When you are fed up with feeling like you can't take hold of the reins of your own life, you know that it's time to do what you can to empower yourself to be better and to feel in control. Feeling powerless can lead to negative thoughts, anxiety, mental and physical stress and the increased risk of depression. Putting you back in the drivers seat and unlocking the key to your overall health and wellbeing starts with taking your power back.

The problem that many of us have is that we don't know what empowerment actually feels like and so when approaching the concept we are unsure of the first steps to take. Of course, you can consult a life coach to help you make changes in your life, or if you are more of a spiritual person you could alternatively look at your birth chart to see what clues the universe and your alignment with it might hold. Ideally though you should begin with your own self awareness. What things trigger you, what makes you happy and when do you feel most at ease. Once you’ve started to get an idea of where your perceived lack of control is coming from, you can begin to form a plan of how to get on track. With that in mind, we've put together a list of four helpful ways in which you can begin to empower yourself and start living a calmer, more stress free life.

Trust Your Gut

It's time to pay attention to your gut instinct. That pull in the bottom of your stomach and the back of your head is your nagging voice that tells you what your instincts are telling you to do. So many of us shut out those instincts and gut feelings to allow us to be guided by external factors, but really we should be guiding ourselves. If you want to empower yourself, then you need to really get better about following your instinct. While you can still take people's advice into account, you shouldn't allow other people's opinions to override what you've truly known.

Check In

Check in with yourself from time to time. Taking time out of your busy day to know what you want is important. All you need is 10 minutes to disconnect from everything and everyone else and just take the time to see how you're really feeling. Doing so will help you to live your life with much more purpose. So lie down for a while or just sit somewhere beautiful and think.

Declutter Your Space

Create an environment that is more than empowering. It's really difficult to feel empowered if you are sitting in a messy room or a messy home. You need your environment to stop you from feeling continuously distracted. You should be ridding yourself of all things you don't need in life so that you can think clearly and have more focus.

Give Back

Start doing something positive for your community. It's all well and good to empower yourself with things that you want for yourself, but sometimes empowering you means giving back. Look into your community and find out how you can do more for others around you or how you can get involved with local initiatives, and then watch yourself grow as a person as a result.

Feeling empowered helps you to feel free, it enables you to have the strength to tackle obstacles, cope with sudden change and have confidence in your own abilities. Whilst it wont make all problems go away it will certainly help in the way you deal with them.

For more helpful advice on freeing your mind from negative thoughts and understanding empowerment, listen to our podcast episode with author & founder of Happy Not Perfect, Poppy Jamie.