Desire is a powerful resource, and it’s an energy I’m always trying to connect with and draw on in my own life. I often ask myself: how’s my desire doing, and how’s my relationship with my desire doing?

Because it matters how I respond to my desire. It matters what I do with that energy pulling me forward into what I most want.

I’ve experienced the power of channeling my desire into imagination and creation and movement, just as I’ve experienced the destruction of pushing my desire away or making my desire mean that I’ll never reach what I want, that I’m not worthy of what I most yearn for, or that my desire is pointing toward the impossible.

Desire is a powerful force – and whether that’s a force for creation and aliveness or for destruction and despair largely depends on my relationship with it and my response to it.

This is some of what I’ve found helpful in cultivating a more positive and powerful relationship with my desire:

Affirm and celebrate desire when it comes up. Because it’s sort of amazing to want things and be fueled by that wanting. My desire means I’m alive, and it’s a gift I am free to use and work with to create, grow, and deepen into my life.

Celebrate the ways desire has pulled you forward into beauty, creativity, and growth. I know my desire has prompted me to do things my fear would have preferred I definitely not do: get on a plane and travel to another country alone, go on that first date, publish and share my creative work. Without desire, none of that awesomeness would have happened. Think back. What has your desire done for you?

Get familiar with your desire. How does it feel in your body? What are its different shades, textures, and energies? How does it ripple through your life?

So what do you want? Where’s your desire pulling you next? I hope that as you explore and lean into your own desire, you also feel into the power, possibility, and creativity that exists within it and lives within you.