The Power of Wanting
(Post originally written in 2021)
Are you someone who has disconnected from your true self? From your true wants and needs? Maybe you’ve focused on what other people want. What other people need. Out of a desire to feel needed, to feel safe, to not rock the boat. This has been the case for me for a long time.
And for a long time I’ve had a gratitude practice. Taking a look as often as possible at all the things I’m grateful for in my life.
I’m grateful for my sweet baby.
I’m grateful she’s healthy and sleeping well.
I’m grateful for my mentors and all the progress they’ve enabled me to make in my growth and development.
I’m grateful for the beautiful walk I had in the hills yesterday.
I’m grateful for my husband being silly and making me laugh.
Taking some cues from this Melody Beattie book, I’ve even gotten into a practice of writing that I was grateful for experiences and phenomena that I was NOT AT ALL grateful for. I did this because I found that writing that I was grateful for them allowed me to approach a new level of acceptance.
Sometimes just a fraction of a millimeter of movement towards real gratitude would happen as I wrote about these. And sometimes I’d stumble upon a well of real honest-to-goodness appreciation for these things. Because I could see that they were showing me where I was stuck or connecting me with some other opportunity.
I’ve been realizing over the past month that I’ve been missing a huge piece of the puzzle. While gratitude practice is so important and while I’m grateful for the peace and joy it has brought me, for me it’s not enough.
There’s another side of the coin. It’s connecting with my true wants and desires that I’ve been cut off from for so long. ALLOWING myself to want. Allowing myself to want things that are big and small, extravagant and ordinary.
Examples from my current DESIRE practice:
I want to take risks
I want to scare myself a little
I want to feel free
I want to expand beyond my perceived limitations
I want to do more of the kind of work I’ve done with ___, which is so joyful and life-affirming
I want more of the connection I have with ___, which is so resonant and full of possibilities
I want to stop hiding and share my light
I want to clearly express and ask for what I want
I want to delight in my wants because they are mine
I want to live a more environmentally sustainable life
I want to get back on my bike again
I want to feel stronger and clearer in my body, free from fear and gripping
I want to see my family more
I want to say so when I disagree or when I feel uncomfortable
I want to take the lead. I want to set the tone.
I want to bloom where I am planted even as part of me yearns to be somewhere else
One thing I am noticing is that a gratitude practice and a desire practice are NOT separate, mutually exclusive things. My gratitude practice often points the way to my desire.
As I write that I’m grateful for something, I often realize that I want or would welcome more of it in my life. And as I write about my desires -- particularly things that I want more of -- I often discover my gratitude for whatever level of these things are present for me currently.
I am going to commit to a daily desire practice for the next 14 days as an experiment. Here’s what it will look like:
Free writing a desire list for five minutes a day, starting each list item with the prompt “I want...” and keeping the pen moving for that full five minutes. No self-censorship, no self-judgment, no excuses about how something might not be possible or practical -- just allowing whatever comes up to come up.
Selecting one want on the list and committing to ONE action that I can take today to move towards the fulfilment of that desire. For example, if I select “I want to get back on my bike again,” I could commit to simply pumping up the tires as a baby step in the direction of that want.
I’m going to give it a go and update y’all on what transpires. I have a feeling it’s going to be JUICY.
(Postscript: I originally wrote but never published this post in 2021. I wasn’t yet confident enough in my voice to post publicly. But today, the moment is right, this all still resonates and I’m fully ready for the challenge. I am going to commit to a daily desire practice for the next 14 days. I already did today’s and I’ve got a reminder set on my phone for each of the next days. I’ll report back on May 31!)
