"A wide-ranging and powerfully optimistic look at how individuals can
change their lives." - Kirkus Reviews
In ME POWER, Dr. LaNysha Tufuga Adams, Ivy-League educated linguist redefines "empowerment" and challenges others not only to answer this question, "Who do you want to be?" but to put the answer(s) into action.
Each chapter includes a variety of exercises and activities to help readers apply the five Me Power principles.
More than a book, Me Power is an attitude, a mindset, and a call to action that urges those who read it to unlock their limitless power of
positive change.
2022 Best Indie Book Award (BIBA) in the Non-Fiction Motivational Category
5-Star Review from Readers' Favorite!
"A wide-ranging and powerfully optimistic look at how individuals can
change their lives." - Kirkus Reviews
In ME POWER, Dr. LaNysha Tufuga Adams, Ivy-League educated linguist redefines "empowerment" and challenges others not only to answer this question, "Who do you want to be?" but to put the answer(s) into action.
Each chapter includes a variety of exercises and activities to help readers apply the five Me Power principles.
More than a book, Me Power is an attitude, a mindset, and a call to action that urges those who read it to unlock their limitless power of
positive change.
2022 Best Indie Book Award (BIBA) in the Non-Fiction Motivational Category
5-Star Review from Readers' Favorite!
S.T.O.P. = Start to Open Possibilities
—RICHIE NORTON
Have you ever thought about what empowerment means?
It’s a popular term without a clear definition. Most of the time, we hear it used in conjunction with a particular social problem, such as women’s empowerment, Black empowerment, economic empowerment, or employee empowerment. Without looking up each definition, we can assume they all relate to overcoming structural barriers, given the population’s needing “to be” empowered somehow.
According to Merriam Webster, empowerment means:
1. the act or action of empowering someone or something; the granting of the power, right, or authority to perform various acts or duties
2. the state of being empowered to do something; the power, right, or authority to do something
These denotations—the literal or primary interpretations of the word—miss the mark of empowerment’s true meaning.
As a lifelong word lover and trained linguist, to uncover the history of the word, I went to the best resource for the English language, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). The OED has six hundred thousand words with present-day and historical meanings and pronunciations with more than 3.5 million entries, spanning over one thousand years. Unlike other dictionaries, the OED is remarkable because each entry contains selected quotations of the word in use at the time, which shows pre- precisely how and when particular words were used, spelled, and pronounced. The OED revealed a different meaning for empowerment’s root word: empower.
To understand its true meaning, I focused on the inverse of its prefix -em: me. The word’s prefix stems from French, Old French, and Latin, meaning “in” or “into.” In doing so, I realized empowerment is a personal process of pivoting one’s perspective inward. Traditional definitions, however, assume external forces control the process. Those who invade our lives with physical power, positional authority, social status, or wealth often intimidate us. They can take the power we guard so carefully, stealing the essence of who we are. None of these definitions reflect the outcomes we can achieve through empowerment. True empowerment requires recognizing we are our greatest assets and that it is possible for us to reach any of our deepest hopes and dreams by activating self-knowledge and principled action (i.e., Embrace Your Barriers, Focus On Your Strengths, Speak for Your Life, Choose Your Guide(s), Ritualize Your Reflection).
First used in 1849, the OED defines empowerment as “the action of empowering; the state of being empowered.” Taking a closer look at its etymology, the transitive verb empower has been used in English since the seventeenth century, when Hamon L’Estrange (in The Reign of King Charles) and John Milton (in Paradise Lost) used it to indicate someone or something else enables power to emerge in unclear ways.
But what about the power that comes from within you, which you manifest when you become more of who you are, creating change and working to reach your maximum potential?
Sadly, my beloved OED disappointed. But the process of examining the word’s use over time revealed a fact that was not at all obvious: Right down to its bones, empowerment is always a matter of power. In its popular use and etymology, empowerment has more to do with power over, referring to an externalizing effect of controlling, impacting, or influencing others. In fact, power over is the opposite of empowerment, yet the two terms share a similar meaning, both referring to giving someone else power or authority.
When I saw Me Power and read the synopsis, I was immediately skeptical. The piece claimed to redefine the meaning of the word “empower,” to teach the reader to claim it as an action verb by him- or herself. But I already knew the definition of “empower,” I scoffed to myself. Could this lady - the author, LaNysha Adams - really have written a book that changed that? Could she really turn the meaning of a powerful - if a bit overused - verb on its head? I thought not.
But oh, how wrong I was. Adams does, indeed, use her book Me Power to turn the definition of “empower” on its head. The kicker, though, is her modus operandi. She first discusses our society’s typical use of the word “empower,” both in itself and as a stem for “empowering,” “empowerment,” etc. She rues the well-meaning but misguided concept of seeking empowerment through things and other people. This, Adams posits, is not the way empowerment should work. A woman after my English major’s heart, she goes on to address each minute linguistic technicality of the word in question - maintaining, of course, her consistently reader-friendly tone. She proves exactly why “empower” could and should in fact be written as “me power.”
Me Power is written with a sense of purpose, a bold plan of action, and a hope for readers’ futures. It is an announcement that help has arrived - help in reclaiming the ability to seize power, ambition, and capability for oneself. Adams has created a masterpiece with her book; more than just a self-help piece, it is a work of transformative non-fiction that is an absolute can’t-miss for any reader looking to improve the quality of his or her life. I recommend it wholeheartedly to any and all.