How to Be a Strong Woman

What does it mean to be a strong woman today? How can women consciously express their femininity without becoming cold or closed-hearted on the one hand… or wimpy and emasculated on the other? What’s the most loving way for a conscious woman to express herself?
Here are 10 ways to live more consciously as a woman:

1. Get to know your authentic self.

Discover the real you. Don’t blindly accept the role you were conditioned by others to fill. You have your own path to follow. Be your own independent person. Don’t allow peer pressure to force you into an inauthentic role.

2. Own your power.

Accept full responsibility for your life. Don’t live as a doormat, a sheep, or a victim. Stop giving away your power. You must accept that you’re the creator of your life and that no one is coming to rescue you. Many women stressed the importance of taking responsibility for your own financial future instead of leaving it in the hands of a spouse.

3. Find your voice.
Build the courage to express yourself authentically. Speak your truth. You deserve to be heard. If others react negatively, that’s their problem. Ask for what you want; you can’t expect others to be mind-readers. You teach others how you want to be treated — not by dropping hints but by telling them directly. If you don’t speak up for yourself, who will?

4. Find your tribe.
Consciously build and nurture a supportive network of positive relationships, including family and friends. Drop relationships that drain you; maintaining them is self-abuse. If you don’t like your current relationships, it’s up to you to change that. Surround yourself with good people who love you and inspire you. You deserve the very best relationships.

5. Practice self-care.
Avoid overwhelm by taking time to sharpen the saw. Give yourself permission to do what you enjoy. Demands from other people can wait. Accept that you can’t do everything for everyone. You can’t give to others when you’re empty inside.

6. Express your creative side.
Cultivate outlets for creative self-expression. Explore music, art, writing, poetry, etc. Build a business. Be artistic. Put your ideas into physical form.

7. Embrace conscious sexuality.
You and you alone must decide the role sex will play in your life. There are no right or wrong answers. If you want it and enjoy it, let that be enough. Different women had widely varying opinions on what kind of sexual expression they personally preferred, ranging from waiting until marriage to having guilt-free one-night stands. But the commonality was that they consciously decided and accepted what was right for them, regardless of how other people felt about it.

8. Be beautiful.
True beauty comes from the inside. It can’t be found beneath a load of cosmetics and surgical alterations. Recognize that you’re a beautiful person on the inside, and you’ll broadcast that awareness on the outside. You are beautiful.

9. Keep your heart open.
Regardless of how badly you may have been hurt in the past, keep your heart open. You’re stronger than you think. The rewards of love outweigh the risks of being hurt again. You’re here to express love, not to live in fear.

10. Become wise.
You are highly intuitive, so work on deepening your ability to trust your intuition. Keep learning and growing. In the long run, your wisdom will become one of your greatest assets, both as a way to meet your own needs and to help others. (Many women placed a very high value on developing their wisdom.)

The point of articles such as these isn’t to dictate how you’re supposed to live. The point is to offer you different perspectives to consider, so you can make more conscious and deliberate choices for yourself.

Being a man or woman isn’t about blindly following popular gender patterns, nor is it about rejecting such patterns out of hand and rebelliously embracing their opposites. Ultimately you must define what kind of man or woman you will become. This is a choice you must make for yourself as an individual, regardless of what anyone else thinks. What kind of man/woman do you wish to be? Life awaits your answer…