You Have No Say in What You Want
You Have No Say in What You Want
What good is power if you don't know what you want it for?
We use power best when we are powerful in the name of a deeply rooted desire. When we do so, we are commanding and creating our world from the most essential, alive and beautiful parts of ourselves.
It's when we're operating from a deeply embodied place of true hunger, of true longing, of true passion, of true need, of true vitality that getting what we want serves the whole universe and creates a world that's custom-tailored to who you truly are right now.
Ultimately, power is not a feeling or a mood – like an outfit. Power is the ability to access your deepest desires, express them fully to others, and use them to influence other people and the world at large. Power means powerful relationships with others.
So knowing what you want is critical to learning how to make powerful asks and negotiate resistance in those relationships well.
In almost every class I teach, I ask students early on: “What do you want out of this course? What's your desire?” After a bit of probing, it’s very common for there to be a reaction of low -grade panic.
Getting to the heart of what you want can be quite confronting and difficult.
So I'm going to offer you something that might help you to marinade some of the more hidden desires – the ones that have been nagging at you for a long time, or that haven't quite been located or named.
Or help you give the deeper desires that you haven't felt free to speak a bit more permission to exist.
Here goes:
You have no say in what you want.
You have no say in what you want.
You have no say in what you want!
You don't invent a desire like declaring a New Year's resolution.
You don't create a desire like you create a goal.
A desire is something that comes through you that you have no say in.
You have no say in what you want.
You do have a say in whether you bury it deep or let it rise into the light.
You do have a say in whether you are willing to be courageous enough to identify it, and patient and gentle enough to coax it into a spoken form.
And you do have a choice in what form you ask for it to be satisfied. As you ‘out’ your desire, it will start to develop and take shape like a seedling that breaks ground to reveal itself – and it’s a marvelous thing to witness.
Here is what I mean: what initially comes up as a desire in its purest form might seem controversial, superficial, silly or simply unrealistic. The feeling is 100% right. But you'll only know the details as you take steps to test it.
As the desire travels from the choiceless place of deep-seated feeling through the emotional body to reach the mental space, we can begin to test to see what satisfies the desire.
Does a desire for a "more romantic landscape with our partner" involves some really juicy content like crazy sex? Or does it paint a picture of tender cuddling or having our partner know exactly what kind of flowers or food we like?
This is where our desire’s interaction with the world becomes very, very interesting and very, very, fun to navigate and play with. It's almost as if we get to go window shopping to see if these novel experiences will match with the desire that’s inside.
Desire isn't a to-do list, nor a shopping list or an item on a menu. It's a living thing. You feed it with care and attention and it grows in new directions. It wants to come alive!
You have no say in what you want.
You have no say in what you want.
You have no say in what you want!
You do have a say in what happens next.
Soon enough, you might start seeing things in your life that ARE possible that would meet that desire. Maybe it doesn't look anything like your first vision. But when you see it, your body knows because it's been cultivating the feeling.
Here’s why giving our desires permission to come through us is so important to honor.
If you will allow me a little bit of metaphysical imagination, I am of the conviction that these desires simply choose the right vessel. They choose you to be the channel and the vessel of that particular expression of life. They choose you to create something new in the world that’s asking to be created.
This is how desire becomes power. If we can be devoted stewards of these desires by identifying, articulating and devising genius plans for how to get those desires met – whether it be the desire we asked for, the one that we create collaboration around, or the one that we materialize in the world – that is true power. The kind of power that's worth having.
When you go and arbitrarily impose your will upon another in order to prove to yourself that you can do it, is that real power? Especially if you suppress their own desires (and possibly yours) in the process?
Consider instead that power is a tool – a tool to identify what is so alive in you, so true in you, so compelling in you, that the legitimacy that comes with that life force lights you up. And that without even having to command it, simply by witnessing your desire, the other person is so captivated that they want to be a part of it. They want to be invited to join the party, or the mission of fulfilling that vision.
Power wielded in the name of a deeply rooted desire is the truest form of power there is, and nothing short of a magical way of living.
There are no guarantees except this:
You have no say in what you want.
You have no say in what you want!
But you do have a say in whether you ask for your desire to be realized, and how you ask if you do.
Desires that we deny become like hungry ghosts to haunt us.
Embrace them, learn to powerfully ask for them to be satisfied, and the game of life is truly afoot.
The Legitimacy Exercise
When we do locate something that we want, we can oftentimes feel a little shaky around the idea of ‘deserving’ that desire, or its legitimacy.
The Legitimacy Exercise is a powerful tool to help you to clarify the signal of what it is that you really, really want, to deepen your ownership of that desire and to really feel the depth of its truth.
When our own desires are rooted in deep legitimacy, we carry the signal within us that others can feel, without us having to speak it.
This is where true power begins.
Throughout centuries, women have been trained to give away their power.
The Academy teaches women to take their power back.
Watch Kasia’s TED Talk, ‘One Simple Trick to Reclaim Your Power’.
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