Image by Jomairy Granda.
Editor's Note: While this article is geared to redefining success for women, its tenets can be applied to success for all genders. Success does not have to be cutthroat behavior, it can be done in collaboration instead... whether by men or women.
In This Article:
- Why Traditional Success Doesn't Work for Women
- Understanding Satisfaction vs. Success
- Defining Your Personal Needs and Wishes
- Setting Clear Boundaries for True Fulfillment
- How to Achieve Lasting Career Satisfaction
Forget Success: Rewrite the Rules for True Fulfillment
by Alanna Kaivalya.
The societal idea of success, with its goal-oriented milestones, inherent competition, and measurable wins, is not the way of the Satisfied Woman. The rules of success were not written by us.
Satisfaction is not an end goal. It does not have parameters or produce statistics. Satisfaction does not have a ladder to climb or inherent competition to beat.
Satisfaction is a feeling. It is the pleasure — the complete joy and delight — we feel when our needs and wishes are fulfilled. Whether those needs and wishes are met through our own efforts or through support from others doesn’t matter.
It’s time to ask yourself: What is it that truly makes me satisfied in life? Forget the conventional notions of success or following previously scripted models of how life “should” look. What makes you the most satisfied? From what do you derive the most joy? The most pleasure? What fuels your creative spark?
Who Decides What Success Is for You?
We determine our satisfaction. We decide what wishes and needs are most important to us. And the way we fulfill them? Well, that’s up to us, too.
I recently discussed the premise of this book in a conversation with a group of incredibly successful women — movie industry professionals in Los Angeles. When I revealed the title (The Way of the Satisfied Woman) and the overall gist of what I was writing, their faces lit up. They responded with comments like these:
“I’ve always hated going to board meetings. It just never felt right.”
“I always wished I could just collaborate with people to find solutions.”
“As soon as I got my promotion, I realized it wasn’t what I wanted.”
“I wish I could just relax a little and not worry so much about what other people think.”
Defining Satisfaction
When I defined satisfaction for them, they became giddy and wondered why they hadn’t considered that satisfaction is so preferable over success. They chimed in about how much they enjoy working with other women rather than against them. They were excited by the idea that they didn’t actually need to do it all or be it all for everyone in their life.
You could hear sighs of relief and feel tension fall away from their shoulders. The amount of struggle and stress the feminine has held throughout these long patriarchal centuries is unfathomable.
We don’t need to carry that anymore. It was never truly our burden to bear. And it never suited us to begin with.
What Are Your Needs and Wishes?
If the core element of satisfaction is fulfilling your wishes and needs, then it is essential to know what your wishes and needs are! We have no need for metrics, deliverables, or keeping up with the Joneses. We simply want to define the wishes and needs that, when fulfilled, give us the greatest feeling of pleasure. There is not one scripted list of wishes or needs that result in satisfaction!
If you wish to earn a degree, then fulfill that wish.
If you need to feel safety by being surrounded by friends and family, then fulfill that need.
Some women wish to start their own family, while others don’t need to have children of their own. Some women pursue traditional success in their career, while other women wish to spend time outside of a traditional career path.
Defining your own wishes and needs is critical, because otherwise you cannot know what it will take to fulfill them.
Establishing Boundaries
As part of the feminine ideal of collaboration, we work with others around us who share our same values, and together we make good decisions on how to proceed. While the masculine in these endeavors likely makes decisions from a place of logic and reason, the feminine (who can also employ logic!) likes to ultimately base decisions on intuition and feeling. This is how the feminine establishes clear boundaries.
Boundaries are what keep people safe. They are necessary and helpful as we collaborate with others to make our wishes and needs come true.
Understanding what a boundary is is simple: It is just a clear yes or a clear no. It doesn’t require logic or reason, but it does need to be expressed. If we don’t express a clear yes or no when we feel it, then it’s likely our boundaries will be crossed.
Anytime we have a breach of boundaries, it degrades our sense of safety, security, and trust in the other, and we do not feel cherished. When this happens, we become unmoored and must work to correct the course.
Understand, too, that there is a difference between an unvoiced boundary and a boundary that is willfully breached. An unvoiced boundary may be a result of shyness or fear. A willfully breached boundary is an act of aggression.
Either way, the feminine suffers. Any opportunity we have to voice, establish, and uphold a boundary enhances the safety, security, trust, and well-being of all involved. It promotes goodwill and keeps positive momentum going.
It is with this positive momentum and trust in those around us that we successfully fulfill our greatest needs and wishes. In turn, we are able to help others do the same. For the world of the Satisfied Woman is not selfish — it is selfless. When our cup is full, then that cup runneth over. When our oasis is nourished, we share that life energy with others.
Let’s Talk about Success, Baby
In a recent conversation with one of the most powerful women in my life about the difference between success on a man’s terms and satisfaction on a woman’s terms, she came to a stunning epiphany. As I explained the power of femininity and how it differs from masculinity, she realized she had made a critical and all-too-common error as a woman. She had spent decades chasing what she was taught were the ideals of success.
She confided in me that even though she was certainly proud of her accomplishments, she wasn’t satisfied. I explained to her that it was likely because we have been taught to achieve success on a man’s terms.
As a popular saying goes, “There’s nothing worse than climbing to the top of your ladder only to realize it’s on the wrong wall.”
As women, we often build our ladders on walls constructed by men. It is their version of success we are groomed to chase after. They have created the rules by which we are all supposed to play, and they define the cutthroat nature of pursuing a career. Our culture tells us that we are capable of doing anything...at all costs. We are fed these ideals from an early age.
The Road Less Travelled
While there is nothing wrong with pursuing a career and achieving career goals, perhaps there is a different way to do it and be satisfied.
What if we, as women, pursued career satisfaction instead of success? What would that look like?
Instead of dominating the boardroom, we establish a roundtable of discussion to collaborate on ideas and get everyone’s needs met. Instead of emphasizing profit margins and bottom lines, we emphasize employee happiness, satisfaction, and growth.
Inspiringly, women already do this.
Companies owned by women are more integrative, family-centric, and collaborative. Female business heads concentrate on communication and collaboration and utilize their intuition to drive business decisions.
Female entrepreneurs tend to keep businesses smaller and more manageable in order to nurture the happiness and well-being of their employees. When women earn more, typically, they reinvest those earnings back into the business and the people who work for them. Women are more relationship-centered than task-centered in the workplace, and they tend to focus more on personal goals than on overall business goals. Women are in business to be fulfilled.
I learned this the hard way when my own solopreneur venture suddenly had an explosion of success. Nearly overnight my business grew tenfold, and I had a much bigger business on my hands than I had ever anticipated. From the outside, it looked like a raging victory.
But on the inside, I was miserable. I was drowning in spreadsheets and expansion plans. My workforce grew beyond what I could personally manage. I was losing touch with the elements of my business that were most important to me, and because the day-to-day running of the business overtook my focus, I was no longer able to tap into my creativity.
But I was successful in the traditional sense. And I was stressed beyond belief, tasked with making decisions that were not just outside of my comfort zone but outside of my integrity zone.
I learned that at that level of so-called success, the relationships I’d built and the values I’d established for my business were difficult to maintain. I tried desperately to hold the reins of this beast and continue to drive it into greater and greater profitability.
But at some point, I had the realization: I was not happy.
Moving Toward Satisfaction and Happiness
I pulled things back. Consolidated my efforts. I stopped focusing on the numbers and shrank my business to a more manageable size, one that allowed me to maintain my relationships and my creativity.
I stopped chasing male-defined success (which in my case was unfettered business growth) and instead started moving toward satisfaction.
While, statistically speaking, women-owned businesses traditionally make less than their male-owned counterparts, I have to wonder: Does that translate to less happiness? It didn’t for me.
Knowing what we do about the financial disparities of women in business, I’m not advocating that the differential should not be overcome. Women need to be able to make all the money their hearts desire — and also consider how much their heart’s desire is to truly be happy and fulfilled.
Fulfilling Our Dreams
Satisfaction comes from the fulfillment of our dreams. When we dream of a fulfilling career, it includes not just financial prosperity but also the things that the feminine values so highly: continued creativity, collaboration, sound relationships, and happiness through the work.
If we’re not happy with our career or in our workplace, no amount of financial success will make that right inside our soul.
Earn as much money as satisfies you and create as much good in the world as you can through your career. At the end of the day, let it fulfill you from the inside out.
Copyright 2024. All Rights Reserved.
Reprinted with permission from New World Library.
Article Source:
BOOK: The Way of the Satisfied Woman
The Way of the Satisfied Woman: Reclaiming Feminine Power
by Alanna Kaivalya.
Although women today have greater opportunity to make our own choices, build independent lives, and craft powerful careers, we all too often forge our path by following the trajectory laid out by men. By emulating what men identify as desirable goals and strategies, we deny our truest, most innate feminine qualities and desires.
The Way of the Satisfied Woman offers an alternative path for women, and for any person who cares to focus more on the feminine than the masculine. The path of the feminine is simply different — perfect in its own right yet integral and complementary to the path of the masculine. Alanna Kaivalya shows how embodying feminine energy sets us free, relaxes us, and allows us to more completely manifest the things that are most important to us.
For more info and/or to order this book, click here. Also available as an Audiobook and a Kindle edition.
About the Author:
Alanna Kaivalya, PhD, is an author, educator, speaker, and thought leader in the field of women’s empowerment and femininity. She has written five books, developed international training programs, and taught audiences around the world. She earned a doctoral degree in mythological studies and depth psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute and spent more than twenty years studying psychology, the human condition, the nature of the feminine and femininity, and Eastern spirituality.
Her work centers on equipping women with a better understanding of what it means to be a woman in the modern world. Her day-to-day efforts are focused on offering empowering resources through her website, including The Satisfied Woman podcast, her blog, and her exclusive women’s community and online courses.
Find out more and connect with her at TheSatisfiedWoman.com.
Article Recap:
True success for women means prioritizing satisfaction over traditional measures like profit and power. By embracing feminine values of collaboration, clear boundaries, and personal fulfillment, one can achieve deeper happiness and lasting fulfillment.
#RedefiningSuccess #WomenEmpowerment #CareerSatisfaction #FemaleLeadership #CollaborationOverCompetition #WomensWellbeing #FeminineLeadership #CareerFulfillment #SelfDefinedSuccess #PersonalGrowth
