91 Shattering the Selfish Myth: Embracing Desires Fully

Welcome back to another episode of the Live Life Unapologetically podcast. I’m Shannon, and today’s episode is going to touch on something that a lot of us women deal with, and that’s feeling like prioritizing your desires is selfish. This is especially common in our culture and too often we’ve been conditioned to put everybody else’s needs before our own. The truth is that manifesting your desires isn’t selfish. It’s essential. But we feel guilty when we do want to prioritize those desires, when we say you know what I’m going to focus on me. A lot of times in our manifestation journey we hold back on things we truly want, because we’ve been conditioned that wanting certain things showing up in the world a certain way is selfish, that others should come before us, that we should be so humble in what we do that we discount our true desires. And when we’re discounting our true desires, we’re creating resistance with the universe because we are not being honest. So we’re going to take a deeper look into why so many women struggle with this idea of prioritizing their dreams and desires. If you’ve ever felt guilty about manifesting for yourself, or worried you’re going to be called selfish, then this episode is for you. Or worried you’re going to be called selfish, then this episode is for you. Grab your favorite drink, cozy up and let’s dive into why this belief shows up for women, where it comes from and, most importantly, how you can let go of the guilt and start manifesting unapologetically.

 2:02

Let’s start with where this whole selfish idea comes from. You see, society has conditioned women for generations to believe that their worth comes from how much they can give to others, whether it’s their time, their energy, their attention. We’re often told that being a good woman means being selfless, always putting others first and sacrificing our needs, our wants, our desires. Then, when it comes to manifesting it can feel like you’re going against everything that you have been taught. You may start to feel guilty, thinking things like who am I to ask for more when others have less? Or am I being selfish for wanting this for me, for myself?

 2:46

Manifesting your desires is not selfish. In fact, it’s the opposite. When you prioritize your well-being, your happiness, when you own your desires, you’re able to show up as more fulfilled, an empowered version of yourself for the people in your life. You know that saying we all heard growing up that you can’t pour from an empty cup, and yet society would make us feel like we need to always have an empty cup. But the truth in that statement still remains that you cannot pour from an empty cup, even though we’ve been conditioned that we should be pouring from an empty cup. Because if we fill our cup, well, that’s selfish, but it’s not. You see, by manifesting what you want, you’re actually creating more energy, more abundance and more joy that you can share with others. It’s not selfish, it doesn’t make you an about-me woman, it doesn’t make you an arrogant woman. To do that. You deserve to be seen, to be heard in your life, to show up with your light shining bright and not being dim. You see, in all of this, truly, if we get down to it, when you think about how women are programmed to always give, to put themselves last, to think of others, putting others before themselves really that’s dimming your light. You have a great light.

 4:14

We teach that you should have an empty cup and keep pouring and be burnt out and overwhelmed and frustrated and just keep giving and that anytime you stop to fill that cup back up. That it’s selfish. You can’t pour from an empty cup. But then women are chastised for trying to fill their cup. We cannot, we have to be full. And when you go on a journey of manifestation. You must be full to attract. You can’t be depleted. You can’t think to yourself, well, well, others need to have it more, or feel guilty. If you don’t believe you should be receiving, you’re automatically creating that resistance with the universe. You’re resisting and saying, well, I really want this, but I really shouldn’t be asking for it. And there comes the resistance and then you’re not attracting and you wonder well, why am I not attracting? I’m going to be so real with you and I hope more women bring their voices into the manifestation space because if you go back and look, there are a lot of male voices in the manifestation space and not to discount them, great, they’re manifesting, but they’re manifesting, but they’re manifesting from a male perspective.

 5:26

As women, we need to manifest from a woman’s perspective Because of how we are brought into this life and the type of society that we’re in. It is not seen as selfish for a man to want things to fill his cup, to have other people give to him. Men receive all the time and it’s normalized, but it is not normalized for a woman to receive from. As a little girl, you are thought to say well, I have to be the one that feeds everybody. I have to be the one that cleans for everybody. I have to be the one who manages my family unit myself. You know that’s just society and we’re talking about manifesting when we talk about limiting beliefs.

 6:08

There are societal limiting beliefs that we grow up with that we must overcome that it is okay for you to want to be taken care of yourself, that it is okay to say no. I don’t have that in my capacity right now to do that for you, because I’m filling myself up, because if we don’t believe that we should be on the receiving end of support and help, then how can we believe we can be on the receiving end of anything that the universe wants to bring our way? And that’s the resistance and it’s truly rooted in limiting beliefs. That’s when I say we talk about limiting beliefs. They’re just beliefs that don’t serve you anymore, that we were taught. And sometimes you know I’ve been guilty about teaching limiting beliefs to my own children and now when I look at it I’m like why? But I know better. Now, when you know better, you do better. But that’s just because that’s how I was programmed. We’re all programmed. Your beliefs are just your program. You get to decide. Is this belief limiting me or taking me forward? Because we manifest what we believe.

 7:10

But when you are full, when you step into the fullness of who you are, you are creating more energy, you are creating more abundance, you have more joy and that spills out to everybody else. When your cup is full and overflowing, then people can get from you. If your cup is empty, what are they getting? Versus if your cup is truly full and filling your cup without feeling guilty In all that, you are to give, all that you are because I love to give, I’m a giver, I love giving, I love pouring out love, but I remember a time where the love that I was pouring out wasn’t great because I wasn’t full. I truly didn’t have anything to give, so I truly wasn’t giving anything. If I have nothing in my hands and I say, here you can have this, am I really giving anything anyway? No, so we really need to understand that we have to release this guilt as women for wanting to do for us, and that it doesn’t make us selfish.

 8:12

Caring for yourself, loving yourself, it doesn’t make you selfish. So we have to flip that script and, instead of asking ourselves is manifestation selfish? Ask how can I prioritize my desires without guilt. When you put yourself first and manifest the life that you want, you’re setting an example for others. You are showing your kids, your friends, your family, your community that it is okay to dream big. You’re giving them inspiration to prioritize their desires as well. That doesn’t mean saying I don’t care about you, it’s all about me. That’s not what I’m saying, but that’s how it gets conscrued in our society, that it has to be one or the other. You have to be completely selfless to be good, or if you’re not, then you’re completely selfish.

 9:04

I’m actually going to be doing a whole masterclass on these two extremes, but I want you to know that it is not selfish to prioritize yourself, because when you prioritize yourself, your cup is full and you have more for others. And not only is your cup full, but it never depletes. You don’t have to say, oh, my cup is full. Now it’s depleted and empty. Lord, have mercy, I got to fill it up again in a cycle.

 9:32

When you show up for yourself and prioritize your desires and you manifest the life that you love, your cup is always full. There’s always more to give. You are never depleted. You see, when you manifest from a place of joy, fulfillment, alignment. You’re able to serve the world in a way that feels authentic and expansive, you aren’t drained, you’re not resentful, you’re not burnt out, you’re full of energy and abundance. And that’s when you can truly make a positive impact.

 10:05

And I really want to go back to this word resentful, because we talk about making a positive impact. I don’t know anybody who wants to make a negative impact. To be honest, in my life that I’ve met I’m sure maybe there are people out there, I don’t know but I’ve never met anybody who goes through life and says I want to see how negative of an impact I can make. I want to see what I can do about that. You want to make a positive impact. But let’s talk about the word resentful, because if you’re showing up and you’re giving but you’re empty as you’re giving because you’re not fulfilling your desires, it becomes resentful. When you’re going to that birthday party your kid was invited to and you’re so stinking tired, are you showing up as the best you or are you just resenting the fact that you have to be there? You’re just thinking my God, I just want to lay in my bed and chill on a Saturday for once, without having something on my damn schedule. How are you showing up? But if you’re in the fullness of you and you’ve been living in the fullness of you, maybe you don’t show up with resentment. You show up knowing you have everything you want in the fullness of yourself, not just oh, this is another thing on my to-do list, because you’re so consumed with the to-do list that you are not fulfilling your desires.

 11:18

Prioritizing your desires is not about just you, and that’s where this big myth and misconception about it being selfish comes in, or this internal struggle we have. Even if somebody hasn’t said it directly, you may have this internal struggle of it is selfish, because that’s just how we’ve been conditioned as women. Your desires aren’t just about you. It’s about everybody else around you, because the more you have, the more you can give. It’s a ripple effect. I just really want you to think about that. It is a ripple effect. It’s the best you.

 11:52

If I am manifesting money because I want money and it makes me happy and I’m not stressed because I can pay my bills and I can go get the things that I want to get, that make me feel good, then that feel-good feeling stays with me and when I’m around everybody else, I have a feel-good feeling that energy transfers. I show up happy If I say you know what, I don’t want to go to that birthday party, but I know somebody else who wants to go and take my kid. Maybe I can just ask them to go and that’s okay. It doesn’t make you a lesser of a person. It’s about being honest with yourself. It doesn’t make you selfish or mean or ugly or self-centered or arrogant. To be open with yourself.

 12:41

I have grandchildren and of course my girls will call me sometimes and say, hey, mom, can you babysit? Many times I’m like, yeah, I want to see my babies. But there are other times when I’m like you know what, I don’t, I’m not feeling it today, I really don’t want to and, being honest, let me show you how this shows up, okay. So when my girls call and say, hey, can you babysit, if I say yes because I want to have all those fun times, then when they come over I’m super happy, excited to see them. We have a great time. If I say yes when I really mean no, because I’m tired, I just want some downtime this week, and they show up that’s resentment. I’m cranky and now my grandchildren get resentful. Cranky noni instead of happy fun noni, because how I’m feeling directly impacts my relationships.

 13:34

I have to be honest with myself and with my children and say this is not a good week, this is not a good time. You don’t always have to say yes, that is not a desire of mine at the moment, because I want to show up as the best me. Now. I know I’m that all of this is easier said than done, because the fear of being seen as selfish can be very deeply rooted, especially if you have spent years or a lifetime putting others first. Now the good news is that you can start to overcome the fear by shifting your mindset. Here’s how you’re going to do that. You’re going to redefine what selfish means, because the word selfish has a lot of negative connotations, but I want you to reframe it.

 14:19

Taking care of your own needs and desires doesn’t take away anything from anyone else. When you’re happy and fulfilled, you’re able to give more generously. So, instead of thinking about manifesting the life that you want and being true and honest to your desires as selfish, see it as self-care. See it as self-care. I’m caring for me. It is not selfish to care for yourself and take care of you. If you want to spend time visualizing and journaling, to manifest things in your life and you want to carve out that time in your day and that means you know that you’re giving that time to yourself. It’s not selfish, that is self-care. It’s just as much as self-care as it is putting on a face mask. I hate those anyway. I mean, I love face masks. I hate when people boil self-care down to a face mask or a hot bath Like that, to me, is not self-care. That’s that surface level stuff and I like to go deeper than the surface level. To me, true self-care is loving yourself fully and deeply and taking care of and filling up yourself from the inside out. Give yourself permission to want more.

 15:24

As women, a lot of times we’re not supposed to want more, right? We’re supposed to wait until our kids are grown up to want more. We’re supposed to wait for the perfect time or wait until somebody doesn’t need us. And let me take you down this road. If you haven’t been down, if you still have young kids or just depending on where you are at life, you may have already gone through this or experienced this.

 15:44

The problem with asking women to wait to want more is there’s always going to be somebody who needs you, just being real. So you have your little kids. Oh, they’re growing up. Oh wait, now I have grandchildren. Now I have elderly parents. There’s not this span of life where it’s just nobody, if that makes sense.

 16:05

Maybe in your early 20s I was a teen mom, so I don’t have that perspective. I know one of my daughters is living her best 20-something-year-old life and traveling and doing all that stuff, but she still has responsibilities. She still has work, she has a dog. Have our own responsibilities. We all have our own seasons of life. But I guess that’s what I’m trying to tell you Stop waiting for wanting more because, yeah, there’s seasons of your life and there are some seasons of your life where maybe people aren’t pulling on you as much. But I can tell you this all growing up, I was told you know, enjoy your kids while you can. You only have them for 18 years. Who the hell made up that stupid thing? Yeah, it’s sad that they’re growing up, but you have a whole lifetime to experience with your children. They’re living their own life, but I’m still experiencing that with them.

 17:01

It didn’t just go away. We have different seasons of our life and we need to honor those seasons, but we don’t need to use the season of our life as an excuse to deny ourself, because it’s okay to want more for yourself. It’s okay to dream big. You don’t have to apologize for wanting a life that lights you up, no matter what season of your life you’re in. So give yourself permission to want more and to go after it unapologetically. The universe wants you to thrive. It’s waiting for you to claim your desires.

 17:29

Remind yourself that you’re worthy, because there’s a lot of guilt around manifesting for women. Coming from a place of feeling unworthy, you may think who am I to have this? Do I really deserve this? Women ask themselves that question a lot. Do I deserve this? Because we’re programmed to think about everybody else. Is there somebody else who could use this more than me? Is there somebody else who deserves this more than me? Do I deserve it? Yes, you deserve it because you want it. Who are you to have it? You’re a beautiful creation of this world. So, yeah, the answer is yes, you do deserve it.

 18:02

But we’ve been programmed to question do we even deserve things? Because we should be thinking about others so much that we can’t think do we even deserve something for ourself? There’s nothing you have to do for it. You are worthy of every single one of your desires just as much as anybody else. You have nothing to prove.

 18:22

When I went on this journey, I realized I had to work on my self-concept big time a lot. I had to really learn to love myself. One of the things that I want you to understand and one of the conclusions I’ve come to, is that you are worthy simply because you exist. There is nothing to prove. You don’t have to do anything. You don’t have to earn it through acts. See, I grew up thinking anything I had, I had to earn it through perfect acts.

 18:48

I suffered deeply from debilitating perfectionism, because if it wasn’t perfect, I didn’t feel like I deserved it. Because that’s what I was taught that the only way you can deserve something is if you earn it through things that you do. But those things can have to be flawless. If they’re not flawless, then you didn’t meet the criteria to deserve it. Well, nobody’s flawless, nobody is perfect. So then nobody would deserve it, right? Nobody’s flawless, nobody is perfect. So then nobody would deserve it. Right In that sense. But then I realized I’m worthy simply because I exist. The universe does not have any kind of condition. You attract what you believe. That’s it. There’s no condition to that. Do you believe it? Great, have it. So you’re worthy of every single one of your desires, simply because you exist. The universe doesn’t play favorites. You know, we may play favorites as human beings, but the universe does not play favorites, I don’t care. It responds to your energy and it responds to the belief that you have in your worth.

 19:44

Okay, so now let’s get practical, because you’re probably thinking this is a lot to take in. I know, when I went on this journey it was a lot to take in, but let’s get really practical. Sometimes I might speak, I guess, on what you could say is like a more spiritual side or a more nuanced side of things. But I’m a very logical person and I’m a deeply spiritual person. I am both very strongly. This is who I am, and I love the logical side about the nuances of connecting with source and source power and all of these things that seem very spiritual or very nuanced, or some people say they’re very woo woo. But let’s get practical, because when I started my journey, that was great, but it left me with more questions than answers and trying to figure it out and get through it, because I’m going to tell you how we connect to source energy is different for everybody. So how can we go through this and just be practical, like let’s just make it applicable to all, and then how you address it spiritually is on you, up to you, do it how you want to do it. I believe that’s just a really personal thing. But how can we just do this practically? How can we put this into our lives practically? A lot of times on here you’re going to see the more logical side. I know that the the woo-woo side of manifestation is all the rage, right, but let’s just get practical so it can freaking work in our life in a way that we can really see it, understand it and put it into practice.

 21:10

So first thing is to set boundaries. So if you’re always putting others first, start by setting small boundaries. That could be carving out time every day for you, focusing on your desires without interruptions. Boundaries protect your energy and they make space for your manifesting practice. One of the things that I started to do when it came to boundaries was putting my phone on do not disturb at certain times during the day. So there just wasn’t any distraction. At first I felt bad like oh, I’m missing calls. I’m this. I’m that Like I felt bad at first but I had to reprogram myself. But then, once I had that boundary in place and I had that space and time to just breathe and not have somebody pulling on me all the time, I was better able to go through life and then be there when I took the phone off. Do not disturb so like. Those are the kind of boundaries you can set.

 21:57

Practicing self-compassion goes a long way of letting go of the pressure to be perfect for everybody else. I’ve got to show up for everybody else. I got to be perfect for everybody else. Give yourself grace, remember it’s okay to focus on you. Be kind to yourself. Remind yourself that manifesting your desires is an act of self-love. And it is an act of self-love because you’re not denying that which makes you happy. It just kills me when we think self-love is so selfish and ugly. But every other love is beautiful. You know, if you had a significant other that withheld from you, that would not be considered loving right, it would be considered abusive. But if you withhold love from yourself for some reason in our society, we think that’s a beautiful thing. Oh, what an act of selflessness to not love yourself? Oh, it’s so ugly if you love yourself and give to yourself. How about we stop inflicting harm on our own selves by denying ourselves love and start practicing self-compassion and being kind to ourselves? Remind ourselves that we’re worthy of everybody else and that just as much love as we give to others we can give to ourselves.

 23:03

Then I want you to visualize the ripple effect and use the visualization to do that, to help you to start to shift the feelings of oh, I can’t do this or I feel bad, bad about this or this guilt to opening yourself up to the possibility that it doesn’t have to be one or the other. Visualize how your happiness and success is going to positively impact those around you. Imagine showing up as your most fulfilled self, in your job, in your home, with your significant others, with your friends, family. Showing up happy instead of drained, resentful, sad. How was that going to feel? It’s literally going to ripple that energy, like I close my eyes and I just see it as like energy flowing off my body onto everybody else. Negativity is contagious. Positivity is contagious. How are you going to show up?

 23:50

I’m going to challenge you this week, really challenge you to start prioritizing your desires without guilt, so you can let go of some of that resistance, so that you can truly attract what you desire. Take time each day to focus on what you want and remember that by manifesting your dreams, you’re actually creating more abundance for yourself and for those around you. I want you to let go of the fear that you’re being selfish and step into your power unapologetically, because you do have power. The reason I know that you have power is because we live in a society that would try to dim your light, and any type of society that would try to dim your light knows you have power. They’re just scared of your power because it is so magnificent Be powerful. You were born powerful, own it.

 24:45

If you’re ready to dive deeper into your manifesting journey, I’m going to invite you to join my Manifestation Made Simple Masterclass. It’s designed to help you release guilt, simplify your practice, manifest your desires with ease 20 minutes or less a day. So if you’re finding yourself feeling like I can’t devote all that time to myself, I’ve created a system where you can do it in 20 minutes or less a day. You can find the link in the show description or you can go to liblifeunapologeticallycom forward slash manifest. I really truly want to thank you for tuning into the podcast today. I want you to know that manifesting your desires isn’t selfish. It is essential. So keep showing up for yourself, and I will chat with you next week.