The Power of Desire: What Would You Truly Love?

What if your desires aren't selfish?

What if they're not evidence that you're ungrateful, unrealistic, or wanting too much?

What if your deepest desires are actually clues?

In this episode of Aligned & Alive—from Within, Kelly explores why desire may be one of the most powerful guidance systems available to us—and why so many people become disconnected from it.

You'll learn how to reconnect with what truly lights you up, why your desires may be pointing you toward your destiny, and how small actions taken in the direction of what you would truly love can transform your life over time.

Just as a ship leaving San Francisco can arrive at an entirely different destination by changing course by a single degree, tiny course corrections made consistently can create extraordinary results.

In this episode, you'll discover:

• Why many people lose touch with their desires

• A simple practice to reconnect with what makes you feel most alive

• How desire functions as guidance

• Why your deepest desires may be pointing you toward who you're becoming

• The difference between gratitude and settling

• Why gratitude and desire can coexist beautifully

• How honoring desire creates energy, momentum, aliveness, and alignment

• The surprising connection between desire and the feelings we most want to experience

• Why one-degree shifts can completely change the trajectory of your life

Questions to Reflect On

What feeling am I choosing?

What thought am I thinking on purpose?

What would I truly love?

Resources & Links

Join The Weekly Anchor

Before the week begins, take a moment to decide how you want to live it.

Every Sunday, Kelly sends a short email that helps you set an intention for the week ahead through:

• A feeling to embody

• A thought to think on purpose

• A desire to honor

• A powerful question for reflection

Because the quality of your life is shaped by what you consistently focus on.

Choose a feeling. It influences your energy.

Choose a thought. It influences your perspective.

Choose a desire. It influences your direction.

Sign up here: https://www.anchormeditation.com/contact

The Morning Anchor Meditation

A simple guided practice to help you call your energy back from the past, release your grip on the future, and begin your day grounded, present, and connected.

Listen here: https://www.anchormeditation.com/morning-anchor-meditation?cid=20ec6d98-fdf8-418e-9132-bcfdfa2d8156

Private Coaching

Ready to stop merely understanding these ideas and start living them?

Learn more about Kelly's private coaching:

https://www.anchormeditation.com/private-coaching

If this episode resonated with you, please share it with a friend or leave a review. It helps more people discover the podcast and supports the mission of helping people create more peace, joy, freedom, and alignment in their lives.

Until next time,

Trust yourself.

Love boldly.

And stay aligned.

Transcript

0:00

Welcome back to Aligned and Alive from Within. I'm Kelly Ryan, and today let's talk about one of the most misunderstood words in personal growth, spirituality, and everyday life. And that word is desire. A lot of us have a complicated relationship with desire because we've been taught to be grateful for what we have, to be realistic, not get our hopes up, to avoid disappointment, and to stop wanting so much. And so, somewhere along the way, a lot of people disconnected from one of the most powerful guidance systems they possess, which is their desires. And so today I want to offer a different perspective for you to consider on desire. Because what if your desires aren't selfish, they're not evidence that you're ungrateful, but they're actually invitations. What if they're clues that are helping point you toward a fuller expression of who you truly are? So let's explore that. One of my favorite questions to ask clients is what would you truly love? So it's not what should you do or what's realistic or what would make everyone else happy, but what would you truly love in terms of your health, your wealth, your relationships? And it's such a simple question, but a lot of people struggle to answer it, not because they don't have desires, but because they're disconnected from their desires. They've spent years ignoring them while prioritizing everyone else's needs, living according to expectations. And really we we start to convince ourselves that we shouldn't want what we want. And those are years spent postponing joy, waiting for permission, and eventually people lose touch with their own inner knowing. And so as we talk about desire, I think it's important to acknowledge that some people hear the question, what would you truly love, and immediately have an answer. Where others hear it and feel completely blank. And if that's you, um, I can relate. I've been there and you're not doing anything wrong. In fact, it's incredibly common. So when you spent years focused on caregiving or responsibilities or survival or achievement or meeting other people's expectations and being what everyone else wants and needs you to be, then it's easy to lose touch with your own desires. And sometimes the disconnect happens gradually. You just become so accustomed to asking what needs to be done that you stop asking what you actually want. The good news is that clarity doesn't usually arrive all at once. It returns through curiosity, through paying attention and creating space to listen. So if you're disconnected from your desires, I encourage you to just start small by asking yourself, huh, what am I naturally drawn toward? Or what gives me energy, or what am I curious about, or what moments make me feel most alive? What do I envy in other people that might actually be revealing something that I want for myself? And so you don't need a life-changing revelation or a five-year plan. You just need a willingness to be curious and notice. Because oftentimes desires whisper before it speaks loudly. And so the more you listen and the more you ask, what would I truly love, the clearer it becomes. And I also want to offer another way to reconnect with desire, not through thinking, but through feeling. And so I'm going to invite you to find a comfortable position and take a slow breath and allow your body to soften. Allow your jaw to unclench, your shoulders to drop, your belly to soften. And now bring to mind a time in your life when you felt deeply alive. Not necessarily successful or happy, but alive. Maybe you were traveling, falling in love, being in nature, creating something, laughing with friends, holding a baby, dancing, watching a sunset, swimming in the ocean. Just remember the experience of aliveness. And more importantly, remember the feeling. What did it feel like in your body? Excitement, freedom, expansion, curiosity, joy, connection. And just notice what happens as you remember. Oftentimes your body knows what your mind has forgotten. And so desires leave clues. Pay attention to what energizes you, what expands you, what resonates with you. What makes you lose track of time? What sparks curiosity? What feels like a full-body yes. Your desires oftentimes reveal where life is inviting you next. So they might not make logical sense, they might not fit neatly into a plan, but sometimes the path forward isn't found by asking what should I do. Sometimes it's found by asking what makes me feel most alive. And when you're ready, you can open your eyes, and if you'd like, you can jot anything down that came up. And I encourage you to pay attention to desire as a form of guidance. So when you're driving somewhere new, you rely on GPS. And when the GPS says turn left, you don't get angry or judge it or debate whether it's correct. You just recognize that it's providing information for you to get from point A to point B. And I believe desire works in a similar way. It doesn't always tell us exactly how to get somewhere, but it often points us in the direction of growth and expansion and greater aliveness and possibilities. Your desire may be asking you to travel, create, rest, speak up, leave, stay, learn, love, play, trust, begin. Your desire isn't always the destination, but it reveals the direction. And I definitely don't believe our deepest desires are random. I believe that our deepest desires matter. So I'm talking about the desires that continue calling to us, that return time and time again, the desires that light something up inside of us and make us feel more alive. I believe that those desires are clues about who we're becoming and what we're here to experience and what life is trying to express through us. So think about it. The acorn contains the blueprint of the oak. The rose seed already carries within it what it's meant to become. And in a lot of ways, I believe that we do too. So why are some people drawn toward teaching and others toward parenting, or others toward healing, or others toward creating, or others toward service? I don't believe that these longings are accidents. I believe they're invitations and that desire often points towards our destiny. So not destiny in the sense that every detail of your life is predetermined, but destiny in the sense that there is a unique expression of life that wants to emerge through you. So we're all so unique. We have a unique contribution, a unique path, a unique way of loving and serving and being. And the challenge is that a lot of us have been taught to distrust desire. And so we dismiss it and we explain it away. But what if your desires are trying to guide you and are gently leading you toward a life that's more aligned with who you truly are? What if your longing isn't evidence that something's missing, but it's evidence that something is calling, inviting, leading? And so the question then becomes: are you willing to listen? And are you willing to take the next small step in the direction of what you would truly love? One of my favorite teachers says, baby steps will take you all the way to the top of Mount Everest if you just keep taking them. So are you willing to take the next small step in the direction of what you would truly love? And trust that if you just keep taking the next baby step, the next action, eventually you'll get there. And when people disconnect from desire, life starts feeling flat and predictable. And they do what they have to do and they fulfill their responsibilities and they survive, but they're no longer fully alive and participating in life. And one of the greatest costs of disconnecting from desire is that we lose access to our life force energy and we stop feeling inspired and excited and curious, and instead begin living from obligation rather than creation. And when that's the case, yes, we're still functioning, but we're surviving, not thriving, and we're not feeling fully alive. And so a lot of us need more connection to what excites us, what inspires us, what calls us forward. And desire and being in touch with our desire on a daily basis, on a weekly basis, brings energy and creates momentum and awakens possibilities. So in our last episode, we talked about feelings and desire connects beautifully to that conversation because everything we think we want is ultimately because of how we believe it'll make us feel. So the relationship, the money, the business, the dream home, the vacation, the promotion. We want this because we imagine that they'll bring us freedom and love and peace and joy and connection and security and aliveness. Desire points toward the experiences we long to have. And often the feeling beneath the desire reveals something even more important than the thing itself. And we don't have to choose between gratitude and desire. That's a false choice. You can deeply appreciate your life exactly as it is and still desire more. You can desire more love, more joy, more impact, more adventure, more connection, more creativity, more freedom, more abundance. So gratitude says, I appreciate what is. And desire says I'm open to what could be. So both are beautiful and both belong. And what happens when you begin honoring your desires is that it changes your daily life because you start paying attention and become more intentional and able to make decisions that feel aligned. And so you stop abandoning yourself and you begin becoming more alive and trusting yourself more. You stop waiting for someone else to tell you what your life should look like, and you become the author of your own experience. And most importantly, you begin enjoying the journey of life instead of postponing your happiness until some future milestone. And so again, I'm gonna invite you to join me in a short and simple practice. Take a breath and place a hand on your heart, on your solar plexus, on your cheek, wherever feels most comforting and nourishing to you. And just ask internally what would I truly love? Don't edit, don't judge, don't explain, don't negotiate, simply listen. Trust what arises. And then ask what's one small way I can honor that desire this week. Not someday. Today or this week. And when you're ready, open your eyes. And some key takeaways from today's episode. Desire isn't selfish. It's not evidence that something's wrong. It functions as guidance. So I believe that desires are pointing you toward your destiny, that gratitude and desire can coexist, that everything we think we want is connected to how we think it'll make us feel. And when we honor desire, we create energy, momentum, aliveness, and alignment. And small actions taken in the direction of desire can transform a life. If you are in a ship and it leaves San Francisco and changes its course by just one degree, it might not seem like much at first. Maybe an hour later, the difference is hardly noticeable. But a day later, the ship is in a different place. And a week later, it's far from where it would have been. And over time, that single degree changes the destination entirely. And honoring desire works the same way. You don't have to quit your job tomorrow or move across the world or write the entire book or start the entire business or have every answer. Sometimes all that's required is a one-degree shift. One conversation, one class, one application, one boundary, one walk, one hour devoted to something you love. Just one courageous step in the direction of what feels alive. And small actions taken consistently in the direction of desire will transform a life. Not because the action itself is extraordinary, but because every action reinforces an identity. Every action says, I'm listening, I'm honoring myself, and I'm willing to trust what is calling me. And over time, those seemingly small choices create an entirely different future. So a lot of people think transformation happens through giant leaps, but more often it happens through tiny course corrections, through a one-degree shift in the direction of what you would really love. A year from now, that one degree shift may have changed your health, your relationships, your work, your confidence, your joy, and the quality of your everyday life. And most importantly, your relationship with yourself, your trust with yourself. And all of this is to say that even if your desire feels too big, don't worry about the destination. Just make the one degree adjustment. And this is exactly why each week in my newsletter, The Weekly Anchor, I invite you to choose a feeling, a thought, and a desire. Because desires matter. They often reveal the next version of your life that's wanting to emerge. And so when we stop dismissing them and start listening and honoring them, life becomes more meaningful, more joyful, and way more alive. If you'd like to receive this weekly anchor newsletter, it comes out on Sundays. You can sign up using the link in the show notes. And before we close, I'd love to leave you with three questions. What feeling am I choosing? What thought am I thinking on purpose? And what would I truly love? And whatever immediately comes to mind, don't dismiss it. Get curious. Maybe your desire is trying to tell you something or guide you somewhere or revealing something about who you're becoming or inviting you toward a fuller expression of your life. Maybe it's leading you towards your destiny. Thank you so much for spending this time with me today. If this episode resonated, I would love for you to leave a review. I'd love for you to share it with someone who might need it. And again, if you'd like a weekly reminder to reconnect with your thoughts, feelings, and desires, be sure to join the weekly Anchor newsletter. Until next time, trust yourself, love boldly, and stay aligned.