Your desires are your birthright

Honor them. Claim them.

Reflect.

Every year I do a New Years ritual, a long process of reflecting on each of the last twelve months and thinking about the things you’re inviting into the next twelve. What happened. What are you done with, what did you learn. Who entered your life, who exited. What did you do, where did you go, what did you learn about who you are. 

We claim and accept what is here now and what has been. Thank you for the lessons and the blessings. We release you.

With clarity comes great potential. 

There can be a lot of pressure to ‘know what you want’ and ‘set goals’ etc., especially around this time of year. Which is all fine and well —we know that identifying what you want and how you feel is important and helpful. That’s why therapy works. When you can name what’s happening internally, you can then work with it consciously.

To put it acutely: “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.” (Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1922).

Once you know what you want and need and feel, the possibilities for what can happen expand.

Claim.

What are you ready to claim?

In order to change, you must accept who you are and what you want to be. As Carl Rogers says, “the curious paradox is that when I accept myself as I am, then I can change.” 

Claim what’s limiting you. 

Acknowledge what you don’t like or isn’t working anymore. In claiming those limitations, you strip them of their power. Bring them right into your awareness; then they can be felt and free.

I’ve been slowly realizing that a big part of my life is no longer serving me. It’s been creeping up, and finally prodded me hard enough to make me stare it in the face, cry about it, and say goodbye.

Claim what you want. 

Alternatively and additionally, when you claim a desire or an identity that lives within you, it can be free to shine and inform your choices. What’s been bubbling up to the surface lately? What is that thing that life keeps poking you to look at? What do you actually want? Even if it sounds silly or impossible. Claim it. Claim that it’s something you want to experience, or be, or have happen. Say yes to it.

Your desires are your birthright. Honor them.

Successfully setting intentions and thinking about ‘what you want’ involves knowing the deeper desire underneath it. The broader why will provide a framework for you to structure the plans and goals you set.

Do you want to run a marathon, or do you want to be a runner? Do you want to write a book, or do you want to be a writer? Do you want to meditate every day bar none, or do you want to start a meditation practice? The deeper desire will inform the actions you take. You can want both, but they’re different.

I’ve recently claimed the part of my identity that wants to be a writer. It feels vulnerable and tender and scary. There is a voice who says ‘who are you to be a writer?’ And also! A stronger voice tells me ‘go forth.’

Commit.

If you want to be a runner, you have to run. If you want to be a writer, you have to write. If you want to have a meditation practice, you have to meditate.

What is life urging you to commit to? What aspects of yourself deserve a wholehearted commitment to honoring?

Give them space to shine.

One of my recent commitments to myself is to lean into trusting that the time to know will come.And embracing the state of not knowing yet. The time to know how I feel, to know what I want, to know what to do — it will come. The state of the not knowing is part of the Process.

And if I don’t know, it’s probably not time for me to know yet.

Cheers to the unfolding. 

xx maggie

A little poem I wrote a year ago

on this thursday the seventeenth of december, 2020. 
it is seven thirty five and here is the glow of the dried oranges on our tiny tree, and there is the thin white snow sheet draped across the street 
the radiators are alive and their love is warm

I feel twisted with the discomfort that comes with expressing what is right for me 

and, also, I feel a grateful relief
a deep breath, a sense of ah, yes. This is right. It will be Okay. 
this is supposed to be this way, right now. 
you are wholly in your worth when you speak out loud the boundaries that exist within you, when you draw them into your life and relationships                                                you are supposed to honor your wants,
they matter as much as your needs.

your desires are here for a reason.
here to show you what you’re meant to be doing.
here to guide you along the most beautiful and honest and free version of this life, your life  

your desires are your birthright.
your longings are your roadmap.
what lights you up shows you where to go,
the little tingles you feel that say go here, or say this,
those are correct.

dance with your desires, get to know them.
entertain those urges that don’t Make Sense.
lean into the longings that emerge from your soul,
& witness the magic that unfolds