In my most recent article I talked about the drive to do more, and I questioned the desire for abundance. This may have left the impression with you that I’m saying that wanting more is bad. And that is not what I’m saying at all.
Over the past three years, I have discovered that there are two kinds of desire for more…
There is the kind that comes from needing to create a false sense of security and safety driven by the belief that I’m not enough. It’s driven by an inner emptiness and fear. It’s driven by a scarcity mindset and the constant need for forward momentum. It’s connected to the false belief that forward momentum equals meaning and purpose. I still think my client captured it best when she said: “Being in constant motion can make it difficult to notice what’s enough. And yet, I know how often I mistake momentum for meaning. I know that if I slowed down, I might be able to recognize what’s enough…”
She is painfully aware that she is being driven by the unconscious desire for more just for the sake of more, or because she thinks it will prove something about her – that she is capable, that she is strong, that she is enough… So many of the women I have been in conversation with over the past seven months have shared similar thoughts – i.e., that their worth is in what they do / achieve / accomplish. Recently, another client shared, “I tell myself that being responsive and available (read ‘on all the time’) is what makes me valuable.”
I started over-functioning at a tender age – probably around age seven. I felt like I was carrying the weight of the world on my shoulders. I now know that I believed it was my job to make my parents happy, to help them get better, and to protect and take care of my sister. I have struggled to put down this responsibility that I took on at age seven.
Being responsible, strong, and reliable has been such a core part of my identity. It has driven my desire to keep improving, to keep learning, to keep getting better at everything that I believed was critical to my worthiness. I am in the process of dismantling my over-functioning, of sorting out what is truly mine to carry, and what is not. I am also in the process of reclaiming my love of learning and growth, purely for the love of learning and growth, and not because it is tied to my worth as a person.
There is another kind of desire for more. This desire for more comes from being fully alive. It’s a longing for continued growth, expansion, and opportunities for self-expression and contribution. It’s a desire that is driven by gratitude and groundedness, the kind of aliveness that can only come from healing.
My therapist describes it best. She explains that we can become so used to drinking from the same pool of water, without realizing that there are other pools out there. When we start doing our healing work, we stop drinking from the toxic pool we had been drinking from for years, and we move to another water hole and discover that the water there is pure, clean, and better than anything we have ever tasted. Suddenly, we are awake to possibility, and we no longer want to keep drinking from the pool that makes us sick, because we now know we have other options.
When you heal and begin to thrive, it’s like drinking from a clean pool of water for the first time, and discovering that life can be sweeter and more beautiful than you imagined. From time to time, we go back to our old pool, but nothing tastes the same now, because now we know what we are missing out on by staying stuck at this pool. So, we want more. We long for more freedom, more joy, more peace, more contentment, and we now realize that it is available to us, and we start to wonder what else there might be if we continue on this path?
This is the kind of desire for more that is part of our in-born nature to want to grow, learn, evolve, and thrive. I have said many times that to thrive is your birth right. And I really mean that. I often look in wonder at my plants. I used to be so bad at maintaining plants, and these days, I love to watch them grow, because they remind me that we are all meant to grow. You can see when a plant is barely surviving, and when it is truly thriving. And when it’s thriving, it keeps expanding. I have had my plants grow out of their pots. I have had to replant them, because they keep growing.
And so it is with human beings – with YOU. You are meant to continue to grow and learn. That’s the point of life. You haven’t come this far in your healing journey, to only come this far. You are meant to continue to expand in the ways that feel natural and alive for you, that feel authentic to your unique personal expression in the world. This is thriving.
From the outside, it may be tricky to tell the difference between these two desires for more. Both whisper, I desire more. But from the inside, they feel worlds apart. With entirely different roots, and entirely different costs.
One kind of more is born from the story of not enough. Not successful enough. Not loved enough. Not accomplished enough. This form of desire chases accumulation. More things, more validation, more proof, in the hopes that it will grant you safety, certainty, and worthiness. Seeking more from this place actually has the effect of moving you further and further away from what your truly long for – peace, joy, love, connection, contentment.
The second kind of desire – the desire to thrive – doesn’t come from lack. It doesn’t have anything to prove. It comes from aliveness, and from the inner peace of knowing that I am already enough, and that my worth is not determined by what I do. I am already inherently worthy, and going after more, is a way that I play, express, explore, and grow, but not a way that I earn safety and worthiness.
When you are devoted to your own evolution and growth, you are devoted to living your truth, to refining who you are, because you know that your being – that which makes you truly extraordinary – is your gift to the world, and not uncovering and cultivating it is a disservice to yourself and others.
Success is not fulfillment and self-expression. These two things are not the same. Success can be achieved by striving for the first kind of more. There is lots of success to go after. And there is nothing wrong with that, unless we make it mean something about us; unless we attach our worth to it.
Fulfillment and self-expression are only available when we pursue the second kind of wanting more – i.e. the desire to be more of ourselves, more fully authentically ourselves, and to express our gifts in the world. Caroline McHugh says it best when she says, “People who are frightened to be themselves, will work for those who aren’t afraid.”
There is something magnetic about someone who stands in the fullness of who they are; who is not afraid to be real and to own their gifts and share them with others. Alison Armstrong talks about this as “owning our noble qualities”.
In THRIVE, we explore what those are and what standing in ownership of our noble qualities looks like.
Something that struck me in the work with Alison Armstrong is that she daws a distinction between “better” and “great”. Our Inner Perfectionist wants us to be better. Striving for more on the outside, often also includes a self-improvement project of some sorts, where we are trying to perfect ourselves and how we perform.
What’s challenging about this, is that sometimes – more often than we might like to admit – succeeding asks of us to dishonour ourselves. We do things we are not proud of, we self-abandon, collapse into fawning and pleasing, and do all kinds of things we end up feeling ashamed about.
When we move towards our greatness, though, we are not trying to be better. We are stepping into the ways we are already great. We own the qualities that make us who we are. When we stand in our greatness – our noble qualities so to speak – it feels good on the inside. It feels aligned and resonant. We feel alive and at home in our own bodies. That is what embodying greatness truly looks and feels like – and you can see it in someone else. They shine. The take up more space.
For years, I have invited people to take up more space in their lives. THRIVE is the willingness to take up the space the universe intended for you with no apology for it. THRIVE is to live in alignment with my noble qualities, so I no longer feel ashamed of who I am. I feel grounded, present, alive, and eager to self-express and to serve through my gifts. This is the second kind of wanting more, and it’s magnificent.