It’s time to out a piece of my shadow – I am desperate.

I am desperate for love and attention.

I am desperate to be liked.

I am desperate for money.

For the longest time I felt a lot of shame around this… ok, let me be honest I still do sometimes.

How can being desperate be a good thing?

When I think of moments I’ve felt desperate, they’ve felt HORRIBLE.

I think of the time my high school ex-boyfriend wanted to get back together with me, but then the moment I expressed too much interest he said never mind.

Or the time my current husband and I broke up for a little bit and all I wanted was to be with him so bad because I knew he was my person, he just didn’t see it yet.

Or the time I wanted to get paid the salary I deserved at my 9-5, but no matter how bad I wanted it or what I did to prove myself they refused to pay me as much as my male colleagues.

Basically, I think of all the times I wanted something so bad I looked stupid.

And in those times, I felt so freaking stuck – with no power or control.

But what’s interesting, is there’s something so beautiful in wanting something so bad you’re willing to look stupid for it.

I remember one time I was hosting a 9TOFREEDOM coaching call and I told my clients, “You have to want your business to work out so bad you’re willing to look stupid.” Everyone on the call agreed – we should go live on Instagram even if people judged us, we should share our services even if our closest family members didn’t understand what we were doing, we had to try.

In that context, I think it’s powerful to want something so bad you’re willing to look stupid. So it really makes me question why desperation is such a bad thing?

On the other hand, you always hear online marketers and spiritual mentors say, “Don’t sell from a place of desperation” or “People can smell desperation a mile away, it’s repelling.” For a long time, I believed them.

The moments in my life when I’ve felt desperate, I pushed the things I want so very far away from me. So I began to fear my desperation. I began to shove it deep deep down inside and never admit that it existed.

But guess what, there’s always going to be a piece of me that’s desperate. A piece of me that wants things so bad I’m willing to look stupid.

I’m starting to think of my desperation like anxiety. It’s not good, it’s not bad, it just exists. I can either give a space for my desperation to exist and be heard, or I can burry it down deep and wait for it to come out, explode and push everything I’ve ever wanted far far away.

When I wanted my high school ex-boyfriend back I was so worried about looking desperate in front of him. So worried that I couldn’t hide it and it exploded out in front of him. I lost him (blessing in disguise really, but ya know still hard for a teenage girlie).

But now, I’m owning the fact that sometimes I get a little desperate, we all do. Now, instead of shaming my desperation or making that part of me hide, I listen to it.

The other day, I had a client who hadn’t replied to my email yet – an urgent email. I almost went into her DMs to ask her if she saw the email yet and I felt so icky as I was typing the message. So instead of pressing send I asked myself, “What feels icky about this message?”

It took me THREE HOURS to figure out why I felt so gross about it. I was journaling furiously trying to figure out what this feeling was. I thought I was feeling selfish asking for what I need. I was worried I might come off as thinking I’m better than everyone else by demanding she reply to me. It took literal hours to get down to the root – desperation.

I felt desperate. Desperate to get her attention, desperate to get her to pay attention to me, desperate to get her to answer me.

Instead of ignoring that feeling and pressing send, I took a pause and gave space for my desperation to tell me her fears.

I’m starting to realize that my desperation is really my fear coming through to control whatever it can.

I did a meditation to listen to my desperation, to tell her what she needs and then I did an activity to accept her as part of me.

That was hard.

I had to admit to myself that I was desperate. I had to accept that it’s okay that I’m desperate. Ew – that was so hard.

When I was doing the exercise to accept my desperation, at first I was sobbing. Feeling so icky, embarrassed and shameful. Then, I started laughing. Of course I’m desperate!

I’m so desperate sometimes that I took THREE HOURS of my morning to try to figure out why I was feeling off. My desperation to feel better was part of the process to accept that I’m a desperate girlie sometimes – it’s hilarious.

Then, my higher self said, “We all get desperate sometimes.” And BOOM – immediately I felt like there was a place for my desperation to exist.

I’m done living in a world where feeling desperate is bad. I’m allowing my desperation to exist and in doing so I’m done unconsciously letting that desperation take over and run the show.

I am desperate sometimes and I’m okay with that.

And if there have ever been times in your life where you’ve felt bad about feeling desperate or wanted something to work out so bad you looked stupid – you’re not alone. What if instead of shaming yourself for that feeling, you gave it space to exist and got curious about what it was telling you?

Xoxo,

Ashley

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