Joy As The New Success: Why Smart, Ambitious Women Need to Reclaim Their Joy and Pleasure
If you are a smart, ambitious woman there are probably certain expectations you have for what you want for yourself, your life and the world at large.
And you are probably innately driven to accomplish these things as well as to constantly learn and grow.
I know I am...
When I first began my personal development and entrepreneurial journey I wanted to be “better”. I happily ushered out the parts of me that didn’t foster growth, achievement and becoming a “better” person.
There were clearly habits and ways of being that would not fit into this better version of myself and my life and I didn’t need them “keeping me down”.
But in this pursuit, I ultimately made parts of myself wrong and other parts right. I obediently began to mold myself into who I thought I “should” be.
This habit became a cycle and pattern that I was living in. It lived in my body and formed deep grooves in my nervous system.
I silenced my body and her subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) sensation and desires in pursuit of an idea of success.
Without realizing it, I’d fallen into a pattern of constriction, avoidance and not wanting to be with the darker parts of me that did not fit into this “better version” of who I thought I should be.
And in turn, I fell into the groove of believing I was not enough in my wholeness, the groove of “fixing” myself and the habit of disconnecting from the deep currents of sensation in my body.
But my feminine soul began craving more life.
She wasn’t content fitting into these awkward structures and systems of the “right” way to success.
She wanted to be in her body, to move her body, to love her body….. to love her full self and share that love with the world.
She wanted to feel more connected to her true desires for her life. To feel life pulsing through her and to be joyful…..and to not shut out this joy for the sake of creating a future version of success she’d been taught to desire.
She wanted to open her heart to the full spectrum of her experience - so that she could live a deeply rich life.
She wanted to listen to ALL her thoughts and fully feel their truth or untruth so that she could completely release whatever wasn’t truth and honor what was.
My feminine soul wanted to know TRUE abundance……
And that meant reclaiming her joy.
My experience showed me that, while I did (and still do) want to achieve certain things, grow and evolve and that systems and structures for this are necessary…… I wasn’t honoring the fullness of the experience I desired as a woman.
Embracing myself as a living, breathing, vibrant embodiment of feminine abundance meant reclaiming my joy and pleasure.
It meant being a woman who takes pleasure in her senses, her body and her life. A woman who puts her body, her pleasure and her joy first.
My experience is that all women secretly, deep down, also desire this. At our core we all want to experience true joy and to feel it coursing through all we do in our work, our relationships and in our life.
Yet, at the same time, many of us believe…..
We haven’t done enough yet to have the joy we desire
We need to be “more beautiful” or still have “more healing” to do before we can truly experience and express our joy
Joy is not here and now but waiting for us in some future experience or goal achieved
Cultivating our joy and pleasure isn’t productive and so it doesn’t have value
In our society, we are cultured to believe that our joy exists in things outside of us. In other people, places, things or experiences. We are sold a version of success that requires “working hard” to achieve these things.
Through these ideals it’s easy to confuse your value as a human with how much you can do and achieve and come to believe that joy comes after the goal is realized. And when we can’t reach those ideals or things don’t go as planned we come to believe something must be wrong with us and we disconnect from our joy.
But when we strip away the blame, shame and marketing we realize a different truth:
Joy exists in this body, in this moment.
Joy is the act of being completely immersed in our senses and in the present moment.
At the very center of our existence we are joy.
Truly, it’s that simple.
Joy is not something you DO, it’s something you ARE.
You are already everything you desire.
When you can embrace all of you and turn towards old grooves and patterns around achievement, success and joy - feel them and release them, it allows the truth to emerge.
Embracing your full spectrum is the act of embodying your enoughness and releasing the frozen energy in your system so that you are free to be with your truth and to experience and express the joy found there.
This is what the world needs more of.
Women who are saying “YES” to the full spectrum of their being and letting the joy in their hearts lead them.
Women who are hungry for something more and at the same time balanced and rooted in their feminine essence and living from the seat of their joy.
Reclaiming your joy is reclaiming your power as an embodied woman…… feeling, honoring and taking action aligned with your loving, sensitive caring heart.
Our planet is calling out for this way of being from all of humanity. She wants us to feel all the ways we have disconnected and desensitized ourselves in the name of constant production and “success”.
She is asking us to wake up and reclaim our joy now.