Work Your Brilliance: the uncommon art of being paid to be yourself

Every desire is the effort of an unexpressed possibility to come into action.

The ceiling you put on wanting

This is Wallace D. Wattles' formulation, but sit with it as a claim about how things actually work rather than as a nice idea. The desire isn't a sign that something is missing. It's a sign that something is pressing to emerge. It is the unexpressed possibility - the unlived work, the unspoken truth, the gift not yet fully offered - generating pressure from the inside.

I used to think I had figured something out when I told myself I didn't need much money. It felt like maturity. Like I'd risen above the "greed" I saw around me. But what I had actually done was put a ceiling on what I was willing to want - and in doing so, put a ceiling on what I was willing to give.

Cautious desire produces cautious expression. A life deliberately kept small, even with the best intentions, withholds from the world what it was hoping to receive from you. The impulse not to take more than your share can, in the wrong hands - your own - become a reason to offer less than you carry.

What if your desire for a larger life isn't asking you to be greedy? What if it's asking you to be more fully you?

What if the thing you've been sitting on - the thing you keep almost saying, almost doing, almost offering - is exactly what the people who need you most have been waiting for?

What if we treated desire with exquisite care?

Work Your Brilliance is a daily publication for people living the uncommon art of being paid to be themselves.