Woman on Fire (35 page)

Once you have made your list, pick out the top five to ten things you want to stop doing and begin to work on those. Every time you come home, you get more comfortable there, and after a while you will find yourself actually living there. Keep working these muscles.

Have you ever bought a new house? Searched for the sanctuary that would make every day better, the place that you could live in, grow in, love in, and share with the people you share your life with? The home that will anchor you, the place you will come home to after long trips and feel at ease, surrounded by the comforts that bring you joy, the environment that makes you feel good? Think about how much energy you put into finding the right house or place to live. Think about how much goes into finding the special space that will nurture you and create the right conditions for your life. You've probably done that searching.

Now you are building home on the inside—and it requires just as much of you, but it's a different kind of work. To be at home in yourself requires independence, self-efficacy, radical self-reliance, a healthy relationship to self and others, self-clarity, self-intimacy, confidence, responsibility, and true power. At home you allow yourself to be in a process of evolution because you trust yourself to lead. You can grow, change your mind, expand your desires, and want new things. You are not who you were. You have to give up those old pieces of who you were—the ones that kept the real you away—so you can come home and be at peace. Give up the “I'm broken” and the “I don't deserve.” The idea that you have to suffer. The ways you prevent yourself from feeling at peace within yourself. When you know you can take care of yourself and you take responsibility for it, and when you know who you are and express it with confidence, you have come home. You are in your true power when you cease to look to others to decide for you, and when you stop thinking that giving everything to them is what gives you value. You are valuable because you are. Like a huge eucalyptus tree that stands in its own glory and doesn't have to prove itself. You are your own eucalyptus. You are enough. At home in yourself, you stop running these stories about having to be something you are not. You expand into the confidence
of being you—all of you. You stop trying to be what everyone else wants you to be.

Sexually, being at home in yourself means you can enjoy being in your body and experience sex more deeply. Sex with yourself becomes an exchange between you and the universe. You build up your internal fire as you fan the flames. You accept all of who you are and express it with the passion of being rooted in your own truth. When sex is not about being overly concerned about how much and how well you please someone else, and instead it's about being present and creating a mutually enjoyable space, it is a completely different experience. At home in yourself, you can be open to receive, to feel pleasure, to give what you want to give and to say no to what you are not open to without guilt or other feelings that take you out of the present moment. The anxiety and nerves quiet so you can enjoy what is revealed, create what you want, explore something new, and hear your partner's requests. You can let go of the spectatoring that keeps you watching yourself and your sexual interactions from the outside, critiquing your body and “performance” in favor of being in your body and in the exchange. Home is the centering you feel from this vantage point, and it frees you to be who you really are. When you can do this sexually, you can do it in every other part of your life.

There is no more self-abandonment, which means you no longer need to fear the abandonment of others. You love yourself and you mother yourself where you didn't get mothered or parented enough. You know you will never be alone. You follow what is true for you, regardless of what outside influences say or want. This doesn't mean you don't need other people. It means you invite the ones into your life who respect your boundaries and create a nourishing reciprocity. You allow yourself to have support because you are anchored inside.

When I first spoke with Murphy, she was a thirty-one-year-old wilderness guide from Vermont who was frustrated and in a place of not having what she wanted financially and sexually. She had not been able to create sexual relationships in which she could express the full range of her desire and she felt trapped in low-paying jobs. She was keen to look at her patterns that had held her back around both sex and money and to begin to allow herself to have more in her life. As she stepped into her authentic sexual self, she learned to stand strong in her own worth, and she began to make choices based on her deep desires. She came home and stopped engaging many of the patterns that kept her in a place of abandoning herself and trying to be what other people wanted her to be. Her work deepened her most authentic expression of sexuality and gender and allowed her to break through the limiting beliefs that were holding her back.

Embracing my butch gender expression has been a long journey. It took many years for me to even become comfortable with my lesbian identity, and becoming butch felt even more transgressive. I've gone from being a shy, fairly femme, quite passive person who suppressed her sexual desire out of fear of hurting others, to being a confident butch lesbian who isn't afraid to flirt and express her desire in the world. I was really afraid that women wouldn't find me sexually desirable if I had a butch gender expression, because I myself was much more attracted to femmes than butches . . . but I finally figured out (with some help from my friends!) that I needed to stop dressing like the women I was attracted to and start dressing like the woman I am inside. As soon as I made the shift . . .
bam!
I started to meet beautiful femme women who were really attracted to butches in general and me in particular! Now I get way more sexual attention and flirtation than I ever did before the shift,
probably because I walk with a kind of confidence, authenticity, and brashness that I didn't have before.

I know I am not empowered when other people's reactions to me trigger insecurities about my self-worth and when I make decisions about my romantic relationships that compromise what I desire in exchange for security or validation. I've grown much more confident and self-directed in all realms of my life. I've started my own business and transformed my relationship with money, both of which wouldn't have been possible before I got in touch with my own internal sense of desire. When I operate from that internal compass, I can steer a true and accountable path for myself. My relationships feel so much lighter, more free, more fun, and more truthful because I don't come to them with a strong need for validation; I come to them just for the joy of connection and to build experiences that are bigger and richer than I can create in isolation.

I feel empowered when I flirt with people I'm attracted to. It's fun when they flirt back, but I think I feel even more empowered when they don't respond and it feels totally fine—that my sexual empowerment is not dependent on external validation or the results of a particular interaction; it's something I carry within me and experience internally as a deep truth.

I have a strong drive to please my partners and honor them as sacred sexual beings, making love to them with a sense of devotion that excites and inspires us both. Learning to be confident in that was the easier half of the equation. I also have a deep yearning to be completely vulnerable and open in letting my partner pleasure me. That has been harder for me because it feels much scarier. It takes trust in my partner, but perhaps a deeper trust in myself, that I will be enough, that I deserve it, and that I will be fine if I have an amazing experience but then lose access to that person or circumstance in the future for some reason. Many thanks to the femmes who have encouraged me and shared their desire with me on this road!

Murphy's story is a great depiction of how important it is to be who we really are sexually, and how much more attractive authentic sexuality is. She stepped into herself as lesbian, butch, and as a polyamorous person, and so many experiences opened up for her. Her homecoming was intrinsically related to embracing her sexual identity. Stepping into those authentic identities and expression created a newfound confidence in her that helped her to change and dramatically improve her life.

One of the most universally sexy traits in a person is their confidence. Over and over in my workshops when I ask women to define sexual empowerment and name qualities they need in order to feel sexually empowered, confidence comes up as the one women most want. Everyone wants to feel more confident as a sexual creature. Somehow women know that confidence holds a key to unlocking their greatest sexual potential. When you are authentically confident, you are at home in yourself.

Confidence is having the ability to do the things you want to do in life without holding back and second-guessing yourself. Confidence expression is different for different people. Some grow confidence through their ability to do things, developing their competence. Some through their friendliness and ability to approach and talk to just about anyone. Some with their power of oration and ability to inspire people. Others build it through making people laugh and being funny.

I believe that there are many different expressions of confidence, and they show up sexually in different strengths, vulnerabilities, and needs. Confidence isn't something you have or you don't: it looks different for an unstoppable Power Player than it does for a flirty Enigma or a shy Wallflower. Many people think that if they don't
have “it,” they will never have it, and I don't think that's how confidence works. I think we each have a Confidence Type.

When we can see the particulars of how we most effectively build confidence and that it's not a one-size-fits-all scenario, we have the ability to be truly successful in building our confidence. At its root, it's an inside job, whether you are a shy Wallflower, a sassy Skeptic, a mysterious Enigma, a warm Connector, or a fierce Power Player. To explain each one is beyond the scope of this book, but you can get more information on the five types and learn yours online. It's also a helpful system for understanding what drives your coworkers, family members, lovers, and friends so you can work better with them to create win-win situations.

MAPPING YOUR CONFIDENCE TYPE

I have observed how confidence works in people over the years, and I have mapped out a system of five Confidence Types, or styles, with their strengths, deep fears, challenges, emotional tone, abilities, and personal needs. I invite you to take my Confidence Types Quiz at amyjogoddard.com/confidencequiz to identify your dominant and secondary Confidence Types.

You'll get an audio class that details the five Confidence Types so you can go deeper in understanding how to best work with your own confidence style and build on your natural abilities.

As we discussed in the previous chapter, one of the best ways to increase confidence is to build skills. When you feel assured that you are capable of performing any task to your best ability and to a high standard, you will absolutely feel confident to do that task
again and again. Committing to developing your sexual, emotional, and relational skills is the surest way to feel more confident sexually and more self-assured when going after what you want. And because confidence is sexy, you will open yourself to even more success as you build on that foundation of confidence!