From People Pleaser to Truly Generous

I'm Michelle Lizenberry Christensen. Since 1997, I've been coaching powerful, purpose driven, world changing leaders who are ambitious in every area of their lives. My Sex Love Power podcast and my YouTube channel are the go to resources for couples and individuals who want the vision of love they see in their hearts to manifest every day in the ways they collaborate, communicate love and make love. Let's go. Today I want to talk in a little bit broader terms than I usually use. I want to talk more deeply, less strategically. Because so many of the problems that women come to me with, and that couples and men come for that matter, they have to do with how we view the purpose of a woman, the power of a woman, what women are for. They don't say it that way, but that's what I see in it. Because we've lived in a culture that for several thousand years has really thought of women as being just helpers to men, sort of accessories. This comes back to, for instance, the biblical story of how a woman was created from a man's rib. Whether you believe that literally or not, and I certainly don't, we know that there are so many messages that we can't really kick out of our heads, we can't entirely eradicate that tell us that we as women are here for other people, that our identities are really rooted in what we can provide for others, what we can do for people, how we can consider their needs ahead of our own, how we can seek their approval. So I want to talk very specifically today about something I've found, not that we need to debate whether it's true or not, but. But what I've found to be a more useful approach to thinking about ourselves as women and a way to approach relationship as a woman and a useful way for people who aren't women to think about women. Because see, I think we've had it backwards. I think what's more useful is to view a woman as not someone who exists to serve, but who is built to receive. Not that you exist to put other people's needs ahead of your own, but that other people's needs are deeply served when your needs are met. I was socialized and I think many women can relate. When I say we've been taught to be nice above all else, what I've learned is that being nice isn't always synonymous with being kind. And that doing what looks nice on the surface often leads to resentment and to being anything but nice on down the road because you've over given, because you've been inauthentic. In how you showed up because you were dishonest about what you really wanted or wanted to do, because you were following that edict to be nice above all else. And there were honest things happening that didn't follow the edict. Another way we've had it backwards is that we've been taught not to be too big. Don't want too much, don't have too much, don't take up too much space. Other people are going to be uncomfortable if you take up too much room, if you stand too tall. I've heard it called in the UK and Australia, tall poppy syndrome. Like you don't want your head to stick up above those of your peers, or it's going to get lopped off the way the one tall poppy, taller than the others, might get lopped off in a show field. We don't want to stand out, but here's the truth. Brilliant women, true leaders, revolutionaries, pioneers, of course we're going to stand out. It's only natural that we do. That's what we're here to do. We don't always fit in. We don't always match the mold that others seem to have been poured from. And sometimes that can feel like we don't match. And that must mean we're doing it wrong. But what if, in fact, we're doing it right? What if that's what evolution is asking of us? To be different in the ways that we are different, to be different in ways that are progressing in, that are advancing above the norm and helping all of us move forward together. So I want to talk about how we can flip some of these beliefs, because these ideas, I think, work better. I don't know what's more true, but I think that there are some ways of thinking about ourselves that create more satisfaction for women. And that when a woman is more satisfied, more joyful, more wildly alive, everything is better for everyone around her. It doesn't matter whether your partner is male or female or a different gender. It doesn't matter if you have children or don't have children, if you're a leader in an organization or you don't work for money at all. You are part of a community. You are part of a family group, and you matter. And your shining and glowing and being radiantly alive imbues everyone and everything around you with the light and heat of your inner flame. So you don't exist to serve. You exist to be served, to be nourished, to be held, to be protected, and to be pleasured. And then from all that, as a Beautiful, lush, full, sponge. For all that goodness, you naturally bless others. You know that saying, if mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy, or happy wife happy life. I think these come from the recognition that pouring into a woman is a really good idea. When a woman allows herself to be adored, cared for, cherished, pleasured, she cannot help but ooze that back to others from her overflow. So we really have it backwards when we try to give out and serve first when our tank isn't full. The better way to operate, if we want to be generous, is to let ourselves be filled up and give from that, naturally letting our own joy nourish others. The truth is, I think you're naturally generous, but you cannot pour from an empty cup. There's this whole underlying tenet that really creates codependence that says, I'll give to you by giving up me, and then your duty is to give to me by giving up you. That's how we know we love each other, is if we make sacrifices of our own well being for the well being of the other one. But as we know, if we've ever tried this, it doesn't work. It backfires when we give to another. I call it the gift of the Magi syndrome. When we sell out the best in us to provide something we think the other person needs, everyone winds up impoverished. You remember that story where the man sells his treasured pocket watch to buy his wife a barrette for her beautiful hair? Unbeknownst to him, meanwhile, she's selling her hair, cutting it off and selling it to buy him a new chain for that treasured pocket watch. So they both gave up too much. And it's. I think it's kind of meant to be this hopelessly, deeply romantic story about true love. But in fact it belies a certain foolishness that they each gave up their treasure and wound up with none. And that wasn't necessary. We all lose out on who we actually are and what we actually need when we give up ourselves to give to others. But if instead we allow ourselves to receive what we need most, if we name that, ask for it, and let it come in, then we can give from our overflow. There's a multiplicative factor that happens when we do that. And I'm not saying it's just women who can operate this way. What I'm saying is that women can lead this and that truly by socialization. We have to lead it because we are the ones who have been most conditioned to do it in the opposite way. When we get from our overflow. We are giving away the bumper crop. Like if you've ever grown zucchini, you know, sometimes you wind up with more zucchini than you know what to do with. And a lot of fruit trees are this way too. There are times a year when you gotta give it away because you have way too much. And that's what happens when we let ourselves be filled up. We're not cutting off our roots that we would be relying on for next year's harvest. We're just giving away from the bumper crop. The third big idea I want to offer you is that selflessness is a way of controlling others feelings. Giving ourselves a way to be nice to others creates this requirement that they then in turn be happy with us. It demands that others submit to our controlling how they feel and, and what they think. In my mind, it's better to be real than to try to be nice or read people's minds or people please. So, for example, when we're being nice, we'll often apologize. What are we doing when we say we're sorry? We're demanding that the other person get over it. Right? It's very nice to apologize, but what's nice then to do in response is to say, it's okay, I forgive you. You have to move on if you're the other person. So there's something more real, more intimate, more authentic about being truthful. So maybe I made a mistake and I go to you and I say, it's hurting me that I did that. That's not how I want to be with you. Instead of saying I'm sorry and demanding that you get over it, maybe instead I say, what would help you now? What can I do to set this right? And then I want to give you a space to feel how you feel and not know necessarily yet what I can do to set it right. I want to give you the time and that's not totally comfortable to do. What's far more comfortable is if we both play nice. I say sorry, you say, no problem, we both get over it and we move on. But if we do it that way, it doesn't deepen our connection at all. Actually, it erodes trust between us. Thought number four that I submit for your consideration today. Receptivity creates abundance, not scarcity. The bigger, more joyful, more receptive, more open you are to letting in other people's love, care, service and generosity. The more you have with which to bless other people. I don't just mean in terms of money and time. I mean Your very being gets bigger. I've had to wrestle a lot to get to the place I'm at with all of this. I have felt badly for all that I have in the past. I've wondered why I'm so blessed when other people have less or have harder lives. And when I wanted even more, when I could see how much more was possible for me. I've thought that my more, my desire was in itself a mark of my badness and that if I got more, it would make me an even bigger jerk. So I thought I was bad for wanting it and that I would be even worse if I got it. I just had this basic fear that I'm greedy and lazy and that the more abundance I have in my life, the more greedy and lazy and out of touch with other people I'm going to become. But when I really looked at it, when I got really honest about the true effect of my abundance, when I feel good, when I feel plenty, when I have more love, more material security, more beautiful things in my life, what happens to how I treat other people and the effect I have on the rest of the world. I'm actually more capable. I'm more generous. I'm more philanthropic. I'm a more present, resilient, patient mother. I'm a more enthusiastic lover. I have more aliveness from which to give. And I'm guessing the exact same is true for you. You are a well. And the more full the well is, the more there is there to pull out for other people. So we've had this backwards, haven't we? The way that I grew up thinking about it was that I thought I had to hold myself back, reel in my desires, not be too greedy, not want too much, not be too demanding of life and of the other people around me. Not be too demanding of my dreams themselves. But that's simply not the way it works. So I wanted to name that today. And the next big thought number five here that I want to make sure to share is that we inspire one another. The bigger we are. What really works is being as big as you actually are in your natural shape, as big as you can be. I've learned that true humility is not just not being too big for your britches. It's also not being too small for your own britches either. It's filling the shoes you came here to fill that only you can fill. It's being fully yourself and huge in all the ways that you are. Look at the people you admire most is what you admire. The ways they hold Themselves back. The ways they compare themselves to other people, the ways they make sure that nobody's ever intimidated or provoked or has their feelings hurt by how much this person shines. No, the people that you are most inspired and uplifted by, the people you can't get enough of, the people you want to be around and you want to become more like, are the ones who are taking up enough space to express who they are. And that might mean they're famous and it might not. It just means that they're authentic. Of course you're vulnerable and fallible in the ways that you are. You're not perfect and you're not better than anyone else in the sense of basic human worthiness, but you are extraordinary in the ways that you are. Excellent, wonderful, delightful. You are the best. No one has ever been quite like you and no one ever will be again. Standing in the glory of that, whether that's with the people closest to you, in the privacy of your own home or on a stage, or doing your work, standing in your glory is of service to all of us. When we see a woman at her best, serving, shining, receiving, enjoying, we love it. We love to watch somebody getting off on life. Everyone around is lit up by you. When you're fully in your joy, when you really let in the delights of the life you have, everybody else wants to give you more, just to experience what it's like to be with you when you receive it. Everybody draws sustenance from your radiance. So it's worthwhile to develop your willingness to let it in. This is another learning edge of mine. I'm learning to be willing, to be provocative, to have people have both strong positive and strong negative reactions to me because I know that they both come together. I can't really touch the people I'm here to touch without pissing some other people off. I'm learning to be willing to get feedback. There are people who are uncomfortable with the fact that I talk about sex. There are people who are uncomfortable with me saying feedback, divorce is okay and long term marriage is okay. You know, two different groups of people. There are people who believe that polyamory is the holy grail of wild aliveness and that I'm a prude for being pro monogamy for myself. Then there are other people who think that because I say polyamory is the right choice for a lot of people, that I'm then going against something really basic at a moral level. I don't see it that way at all. And I used to just Want to please everybody. I didn't want to say anything that was going to bother somebody. I wanted to be safe. I thought that safe meant never pissing anybody off. But now I see, like, boy, if I say anything that has some meaning to it, somebody's going to be delighted and somebody else is going to be turned off or bothered. And the really cool thing is that I'm discovering that when we provoke someone with what we're saying, what we're doing, how we're being, when that provokes a reaction in someone that's of service to them, even it actually helps them. If someone's bothered by you, they get this beautiful opportunity to see something about themselves that they might not otherwise have gotten to see. Now, they may or may not choose to learn from that, choose to let that be a blessing to them, choose to let that awaken them. But that's really their business, not yours. You can't control what other people think of you. And I know that I'm saying this with so much zeal because I'm just now learning it. But that discovery that it's okay if people don't like me or approve of what I said or have reactions to me is so liberating, and it helps me do what I came here to do. And I hope it can do the same for you. Whatever is written on your heart by the divine. I've said this for so long, I really believe your rings are your instructions in this life, that every deep desire you have, not your passing wants, but your deepest desires, are your marching orders written on your heart by the divine. They're invitations for what you're supposed to do in this life. Of course, there are spiritual teachings that talk about wants, that the ego can just pursue things and try to get more, and it's never satisfying. It's basically empty. The hungry ghost, that you can feed as much of this thing that you want as you want, and it will never be satisfied. And that's my experience, too, you know, Bono wrote this lyric for you, too, that says you can never get enough of what you don't really need. In addiction, I have found that one was not enough, and an infinite never was never too many. Gabor Mate's book In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts about addiction speaks really poignantly to this. It was one of the books I read when I first started to recognize that my relationship with both food and spending were squarely in that category of addiction. My son just came home. You might be able to hear him in the background. I'm going to keep that in. So Gavor Mate talks himself about shopping for classical music CDs. Even the most benign activities can be addictive in nature. If what we're doing is grasping for one more, when that's not really what we need, when we're grasping just to escape the moment that is wanting. And that's not what I'm talking about here. When I talk about your desires, when I say your desires come from the divine and that they're your marching orders, I mean that those yearnings that you have, the ways you most long to feel, the experiences you desire to have, like adventure and passion, pleasure, peace, surrender, feeling opened wide, those feelings are guides to who you are to be what you are to do what you are to create in the world. And every one of them is a promise that those experiences are available to you right here. Those are your divine qualities. They're already in you. And they'll guide you to where to show up. If you really listen to that guidance directionally, it will take you where you're meant to go. Now, will the things that you've pictured or how you think you're going to get those things, those experiences, will the designs that you have in your mind right now always match perfectly the way that your life's gonna unfold? No. No. Desires are not about the particulars. They're directional guidance. They help us to evolve directionally in the way that brings us to our greatest selves. So we don't always know exactly why we're wanting a particular thing or why we're headed in that direction. But when we take action, guided by our deepest desires, we wind up where we belong. We wind up doing the things that we're meant to do, meeting the people that are ours to meet, and becoming the selves that feel the best to be. We have to kind of keep our radio on, you know, Imagine you're like a little soldier out in the field. You get your marching orders at headquarters and you set out, but you keep your radio on because you might get an update on your instructions. You want to stay tuned. So to me, life is this daily conversation asking my deeper power inside, what am I to express today? Use me. And so I listen in my meditation time, I get a sense of that and then I check it out. So I'll say to the divine, I think I'm hearing this. I'll write about it, allow it to come forward. I'll check it out and then act on it. If the next time that I meditate on it, it feels like, yeah, that's the guidance I take the inspired actions. And then as I move in that direction, I see what kind of feedback I get in terms of how other people respond to me, the way it feels in my body when I'm taking those actions and being in those places. And then I review and iterate again. That ongoing dialogue with your desires, I think is the most intimate conversation you need to be having in your life. It's a conversation with life itself, with your own body, with your emotions, with your sensations, and with the divine. And then that's what drives your conversations with other people. So if you'll engage in that conversation with your inner knowing, then this still quiet confidence I have found will come forward. It helps you make decisions from deep down in your body. For me, it feels like they're coming from inside my pussy. There is a center of wisdom there. This kind of guidance will help you make decisions in your relationships, in your career. It'll guide how you spend your money, how you show up with challenges. Parenting, which is certainly an opportunity every day to grow into something you never knew how to be. I joke to my kids, I'm new at this. You know, my kids are 15 and 12. I've never parented a 15 year old boy or a 12 year old girl before. Every day they're changing and I'm growing to keep up with it. So I know I need all the inner guidance I can get. I need all the trust in myself and all the connection with saints and sages and devas and angels, every guide and guru I can get to inside. I ask to be alongside me as I mother them. And I absolutely have to have my tank full if I'm running on empty, if I'm frantic or I'm spread too thin. I cannot be who I desire to be for my kids. So there's a metaphor for all this, and that is that you are the hearth. I tell my female clients, imagine a big fireplace at the center of your home. It's huge and round and the smoke goes out just above it. You can see it from every angle, from every room. And the heat and the light and the energy from that hearth fuel your entire home. Everything that happens in your home is fueled by this hearth. It's how the bedrooms stay warm at night. It's how every room is lit. And that hearth is you. It is your flame, your pleasure, your passion, your vitality. You're feeling healthy and wildly alive. You are feeling pleasure filled. You are feeling joyful and on your path. You are feeling your feelings. You are being Rested. These are the things that tend the flame in that hearth. I don't know where you are right now. Maybe you feel like in your hearth there's nothing but barely glowing embers shrouded in ash. That's what it's like when we're in burnout or depression. And that is not an indictment of you. That is not saying you're being a bad hearth to your family. That's saying this is the reality of what has happened to your work, your family, your life. Because you're not feeling great. You haven't been filling your well before you dipped out of it for other people. You've been very generous, but not as wise as you're now prepared to be. And as a result, the light and the heat are dimmer all around you. The level of energy is lower. Because you giving up you for the sake of others has always just been a fallacy. It doesn't work, it doesn't nourish them, it doesn't light or heat your home. It doesn't give anybody energy when you're depleted by it. But when you stoke the flames of your well being, when you make sure that you, a pleasure fueled organism by nature of being a woman, are full of pleasure, when you make sure you're rested, when you're proceeding at a pace that allows you to de stress every day as quickly as possible, anytime your stress level goes up, you can be an abundant hearth. Now I'm not saying life isn't stressful. Parenting, running a business, managing your finances, making time to be with your husband so the two of you can connect, or being with your spouse or partner, all of these things take energy and all of them can generate cortisol and can have you really busy. But you can become masterful at nourishing yourself, recharging yourself, because you recognize that your nourishment is what fuels everything else. And if you do that, you won't flip flop from our culture's way of thinking. Like you get the dregs, you get the leftovers. Take care of yourself. Maybe on a Saturday morning, or maybe now and then, maybe one weekend away with the girls per year. If you don't flip into a way of thinking that puts your well first, you're going to be in a perpetual cycle of depletion. You'll always be that cold, dark, great, your flame's never going to die because you are that powerful, that resilient. But your home's never going to be bright and warm, really. But if you'll have the courage to flip this around to recognize that you are the hearth. You can burn brightly, feel amazing yourself, and watch how that benefits everyone around you. Far from being selfish, it's the most generous thing you can do for others, to give them your brightest self. But it takes courage every single day to swim upstream in this culture, to make the space, to set the boundaries, to declare I matter and my pleasure, my connection to my inner wisdom, a pace that works for my nervous system. Those are the most important things. Those are my top priorities. That takes courage. It takes a lot of support. It's an ongoing conversation, but I think that's exactly what women need to really live the lives that we feel called from within us to live. I'm guessing that if you're listening this far, you have a vision of what that could be like. You have a deeper love, a deeper passion, more pleasure, a more sustainable approach to life that you're hungry for. There's a blueprint for it inside you. But you don't know how to get those beams up, how to install the windows, how to make that beautiful vision you have into a reality that you can inhabit. But that's what I've been working on in my marriage and in my life for 27 years. It's what I've helped other women do for that whole time as a coach, but particularly since about 2008, 2010, as I've been focusing more and more on relationships and embodiment. So I want to say with this episode that there's a movement afoot. We are a part of a revolution of women learning to tend the flame. I'm building community around that. So if you're interested in tending your own flame, interested in learning more about what this really means and what practices we use to do that, to keep deepening our capacity to receive and keep deepening our strength, to put up fences where they're needed and to really be willing to live from our joy and our pleasure, even in a culture that would tell us those aren't valuable. Please reach out. You can email supportisonberry.com and I'd love to hear from you, and my team will help you learn more. So I want to close out this episode by saying, you are the hearth. And there's another metaphor that I think is really potent, and that is thinking of yourself as a garden, because I'm not a great gardener myself. But, you know, in the summer, it's very easy to grow greens like lettuce and herbs. And I love to eat from our own garden. If we just take the little tiny seeds and plant them and keep them reasonably well watered. The sun shines on the garden and the soil feeds those little seeds and they grow. I don't have to do a whole lot to get beautiful food sprouting in my yard. Those little seeds create life where there wasn't any. Think about that. That is evidence that something really powerful is at play here. I don't know what it is, but it's just the same in your life when you grow more good. When you plant the seeds of abundance, of enough, of pleasure, of joy, of service, of love in the garden of your life, particularly in the garden of who you are, it makes more. It creates what wasn't there. And in that way you can have absolutely anything. There's no limit to how expansive your life can be. There's no way in which your expansion takes away from anyone else. You grew it. If you're doing from your own honesty, your own love, you're not hijacking anyone else to take what's rightfully theirs. You're in fact growing what's yours. And as you do that, you have a right to absolutely anything you can imagine opening your receptivity to. And the truth is that when you have more, it thrives everyone else. You can't help but give it away just by being you. You don't have to do anything or write any checks to light other people up with your joy and your aliveness. Just watch. Test this out next time you're having a 10 out of 10 day. Notice how it impacts other people around you. Notice what happens even before you have fun buying coffee for the person right behind you in line or any of the other overt acts of generosity. You may be inspired to notice how much your well being is itself an act of generosity. You are the hearth, you are the garden. And that is the truth of your real power, your real purpose, your real meaning. Thank you so much for listening. May this truth land deeply in every cell of your body. May you inhabit it and may it nourish you for every day of your life. I'd love to hear what you're going to take away from this episode and what questions you have. Where do you feel this conversation in your body? Drop me a DM on social media anytime. Links are in the show notes. You know, reviews are really what help others recognize how this podcast is different from other relationship and sex podcasts. So thanks in advance for leaving a review right now in your podcasting app before you move on with your day. And hey, have you subscribed? Hit that subscribe button in the app so you'll always get notifications of new episodes when they drop. Thank you so much for being here. I'm Michelle Isenberry Christensen, and this has been Sex Love Power. I'll see you on the next episode. And until then, may the light within you illuminate the world around you.