You are Allowed to Want a Magnificent Life

I have never understood why women are expected to be so reasonable about what they want.

We can want security. We can want a comfortable home, a decent relationship, a little financial stability, and enough peace to get through the week without losing our minds.

These are perfectly acceptable desires.

But start talking about wanting an extraordinary life, and people get nervous.

Say you want money. A lot of it.

Say you want to be beautiful, beautifully dressed, wildly in love, intellectually stimulated, and free to spend a Tuesday afternoon doing something that serves absolutely no practical purpose.

Say you want a house full of art, fresh flowers, interesting people, and excellent food.

Say you want to travel extravagantly, have delicious sex, change your mind whenever the evidence warrants it, and wake up in the morning excited about the woman whose life you're living.

Suddenly, everyone has concerns.

Perhaps you should be more grateful.

Perhaps you should examine why you need so much.

Perhaps this is all a symptom of some deeper dissatisfaction.

What if you simply have excellent taste in living?

What if wanting more is not an indictment of what you already have?

I can love my life and still want to make it larger. I can appreciate my marriage and still want more romance. I can be grateful for my home and still dream about a spectacular apartment in another city. I can be deeply satisfied with the woman I am and still be curious about the woman I might become.

Gratitude is not a contract requiring you to stop wanting things.

And contentment is not supposed to be a life sentence.

I am especially interested in the peculiar moral expectations placed on women as we grow older.

We are encouraged to simplify. To become more practical. To stop making such a fuss about our appearance, our ambitions, our appetites.

We are supposed to have acquired enough wisdom to know what really matters, which apparently means wanting fewer things and taking up less room.

I disagree.

I think wisdom can make a woman's appetite for life considerably more sophisticated.

At fifty-eight, I have less patience for things that bore me, less interest in performing likability, and a much greater appreciation for beauty, freedom, intelligence, pleasure, and excellent company.

I want fewer obligations that do not belong to me.

I want more afternoons that unfold without a schedule.

I want money because I like choices, and money makes a remarkable number of choices available.

I want beauty because beauty changes the experience of being alive.

I want adventure because I have no desire to spend the rest of my life faithfully repeating what I have already experienced.

And I want all of this without having to pretend my desires are secretly in service of some nobler purpose.

Sometimes I want something because it is wonderful.

That is enough.

Of course, a magnificent life is not necessarily an expensive one.

Some of the most exquisite moments I've known have cost almost nothing. A long conversation. Rain against an open window. An unexpectedly beautiful street. A perfectly ripe peach. A dog asleep against my leg.

Magnificence has as much to do with attention as it does with resources.

But I refuse to turn that observation into another lecture about how women should be satisfied with less.

There is nothing morally superior about deprivation.

There is nothing particularly enlightened about pretending money doesn't matter.

And there is no prize for reaching the end of your life having been the most accommodating woman in the room.

The point is not to accumulate beautiful things as evidence that your life is valuable.

The point is to recognize that your life is valuable already, and then arrange it with the affection, imagination, and discernment that such a life deserves.

This is where things become interesting.

Because most women do not need permission to dream.

They need to examine the lives they have built around being responsible, reasonable, dependable, and easy to accommodate.

They need to notice which commitments still belong to them and which ones they have simply continued honoring out of habit.

They need to become acquainted with their own preferences again.

Not the preferences of the woman they were at thirty.

Not the expectations of their families.

Not the cultural script about what a woman of their age should find fulfilling.

Their preferences. Now.

And then they need to start making choices accordingly.

That can be surprisingly disruptive.

A magnificent life may require disappointing people who have grown accustomed to your availability.

It may require admitting that something you worked very hard to achieve no longer interests you.

It may require spending money differently, changing relationships, taking a risk, or allowing yourself to be a beginner at something gloriously impractical.

It will almost certainly require becoming less concerned with whether everyone approves.

Because a life organized around universal approval will rarely be especially interesting.

And I think interesting matters.

I think pleasure matters.

I think the shape of an ordinary Wednesday matters.

I think a woman should occasionally be so delighted by her own existence that she wonders how she managed to get so fortunate.

Not because everything is perfect.

Because she has become an active, imaginative participant in her own life.

I want women to be greedy for that kind of aliveness.

Greedy for wonder. For beauty. For freedom. For experiences that make them feel gloriously awake.

Greedy for the opportunity to discover what else might be possible.

We have spent enough centuries being praised for how little we require.

I would like to see what happens when we begin taking our desires seriously.

You are allowed to want a magnificent life.

And you are allowed to begin arranging one now.

An Invitation

This is the work I do with women in my private coaching practice.

We examine the identities, habits, relationships, and commitments shaping your life. We get very clear about what you actually want, what no longer fits, and what needs to change.

Then we do the interesting work of making those changes visible in how you live.

Private coaching is $650 per month, including four sessions and support between sessions by email or chat.

If you're ready for a life that feels more beautiful, more spacious, more sovereign, and unmistakably your own,

I'd love to work with you.

Explore private coaching.



Because wanting a magnificent life is lovely.

Living one is even better.