives.  The Spirit, on the other hand, is our higher mind, and contains our pre-conscious blueprint, and our pre-thought blueprint, and must and can be accessed, for our own benefits.

   How do we access this higher mind? We use these twenty minutes in the morning to either meditate, practice the scientifically proven exercise of appreciation, or that of journaling, or a combination of all three.

3. Mind: 20 minutes: The “mind”, we’re alluding here, is the conscious mind, the intellect, the higher functions of the mind or the brain, notably, reasoning, memory, perception, imagination, among others. All of them need to be accessed and strengthened if they are to serve us.

   How do we strengthen the mind? The simplest response…read, read, and read. Do so for twenty minutes a day, and the rest will be taken care of.

What does it take for us to dedicate our first hour of the day to our Body, our Spirit, and our Mind? Should we go ahead and give it a try?

More later on the SWEET Empowerment Hour. Meanwhile please share with us, what you are going to do as part of your implementation step.

Until soon,
Karen and Mardoche