Women have a complicated relationship with the word and feeling of “want.” For so many women, it’s hard to allow “wanting” a seat at our inner table. We replace “want” with “should”—do what we think we should do, become who we think we should be. And we’re very good at doing what we “should” do, but over time, we lose touch with the feeling of wanting altogether. So many women haven’t asked themselves what they “want” for so long that the question itself feels strange, blank, and unanswerable.

At the same time, we’re conditioned to believe that allowing ourselves to “want” is selfish and indulgent. Who are you to get to do what you want? is a common sentiment, as if wanting itself is an act of entitlement. Because you “want” something is not a good enough reason to act on it; we need some extra validation or legitimization to get to consider our own wants, if they still exist at all.

“Wanting” in our culture has also been linked with sloth, immaturity, and even danger. The message we receive from a very early age is that if we allow ourselves to “want,” we will end up on the couch, naked and eating bonbons for the rest of time. “Wanting” is presented to us as a process dictated by our fundamentally sinful nature. “Wanting” is linked with the body and its dangerous desires, while “shoulding” is tied to the mind, productivity, and the rational. The “should police” make sure we stay in line and offer all sorts of narratives for what will happen to us and who we could become if we were to trust our “want.” Essentially, we would be playing with fire and tempting fate. On the other hand, when we act from a sense of duty—doing what we “should” do, what’s “right” and “expected” (not just what we “want”), we’re being virtuous and mature, taking the higher road, and doing good. In a nutshell, “want,” as it’s presented in our cultural narrative, is bad, while “should” is good—and makes us a good person.

“Want” is a feeling that comes with a lot of baggage in our culture. But there’s another aspect of our strange and strained relationship with “wanting” that further complicates our ability to connect to what is, in fact, our most primal, authentic, and life-directing sentiment—our deepest wisdom.

The challenge is that we think of “wanting” in terms of what we want. We go looking in our mind for a possible object of our “wanting”—a car, a house, a particular job, a certain amount of money, or some other such external thing or accomplishment. The focus is often on the thing itself that we think will make us happy. And yet, if we want to genuinely restore our connection and open the doorway to our own “wanting,” if we want to tether ourselves back to our authentic self and remember what makes us who we are at center, if we want to consult the wise guide within us, we need to ask ourselves different questions when it comes to our relationship with “want.”

Instead of asking yourself What do I want? try asking yourself What delights me? Or, What wags my tail? Perhaps the question is What would make today a good day? What makes a day feel nourishing and joyful—for me? What kind of day inspires gratitude? And, at the core, What do I like without having to try to like it?

These sorts of questions take the focus off the external object of “wanting” and place it on your individual and unique experience. They shift you from a future orientation, something you’re going to get that’s not here now, to a right-now-centered experience inside you. They turn your focus from outside to inside—move you from an idea of what you want that lives in your head to the direct experience of delight that lives in your body. Quite literally, the feeling of a dog who’s wagging its tail.

If you ask a kindergartner whether she likes a particular person, the answer is straightforward and obvious: She likes him or she doesn’t; she wants him at her birthday party or she doesn’t. Liking is not complicated, nor is the feeling it inspires inside us. In fact, it’s one of the best feelings we get to have as humans. Such simple inquiries and yet so powerful: what do I like to do, who do I like to be with, how do I like to spend a day?

When you start asking yourself these, to some degree, simpler questions, you move out of your head and into your heart and body. If what you want feels mysterious or unreachable, try using different language. Rather than focusing on what you want, instead of combing through possibilities of things and experiences that you could want in your mind, try dropping into your body and marinating in what delights you or what makes your tail wag. Be a kindergartner.

Give it a whirl. If the “wanting” in you remains elusive, don’t despair; walk with and live in these simpler questions. Notice when you feel delight or liking or just plain good. You are probably meeting a voice inside you that hasn’t been consulted or invited into the conversation for a long time. And if nothing changes and you still don’t sense who you want at your birthday party, rest assured, the “should police” will welcome you back with open arms. But my (confident) hunch assures me that that won’t happen.

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• First girl: “So are you going to rock it out, show off your bod in a bikini this summer?”
• Second girl: “Probably not…not feeling the rockability of my body just now, I need to drop about 10 pounds before I’m ready to rock publicly.”
• First girl: “Oh, c’mon, you look great. What do you care what other people think, anyway? You rock, girl. And anyway, the best way to say FU to the haters, to not let the Patriarchy control you, is to wear a thong and flaunt it. I say own it, be strong—for all of us women. Wear the itsy-bitsiest bikini you can find and tell them all to F themselves. I’ll send you some links.”

While this may be just one tiny sample of young women’s thinking these days, it made me wonder: When did wearing a bikini become a test of our power, or whether we’re being controlled by patriarchal paradigms?

Our worth has classically been tied to the bikini-readiness of our bodies (whatever that means) and to the hours we’ve been willing to spend in bikini boot camps (and whether that time “paid off”)—the attention we’re willing to devote to making ourselves into a shape and size that’s desirable. And yet, it seems that the criteria for our power and value has now shifted and expanded to include our ability to prove we don’t buy into the messaging, which of course still entails wearing a bikini. Regardless of whether we want to wear a bikini, enjoy or feel comfortable or empowered in this sort of “clothing,” our status as empowered, free, and modern women requires that we offer our bodies up for public view and consumption—to be gazed at—and remain unbothered by cultural judgment, or, if bothered, then to be strong enough to not let it affect the choices we make.

The assumption that every woman wants to wear a bikini, and that the only reason she wouldn’t is because she’s not in the right shape or not willing to confront the patriarchy, is a problem unto itself.

Many women don’t like wearing bikinis because they’re uncomfortable, difficult to swim in, and require a great deal of adjusting/futsing to keep them in place—or they just don’t feel comfortable wearing a bra and underwear in public. The point is, whether we wear or don’t wear a bikini, for whatever reason, need not be a test of our confidence, strength, or willingness to support other women.

Whether our model for female empowerment looks “for” or “against” the male-oriented power structure that limits women is, to some degree, irrelevant. What it means to be a woman, to be empowered, is not something that can be assigned to us; an empowered woman is not one who is defined for or against the powers that be but rather one who decides what it means to be an empowered woman—for herself.

But the question begs: Is it even possible to define ourselves, for ourselves, not in agreement or resistance to the model we know? We’ve been marinated in the same thinking and belief systems as those who created the system; we are also of it. What does it mean to say “I am not your woman” or “I am my own woman”? Is a version of “woman” even possible that’s not defined by or in reaction to our system?

We’ve certainly been offered different models for woman-hood: the long wavy-haired, ever-fertile woman, twirling in her flowing skirt wearing a crown of wildflowers, guided by feminine intuition and bodily-wisdom; the pink-pussy-cap-wearing feminist, her fist raised in rebellion and anger; the scantily-clad, body-exposed “empowered” woman who owns her sexuality, wears it out loud, and rejects whatever it evokes. Other models are offered, but the question remains: What does it mean to define ourselves for ourselves when every other definition is, to some degree, yet another incarnation of control and therefore, disempowerment?

Who are we if we are not your woman? The answer comes down to: What is our truth in this moment? What do we know to be true, in our minds, hearts, and bodies? Defining ourselves, for ourselves, means being willing to trust our truth beyond the image that has been designed for us. It requires reclaiming trust in our own minds, hearts, and bodies, taking up residence once again inside ourselves—the very place we were taught to vacate and never to trust.

Learning to listen to our own insides, the deeper truth that exists inside each one of us, is to be our own woman, and to create a new version of woman-hood that we define for ourselves. So, too, it is the path to a power that cannot be taken away from us by anyone or anything, a power beyond “empowered” or “disempowered.” Ultimately, it is our own truth—known, owned, and trusted—that sets us free from the definitions that have always been written for us.

The post Do I Have to Wear A Bikini to Be Empowered? appeared first on Nancy Colier.

Everything about the way we live in this society is geared to pull our attention outward and away from ourselves. We rely on external sources for information, knowledge, belief systems, entertainment, physical subsistence, codes of behavior, and everything in between.

At the same time, we’re sold the idea that our happiness will also come from the outside: acquiring external validation, material possessions, achievements, and pleasurable experiences. Over time, we come to believe that everything desirable, satisfying, and fulfilling, everything we want and need, comes from outside of us. Our focus is so habituated to go outward, in fact, that we forget that we are even here and can be a source of anything. We forget—or maybe more accurately, never learn—that we can look to ourselves for what we need.

We talk a lot about self-care in this culture, but most of what we consider self-care is some form of pampering. We see self-care as something we buy or do, something, once again, that sits outside of us—in someone else or some other activity, experience, destination, or maybe, lemongrass candle. But there aren’t enough pearls in the Dead Sea or hemp in nature to make us well. Ultimately, we must recognize that we are the destination we’ve been seeking; it is our own nectar that we think we lack.

In order for self-care to take root as a way of living, not something you buy or do, a one-off, you must be willing to consider that you know infinitely more than you’ve ever been allowed or allowed yourself to know. Both in mind, body, and spirit. And furthermore, to recognize that you are the only one who knows what’s true for you, the only one living your unique experience. In fact, while it’s the last thing the self-care industry wants you to discover, you are your most reliable source of well-being, even if you can’t imagine it yet.

But remember: The conditioning that led you to abandon yourself, to hand over your authority to others and the external world, didn’t happen overnight. Similarly, reclaiming yourself as a valuable source of wisdom also doesn’t happen overnight. Before you can see a new path, you must be able to see the path you are traveling now—all the ways you’re turning away from your truth and handing off your authority. In order to create real change, you have to be willing to challenge your conditioning and practice new behaviors.

Just as you build the habit of exercising by actually moving your body or eating healthfully by actually making healthy choices, you have to build the habit of curiosity in yourself, making yourself a destination, by doing just that: getting curious about your own experience, asking yourself what’s true for you, and caring about what you find. You have to be willing to look to yourself for answers and questions, too.

With practice, the inclination to turn towards yourself for guidance becomes second nature. But again, it doesn’t start out that way. The process of learning to trust yourself happens gradually.

Over time, you’ll likely start noticing you feel more present, more located inside yourself as if you’re living from something solid that feels like you. Without trying, you’ll find you’re speaking what’s actually true and being honest rather than saying what will secure your being liked. You’ll feel the gap closing between who you are authentically and the roles you play in your life. I’ve heard the process described in so many different ways, but what all of the descriptions have in common is a sense of taking your seat at the center of your life—coming home to yourself.

Keep inquiring into your own experience; keep spending time in your own company, listening to your truth, and tuning into your own presence. Gradually, your outward-focused wiring will shift, and your attention will start naturally returning home to you, its original source. And indeed, with intention and practice, you will become that destination, that magnificence for which you’ve always been searching.

The post What if You Are What You’ve Been Searching For? appeared first on Nancy Colier.

The patriarchy doesn’t have to do anything to enact its system of control over us, we do it for them. What’s most insidious about the patriarchy’s control of the female body is that women have internalized its system and become its most powerful enforcers, perpetrating its methods of imprisonment upon ourselves.

We’ve grown up in this cultural paradigm and internalized its ideology. Consequently, we also believe that our bodies cannot be trusted and are unsafe to inhabit. If we want to be successful in this society, we understand that our bodies need to be policed and managed, and used as instruments for the greater goal of being what’s wanted and desirable. With this as our core belief, we depart our own homes and give up our bodies as our primary residences. We stop living from inside our bodies and learn to relate to ourselves from the outside, as if third-person characters in our own lives. It is the ultimate paradox: we abandon ourselves to take care of ourselves.

Women feel trapped, pressured to play by the rules and jump through the hoops set up for us by our patriarchal system. If we don’t, play the game, we face rejection and aloneness. We behave obediently within a system that fundamentally doesn’t work for us, even when we know it’s sucking the life out of us. We conform and perform dutifully even when we know that it is the system for which we’re conforming and performing that keeps us imprisoned. It’s the dance that’s killing us and yet we keep dancing.

But I’m not here to cast blame, or make another case for why it’s our fault that we feel powerless and trapped. In truth, there’s little chance for a woman raised in this culture to feel safe listening to her own experience, or living inside her body, for that matter. The pressures to disconnect from ourselves and our bodies are strong and real. Simultaneously, the payoffs for participating in the system as it is are also strong and real. But so, too, are the consequences. In the end, such a system: abandoning ourselves and turning against our own bodies, leaving home in order to be safe and ensure we have a home with others, can only generate the most fragile kind of safety or self-esteem. Ultimately, playing by the rules is a recipe for feeling powerless and trapped.

In order for women to awaken our inner voices, trust that we can speak and live from what we really think and feel; for women to feel safe being who we are, even when that may not fit into the patriarchal ideal, women need to go even further than knowing, speaking or even acting on their own needs.

We need to return to our own bodies, to re-enter and live from inside our own physical experience. To invite ourselves, not just our thoughts and feelings, but our senses, our bodies, back into the conversation and into the experience of living. What’s needed now is a paradigm shift away from the patriarchal system that has us relating to and at our bodies, from outside of them, with our bodies as objects for patriarchal review and judgment—and towards a new system of our own making, one in which we relate—from and through our bodies, with our bodies as our guides, inseparable from ourselves.

As women, we want to feel more than just not exhausted. We want to feel authentic, empowered, and free to live the full expression of who we are, to be ourselves even if we don’t know who she is just yet. We cannot actualize ourselves or claim our full power while simultaneously ignoring, rejecting, and vigilantly controlling our richest source of self-ness and power—our bodies. The path back home to ourselves demands that we take up residence in our original home, precisely the place we were told we needed to vacate, to trust the very place we were taught to distrust. In order to do this, we must radically shift our whole conception of our bodies—from being shameful and rejected “objects” that need to be policed and adorned for the pleasure of others, to being the trusted “subjects” of our lives and a place we can and want to inhabit.

Our work is to reunite the fundamental split—from ourselves—the one we believed we had to perpetrate on ourselves. To unlock the source of our deepest power and wisdom, we must re-establish residence within our most vital source—our own bodies.

The post Why Women Chase Perfection, Even Though It’s Killing Us appeared first on Nancy Colier.

At the same time, pay attention to how it feels to be reliant on your relationship and your partner’s state of mind for your own well-being. Notice what it’s like to ride the roller coaster of staking your equanimity on the current relational weather. How does it feel to tuck away or ignore your own needs so as to keep your partner happy and keep the peace?

No matter how familiar, manageable, and even necessary such behavior may feel, living it is never easy or comfortable—not when you start asking yourself what it’s actually like on the inside. In order to change the behavior, you need to get in touch with the suffering that comes with it—what it’s really like to choose a relationship with your partner over a relationship with yourself.

Investigating core beliefs

Once you become aware of your own behavior and the suffering that comes with it, the next step is to investigate the core beliefs that lead to it. Do you, for example, believe that it’s selfish to consider your own needs, or that being a we means there can be no me? Are you perhaps convinced that the relationship would not survive and that your partner would leave you if you stopped taking care of their needs so attentively or were more than just a “giver”? Or maybe the core belief is that no one really cares about what you need, and certainly not if it conflicts with what they need? For many people, what underlies this behavior is the belief that they simply don’t matter, aren’t good enough, and don’t deserve to have their own wants and needs considered, much less taken care of.

The core beliefs that sit below such behavior are often painful and related to early life experiences. Given this, it’s necessary to bring not just curiosity, but profound compassion to these deeply rooted belief systems that bleed out into everything else you think and feel. If you’re trying to change this behavior without investigating the core beliefs that drive and sustain it, and how you came to believe such things, you’re just trimming the weeds without pulling up the unhealthy roots. You may be able to temporarily change the behavior, but eventually, the patterns will return, because the deep-seated storylines beneath them haven’t been healed.

Investigating core beliefs can be a tricky, difficult, and painful process; it’s not something you should or even can do alone. Because you probably still believe the beliefs you’re attempting to unearth, it may not be possible to spot them, as they are baked into the lens through which you’re looking. We can’t see the thoughts/beliefs we’re holding as absolute truths—not if we still think they’re true. It’s helpful and often necessary to work with a professional to help support and guide you through this meaningful process.

Taking action

Breaking free from codependence is about more than just awareness; it’s about action. You need to practice independent behaviors, otherwise known as not being codependent. That is, setting boundaries and actually saying “no”—out loud.

We’ve been taught that unlimited and unconditional giving without any boundaries—pure selflessness—is somehow spiritual, a form of divinity. But unlimited and unconditional giving can be, underneath the spiritual narrative, a recipe for being a doormat. It can mask what’s really a difficulty in setting boundaries and taking care of yourself.

Along with setting boundaries and saying “no” out loud, you need to practice paying attention to your own experience, asking yourself (frequently) what you want and need in any particular situation, how you’re feeling, and what would take care of you in the present moment. The idea is to make yourself a destination, and ultimately, befriend yourself—as counterintuitive as it may feel to treat yourself like someone who matters. You practice telling the truth, your truth, and being more honest about what you think, feel, and need. You try out a new model for love—taking the risk of experiencing what it feels like to show up authentically in your relationship and let your partner meet a (more) real you.

In essence, you practice not controlling the relationship and deliberately not fixing what feels like needs fixing. It may seem like you might literally die if you don’t fix it. Still, don’t fix it; you won’t die, nor will your partner, and they may even fix it for themselves. Your work is to get more comfortable with the uncomfortable, which means closing your mouth, sitting on your hands, or doing whatever it takes to refrain from jumping in to fix and control what feels not okay.

Baby steps and self-compassion

Remember, however, that you didn’t get this way overnight and you won’t not be this way overnight. Like every change process, it starts with baby steps—one small situation, one passing conversation at a time, and little changes one moment at a time. These baby changes add up and lead to big changes in who and how you are. As you embark on this process, one thing is critical: self-compassion. Wherever you are on this journey toward independence, and regardless of whether your baby steps are those of a toddler or a track star, and heading forward or temporarily backward, one thing matters most: that you be kind to yourself and stay on your own side. As it turns out, treating yourself like you matter begins, first, in this change process.

Feeling codependent is not fun; it’s painful and anxious-making—destabilizing. You’re constantly in a state of uncertainty and insecurity, not knowing if the ground is going to disappear beneath you. We don’t choose to be this way, so stop blaming yourself if you are. That said, it’s important to honor your intention to evolve, and the courage it takes to change this ultimately limiting behavior. Shift the unconditional, un-boundaried giving that you offer others, and turn it around: Offer it to yourself in the form of unlimited kindness, forgiveness, and compassion for however you got to where you are and however your path will unfold from here.

The post How to Become Someone Who “Matters” appeared first on Nancy Colier.

Source: Alex Iby/Unsplash

It’s psychologically healthy to acknowledge the suffering and feelings of powerlessness that accompany such experiences.

And yet, there are those people who feel like victims all the time, regardless of the circumstances. Those with victim mentality are always being victimized in their own mind.  They maintain a consistent victim identity and see life, perpetually, through victim-tinted glasses.

We all know people who seem to be constantly commenting on some injustice done to them, how others are denying them what they need, want, and deserve, controlling them against their will, making them do what they don’t want to do—how life is against them and the universe is designed to punish them, personally.  Or perhaps, you yourself are someone who experiences life this way?

To always feel like a victim of life, or, to love someone who’s always convinced they’re the victim of life—neither is easy and both are painful.

To illustrate some of the most common forms of victim mentality, here are three cases in point.  Read more…

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/inviting-monkey-tea/201801/are-you-ready-stop-being-victim

The post Are You Ready to Stop Being a Victim? appeared first on Nancy Colier.