Accessing Desire
“I hope I’m having twins so I can leave my job.”
The words left my mouth and then I burst into tears.
Verbalizing that desire was a risky and vulnerable moment. Thankfully my best friend received this confession with compassion. She calmly asked, “Why do you need to have twins in order to leave your job.”
What became clear through the conversation was how deeply unhappy I was with my professional role. I was struggling with owning that dissatisfaction for myself. I’d feel much better if some external circumstance or force could make the decision for me. And at that moment, as I was pregnant with my second son, anticipating two babies instead of one felt like the perfect external factor I could hide behind!
Figuring out what we want and then owning that desire is so challenging for those of us who have spent a lifetime figuring out how to work and perform in ways that please authority figures: parents, teachers, supervisors, etc.
In her book, Playing Big, Tara Mohr addresses this dynamic regarding what she calls “good girl” behavior and links it to the way external voices reinforce and reward certain kinds of behavior for girls.
Good girls learn how to follow the rules and please those in authority. We crave the affirmation that comes with a pat on head and the knowledge that we’re doing the kind of work expected of us. We eat it up! We bask in it!
But, as you can guess, the skills we learn to keep other people happy, especially our bosses and co-workers, aren’t the same skills we need to cultivate if we want to grow our ability to access our desires and express them in ways that allow us to move toward the changes we want.
The good news is that desire is already in you. I already knew I wanted to leave my professional role before I was able to admit it to myself or anyone else.
Here are a couple of ways to cultivate access your own desires:
Pay attention to what you avoid: is there a question or topic you refuse to address when it comes to your life, professional or otherwise? Avoidance is a common tactic we use to keep ourselves in the dark about our own desires.
Ask yourself, if you set aside money and other practical limitations, what do you want to be doing? What’s the work you want to put into the world? How does that compare or contrast with your current work?
