Meeting Your Power: Returning Home To Yourself

By DJ Zinhle and Nokubonga Mbanga

A message for today's women; it is time for you to step into your starring role.
Being empowered is a choice; it is a daily decision that defines who we are and it is accessible to everyone.
Meeting Your Power is a reminder that power is inside all of us, and that your journey to empowerment begins with you.
This is the story of two remarkable women, DJ Zinhle and Nokubonga Mbanga, who have experienced life's ups and downs. They share the lessons learnt on their life journeys through inspirational words - words that will invoke your inner power, words that will help you return home to your essence, and words that will encourage you to return to the source of your power, the power that we are all born with.
Being an empowered woman is more than just doing, it is also about being. This book will show you how to look at power differently and will help you to unleash and harness your inner power with honest, simple and practical examples and advice. Most importantly, you will learn that your greatest empowerment project is being authentically you, every day.
Prepare to meet your power and radiate your possibilities.
Let's ignite a movement of women and girls who understand the higher meaning of love for oneself and others, who appreciate and celebrate our collective growth; who nurture a solid mindset of achievement and who value creating, protecting and preserving our inner peace.
Rise and Raise.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tracey McDonald Publishers
• Release date: May 25, 2018
• ISBN: 9780994722676

Book preview

First published by Tracey McDonald Publishers, 2018

Suite No. 53, Private Bag X903, Bryanston, South Africa, 2021

www.traceymcdonaldpublishers.com

Copyright © Zinhle Jiyane and Nokubonga Mbanga, 2018

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission from the publisher.

ISBN 978-0-9947226-6-9

e-ISBN (ePUB) 978-0-9947226-7-6

Text design and typesetting by Patricia Crain, Empressa

Cover design by Ron Olivier, incynq solutions

Digital conversion by Johan Koortzen

Front cover photography © Stills by Tom

Printed and bound by Pinetown Printers (Pty) Ltd

For our daughters Kairo Forbes, Melathisi, Khakha and Sibane Mbanga

may you always remain fully present in every moment.

For our mothers Jabu Jiyane and Zenziwe Makamba

who taught us the value of changing our stories regardless of our background.

Thank you for believing in us and praying for us.

Daughters of the World

may our experiences inspire you to create more empowering stories,

to love yourselves confidently and to live courageously.

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1 SELF-WORTH

CHAPTER 2 MANAGING FEAR

CHAPTER 3 MANAGING YOUR INNER CRITIC

CHAPTER 4 MANAGING CRITICISM

CHAPTER 5 FACES OF INSPIRATION (WE ARE NOT ALONE)

CHAPTER 6 THE COMPARISON TRAP

CHAPTER 7 THE POWER OF THE WORD

CHAPTER 8 PROJECT ME

CHAPTER 9 ADVERSITY

CHAPTER 10 GRATITUDE

CONCLUSION

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

INTRODUCTION

In both our professions, we have been blessed with the opportunity to interact with women from all parts of the world. We have seen certain parts of ourselves in these women and we are truly inspired by their wisdom, love, respect and compassion. We are both passionate about the empowerment of women, and by writing this book and sharing our own experiences we hope to contribute positively towards the journey of each and every woman who reads these pages.

We are also on our own journeys and we hope that the lessons we have learnt and share in this book will be an inspiration to you and encourage a deeper relationship with yourself. We hope it lights a fire in you that cannot be extinguished or ignored, a fire that propels you towards your power. Your power lives within you; we want you to discover it because living your best life is your responsibility and nobody else’s.

Pain cannot be avoided, it’s part of life, but we believe that it is an instrument that can be used for greater good. We have used pain (and our joys) to become stronger and more resilient women. We hope that this book will encourage you to appreciate every experience, no matter how hard it is, by believing that each experience is meant to grow and prepare you for the next greater and fulfilling chapter of your life.

Power has always felt as though it’s a responsibility or a gift, reserved and accessible for some, and not for others. But we have learnt that power is accessible to all of us, every day. Our daily decisions, our daily activities, our daily interactions and our daily thoughts give us the opportunity to experience our power.

We realise every day that we are blessed with opportunities to harness the power to be better, happier, more productive and successful, and so much more. Meeting your power is a daily practice.

Meet your power and radiate your possibilities so that others will be inspired by you. Let us all inspire change and ignite a movement of women and girls who meet their power with grace.

Rise and Raise!

CHAPTER 1

SELF-WORTH

ZINHLE

What is self-worth?

I asked a few of my friends what they thought self-worth was and most of them looked and sounded uncomfortable. They could not give me a straightforward answer and it seemed that none of them were confident about what they understood self-worth to be.

This got me thinking. Where are we taught self-worth? Do we learn it on our own, is it something we pick up as we learn and grow from experience, or could it be that we are born with it?

The dictionary defines self-worth as the sense of one’s own value or worth as a person. Another definition that came up when I searched for the meaning of self-worth on the Internet was self-worth is the opinion you have about yourself and the value you place on yourself.

It is also important to define the word ‘worth’. According to the dictionary, worth is the level at which someone or something deserves to be valued or rated.

I have always understood self-worth to be what you think of yourself and how you see yourself. So the best definition for me is that it is the opinion you have about yourself. Opinions may or may not reflect the truth, and opinions can change. Why am I saying this? Because whatever opinion you have of yourself today can change as a result of an experience, a revelation or new information you may come across.

I remember clearly the first opinion I had of myself. As a child, my parents, their friends and a lot of the people who visited our home had one question that they’d always ask us. We children would line up to be introduced and the question would be: ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’

I had no idea what I wanted to be. This worried me because my sisters and brothers all had answers but I, on the other hand, did not. I didn’t believe that I was capable of being anything incredible or amazing and I’ll tell you why: it was because of the opinion I had of myself.

When I was growing up I was repeatedly told that I was lazy. I was told often enough to eventually start believing it myself. We all know that lazy people do not amount to anything and so believing that I was a lazy person made me think that I could never achieve anything and that was why I didn’t have an answer to the question people asked.

So, as a kid, I already had an opinion about myself and I already had low self-worth because of what I was told by people whose opinions I trusted.

Another childhood memory is about my appearance. People would often tell me how beautiful I was. Again, this was a message I heard so often that I believed it. I was okay with this information. I knew that it was a good thing, but it was not a big deal for me. It felt good for a moment but it was not something I thought about every day.

I started feeling differently about this information when I was with people who I viewed as more beautiful than myself. All of a sudden I felt as though my beauty was not enough.

Those were two instances regarding my self-worth that I remember as a child; one of them was a positive affirmation and the other was negative. When I was told how lazy I was, I was very quick to believe it. However when I was told how beautiful I was, I didn’t spend a lot of time appreciating or processing that information.

We receive a lot of messages on a daily basis about what people think of us and they have a great influence on the opinions we have of ourselves. With so many messages, how do we select the information that is right for us to form opinions of ourselves?

People often tell us how to behave, what to do and what not to do. We are told what perfection is, and then it is expected that we should live up to those expectations. When we fall short of meeting the requirements, we start putting ourselves down and having negative opinions about ourselves. We start thinking that we are not good enough, that we do not have what it takes to succeed, and that we are not as worthy as the next person.

We have given people the power to define our self-worth for us. In my opinion that is too much power to give away. The sooner we start defining our own self-worth the sooner we will start believing in ourselves. If we are so ready to believe other people’s opinions about us, then we should be even more ready to accept our own opinions about ourselves. We need to be in control.

If you have given too much power away and allowed people to define you, you need to take back the power. When it comes to defining yourself you need to trust yourself and your views more than you trust those of other people. It is in your own interests to start doing things differently, always bearing in mind that self-worth is about the value you put on yourself.

The good news is that you can take control of this right now; from this moment on you can start being positive about your self-worth. It’s time you started believing the good things that have been said about you and it’s also time that you started saying and believing good things about yourself. If you do not believe in yourself, who will?

If you do not think highly of yourself, there’s a good chance that you do not believe you are capable of great things. Now, let me tell you something, you are created to be great; everything you need to be great is already in you. The secret is in believing it.

You need to believe that you are capable of achieving great things because the simple truth is that you are amazing, great, smart, charming, beautiful and capable. Each of these attributes – and more – are true about you. I cannot repeat this often enough. My task here is to deliver this message to you and your job is to start redefining your self-worth. Start writing a different script for yourself, delete all the negative things that you have believed about yourself and replace them with positive things. When you start having a different dialogue with yourself it will feel uncomfortable; sometimes you might feel that you’re not being honest with yourself because of all the negative things that have been said about you, but don’t give up. Repeat the positive messages until you believe them.

You need to tell yourself over and over again that you are worthy. Unfortunately, this change will not happen overnight because acquiring positive self-worth takes time. Any moment you get to define yourself, to have an opinion about yourself, you need to invest positively. This means replacing all the negative dialogue you have with yourself and to stop saying mean things about yourself.

As of today, as of this moment, I need you to start writing down all the positive things you believe about yourself. Add more information every day and it doesn’t matter whether it is big or small. Celebrate it. This journey of finding your self-worth is a great time for you to start letting people know that from now on you are expecting only positivity from them. Anyone who has a negative opinion about you should please keep it to themselves.

Comparing ourselves with others is problematic because it causes us to doubt ourselves and create unfair expectations of ourselves. Comparing yourself with others will almost certainly have a negative impact on your self-worth. Don’t do it! Trust yourself.

Other people are on a different journey from you; their destiny and yours are totally different. Why then compare yourself with anyone else? When you do this you will fall short because you are measuring yourself against a journey and a destiny that are not meant for you.

Focus on yourself. Trust that God has instilled in you what you need to be your great and fulfilled self. Greatness is your destiny and you’ve got what it takes to be whoever you want to be.

As I said earlier, opinions can be changed. You can start forming new opinions about yourself today. We all have bad days, but what’s important is that you stick to the plan to continue being kind to yourself and positive about yourself.

The next time someone asks you about self-worth, I want you to be excited at the thought of how positive your self-worth is. We pay people compliments all the time, so don’t forget to compliment yourself. Don’t forget to say amazing things about yourself –

Reviews for Meeting Your Power

[Cindy Buthelezi Dibete · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Inspirational, brilliant straight to the point hacks. I loved it thoroughly.