Every time I witness a woman expressing what she wants, I’m filled with admiration for her courage and vulnerability, because I know how difficult it can be to tell the truth about desires.

Women face countless obstacles in identifying, owning, and claiming what they want, and this is especially true today. How do you navigate the obstacles, negative messages, and roadblocks to knowing and expressing your desires?

It all starts with you.

It starts with  knowing exactly who you are, trusting yourself as your fiercest ally, and offering your unique gifts to the world from a place of abundance, rather than from a place of exhaustion or neediness.

I call this journey The Radiant Threefold Path, which leads to you — radiantly empowered.

For the past 12+ years working with women who’ve experienced profound disappointment and betrayal, one of the most common questions I ask when a woman brings a challenge to therapy or to coaching is some version of:

• What do you want?
• What is your vision in this situation?
• What would you like to see happen?

Why is asking about your vision such an important question? Because, in truth, it is the only thing that matters. It is the starting point for facing every challenge or obstacle in your life.

But what if you have no idea what you want, or what your vision is, or what you would like to see happen in your life? I get it. I can remember times in my life where I had no idea what I wanted.

Women are bombarded every day with images, messages, and even people we love who tell us how we should look, what we should wear, what we should think, how we should (or shouldn’t) speak, and how to behave.

We’ve been trained for so long to practice so many forms of people-pleasing that we simply don’t know the quickest route to our own authentic happiness. And that is discovering who we are, separate from every expectation from the outer world — even from those who are most dear to us.

Getting to your desires requires becoming intimately familiar with you — knowing what lights up your five senses, knowing which emotions drive you (and the ones you ignore or try to hide), discovering the thoughts that give you confidence, and the thoughts that tear you down.

Here’s a simple exercise I’d like you to do for 15 minutes today:

Set your timer for 15 minutes and make a conscious decision to enter into beginner’s mind. Beginner’s mind is when you, to the best of your ability, empty your mind of prior thoughts, knowledge, or judgment so that you can be an objective and unbiased observer.

Walk around your home, your apartment, or the room in which you’re spending the most time. Observe everything that belongs to you, all your possessions. Notice the colors, the shapes, the book titles, the furnishings, the textures and style of your clothes. Don’t stop to straighten or clean — just observe.

When the timer goes off, set it again for 5 minutes and write down everything you noticed. Write without stopping and without censoring. And then reflect on what you learned about you, staying in the objective and unbiased observer role as much as possible.

Reclaiming your authentic feminine self starts with knowing exactly who you are — body, mind, and soul.

© Vicki Tidwell Palmer (2020)