If you find yourself feeling worn out, overwhelmed, resentful, or exhausted, then these may be clues that your needs are not being met. You may be experiencing a lot of conflict and you’re not sure what is driving them. Perhaps the way you are spending your time, energy, and emotional investment could use some re-aligning.
The cultural advice around this is to set boundaries. And I am one of those people; I am a big advocate for healthy boundaries to protect our peace and well-being. Yet, before you go into any boundary-setting conversation or any conflict resolution, you need to get clear on what you want, your goals. Clear conflict goals are more likely to be achieved.
In part one of this series, I’ll discuss how to get in touch with what you want and in part two, I’ll discuss how to respond to those desires and communicate those with others, if you choose.
Acknowledging What You Want Can Be Difficult and Risky
For many people, especially those socialized as women, it can be very hard to notice and voice your own needs. In childhood, you may have received praise for being selfless and forgoing your own needs to help someone else. Being kind and generous is laudable and yet, if you never make space to voice your own needs, preferences, and hopes, then it is unlikely they will ever be met.
Recognizing that something in your life is very far from where you want it to be can feel like a scary realization and one that may be at odds with what others want. Perhaps you’ll realize that you aren’t happy in your marriage and you may need to grapple with whether to get divorced. Perhaps you’ll acknowledge that you’re burned out and you can’t keep up with your current pace at work. As inconvenient as it is to connect with our desires, continuing to push down and silence your own needs, desires, and dreams means that you get further and further out of touch with them and that they don’t get met.
It may mean that when someone asks you, “Well, what do you want?” You may have no idea. You’ve lost a way to connect to, or access, your own desires. This is one reason why many people feel lost at different points in their lives and feel unrecognizable to themselves. Spending all of your time helping others to meet their goals and fulfilling others’ needs means that you may have denied your own for so long, that you aren’t even sure who you are anymore. After all, our desires and unique quirks and preferences are what make us who we are!
Cultivate Practices that Allow You to Connect to Your Needs
That’s why it’s vital to cultivate practices that allow you to acknowledge and stay connected to your desires, preferences, and needs. Noticing your needs and then making sure that your emotional tank is filled up will help you feel more balanced, happy, and peaceful.
Consider a situation where things feel misaligned. Think of a situation where the way you are spending your time and energy feels out of alignment. The situation may be at odds with your values, your capacity, your skills, your commitments, the way you want to feel, or where you want to be in the future.
Tune into yourself. What mindful practices do you have that notice how you’re feeling and what might feel out of alignment for you? For some, this might be a meditation practice, a mindful walk, journaling, yoga, or any sort of stillness. What does a practice of tuning in look like for you?
In stillness, we are better able to tune into ourselves and try to listen to our desires. If stillness makes you feel jittery, ask yourself what you are afraid of. Then, be brave, and start by trying just one minute of quietness, with no distractions.
Close your eyes and take a couple of deep breaths. Imagine pulling up a chair next to yourself and asking, How do I want to feel in this situation? What do I need and want right now? What will support me in showing up in the way I want to show up?
Tune out the noise. As you practice this, notice what else comes up for you as you try to tune into your desires. Notice the voices you hear in your head. Notice if another part of you immediately tries to tell you that your desires are selfish, impossible, infeasible, or ridiculous. Ask those voices to quiet down so you can hear the part of you that has a desire and a need.
Acknowledge your desires. Regardless of whether these desires seem possible, at least acknowledge them: “You want someone else to host this year. It feels like too much for you to do it.” Write them down and keep them someplace safe. Every time you hear yourself and acknowledge your intuition, you are building a stronger connection to that part of yourself. It will make the path easier to walk next time and you’ll build self-trust.
If nothing comes through, that’s okay. As you continue to cultivate a practice of connecting with yourself and your inner wisdom, it will get easier to access your desires. They may be buried under a lot of other stories, expectations, messages, and emotions.
Acknowledging what you want is a big first step. In my next entry, I’ll discuss what to do once you have gotten in touch with your desires and if you choose, how to communicate those needs to others.