Lately, I’ve been thinking about wanting.
After spending many years giving myself permission to want more, I’ve been experimenting with surrendering my wants. What if I let go of my agenda, stop trying to force my wants, and instead allow myself to be guided by an energy that’s greater than me?
What if surrendering my wants, ironically, is what’s going to allow me to receive even more of what I desire?
Before surrendering our wants, most of us need to allow our wants to exist in the first place.
Here are some of the themes I’ve been noodling on, I’m so curious to hear how this lands with you!
Allowing wants.
How much do you allow yourself to want? How much do you believe you deserve your wants? How much do you allow your wants to actually come to fruition?
Different kinds of wants.
There’s wanting from a place of grasping and desperation. Black hole type wants. These wants stem from pain. Chasing these wants is an attempt to get out of pain.
And there’s wanting from an authentic and even vulnerable place. Expansion type wants. These wants stem from pure desires. Desires that pull you towards pleasure, joy and your own becoming.
Different kinds of wanters.
Some people don’t allow themselves to want or have needs. They are repressed wanters.
Others seem to want more, all the time. Hungry ghost wanters.
Women and wanting.
How much are women allowed to want in life? What happens when women want too much? How much has each gender been conditioned to allow certain wants, and deny others?
Wanting and childhood.
How much is wanting connected to whether or not your needs were met as a child? If your needs were not met, you probably developed coping strategies that either repress wants or desperately try to fill the hole.
When I reflect on my own wants, I’ve had a desperate, grasping energy towards my wants for most of my life.
This desperation is rooted in a fear of not getting my needs met. And this fear causes me to attempt to control, force, push and pull my desires to me quickly, steamrolling others in the process without considering consequences.
Yes, there’s a greediness to it, but more than that, there’s a silent desperation underneath all these behaviors.
When I’m in an authentic desire, there’s no desperation, no timeline, no agenda, no story.
It just is.
There’s a purity and a simplicity to it.
My “lower self” often comes in and attempts to control and force these pure desires. And that’s ok. I’m learning how to make space for these parts of myself, how to reassure them that I’m here, no matter what. More than anything, I attempt to show these parts of myself that I am able to meet all their needs, right here, in this moment, by simply loving them as they are.
What gets in the way of your wants?
Take a moment and write “I want” five times in a row.
I want this.
I want this.
I want this.
I want this.
I want this.
Writing these words, I feel old beliefs and shame crop up.
What do you notice reading or writing “I want” five times in a row? What does it bring up inside your body or mind?
Many of us have been taught that our wanting is shameful.
Look outside your window at a tree or a plant that’s stretching towards the sun, blossoming with new leaves. Would you ever consider calling it shameful for that tree to want more sunlight, to want new growth?
How ludicrous is that?
And yet, we deny our own wants all the time.
“I shouldn’t do xxx.”
“It’s more responsible to do yyy.”
“That’s selfish.”
“I don’t have time.”
“I don’t know what I want.” (In this case, you can start with “What I want is some quiet space alone to begin getting in touch with my wants.”
Some of us don’t let ourselves want because we fear being disappointed.
Or we believe that if we unearth a want, we must take action to make it happen immediately. This is not the case.
We can allow ourselves to want just for the sake of wanting and dreaming.
Some of us don’t want to want because we don’t want to feel the painful gap between the want and where our life is currently at.
Maybe you try to stay positive and not speak about lack because you know words are powerful. Constantly looking for more can make it hard to appreciate the now, but it’s also human nature to wish things were different.
Unexpressed wants can turn into sour complaints very quickly.
Wants are there, whether you acknowledge them or not. Certain wants are quiet nags that don’t go away. Denying wants causes us to grow in twisted and distorted ways.
Bringing wants to the surface is like opening the curtains and allowing sunlight into the room of your heart.
It helps you get back in touch with love and vitality.
As I reflect on what stops me from allowing myself to express my wants, it’s mostly because I don’t want to feel the painful gap between what is and what I would like to be.
Here’s a crazy idea; what if we incorporated grief into our wanting?
Maybe grieving what is not yet here is a natural part of wanting.
And if we allow the grief, we can integrate it and re-focus on the new desire that’s emerging with more of our life force.
There’s a difference between wallowing in complaints and negativity, which keeps a negative cycle going, and allowing your body or emotions to express pain, discomfort or sadness, which then releases and integrates.
What if we imagined a new want and felt the joy and thrill of it, followed by the disappointment and grief of it not yet being, like an inhale and an exhale.
So today, I invite you to get curious about your wants + grief.
What is your relationship to wanting? Do you allow your wants or repress them? What comes up for you when you imagine allowing yourself to want more? Shame? Fear? Sadness?
Start to unearth and claim your wants.
(especially if you’ve been a Repressed Wanter)
Experiment with surrendering your wants or feeling the painful gap between what is and what you want, allow the felt perceptions that come up to be loved, healed and integrated.
(especially if you’ve been a Hungry Ghost Wanter – like me!)
One practice I keep coming back to over the years that continues to be useful is to set a timer for just 5 minutes and write stream of consciousness;
“I want…. “
Simply write “I want…” “I want…” “I want…” over and over again, from the mundane to the extreme, nothing is off the table. Just don’t let your pen stop moving. You may be surprised by what comes out.
The point of the exercise is to get more comfortable unearthing and expressing your wants.
You don’t have to do anything about your wants. You’re simply bringing them out into the light.
Allowing your heart to breathe a little more.
I want kittens.
I want to lie down every day for at least ten minutes.
I want a clean office.
I want someone to cook me delicious, nutritious meals.
I want to feel healthy and full of energy.
I want to laugh every day.
I want to be really present for my kids.
I want a partner who wants to meet me in joy and co-create from there.
I want to feel like a team with my partner.
I want to feel sexy as I age.
I want to do something creative every day.
I want to build a business that shifts consciousness on the planet with ease and joy.
I want to change how we work.
I want to bring more pleasure and joy to work.
I want to spend lots of time outdoors in nature.
I want to have close friendships with people in my community.
I want to be useful, to be of service.
I want to be playful and goofy.
I want to find lots of amazing, page turner fiction books with little to no effort.
That’s my list for today.
Your turn.
What do you want?
I’d love to hear what this brought up for you! Simply hit “reply” on this email and let me know. I’ll read all your responses.
I want to read your responses. 🙂
And if you want support in getting in touch with your wants through following your energetic breadcrumbs and the whispers of your soul, stay tuned, we have some very exciting announcements about our upcoming LIVE Soul Solution course coming next week!!
May you allow yourself to want more, and magnetize your wants with ease and joy,
Vanessa
P.S. Our audiobook publisher just sent us this exciting news…
The Soul Solution audiobook is 60% off on this platform through 9/23!
If you’re like me, you have a ton of unused credits on Audible…in which case this 60% off won’t work, but you can download it for free with one of your credits. 😉
With August in full swing, our audio publisher thought it was the perfect time to offer you an end-of-summer discount so you can enjoy the audiobook on a road trip, at the beach, or while relaxing in the AC.
P.P.S. In the coming weeks, I’m going to be offering a LIVE Soul Solution Course with weekly Lessons and Live Calls to dive deep into the coaching tools from each chapter of The Soul Solution book.
Stay tuned for more info on how to sign up next week.
You can jump ahead by starting to read or listen to the book right away!