Pleasure Is the Compass: Why Midlife Women Lose Their Way (and How to Find It Again)

When was the last time you did something purely because it gave you pleasure, not because it was productive or helpful to someone else?

There are plenty of my friends who have spent decades in service and sacrifice. They’re the folks who take care of everyone else and put their own needs last.

If you are one of those who have been so focused on responsibility, productivity and meeting obligations that you have completely lost touch with what actually feels good to you, I want to tell you something that might sound radical and contrary to what you’ve grown up believing.

Your purpose is not something you figure out by thinking harder, trying harder or sacrificing more. Your purpose is something you find by following your personal, genuine pleasure… The kind of pleasure that comes from doing work that lights you up, from having time that belongs only to you, from being fully present in your own life instead of constantly onboard for other people.

Now, if this sounds selfish, frivolous or like something you cannot afford to prioritize right now, that is exactly why I want you to hear this because the women who have been trained to see pleasure as selfish are the same women who have lost access to the very compass that would show them what they are actually meant to be doing with their lives.

I didn’t get to where I am by luck or rationality. Well… Okay, that’s not true. I am blessed with good luck and I have a good head on my shoulders. HOWEVER, it was my pleasure that illuminated my desire and led the way. Pleasure and I have a wonderful relationship.

The conventional understanding of purpose suggests that you find it through analysis, planning and strategic thinking.

🤔 You assess your skills, experience and values.

🤨 You look at what the world needs and what you are good at and where those things intersect.

🤓 You create a plan. And if you follow the plan correctly, you will eventually arrive at work that feels meaningful.

But that approach misses something essential. Purpose is not just about what you are good at or what the world needs. Purpose is about what makes you come alive. And the only reliable way to know what makes you come alive is to pay attention to what gives you pleasure.

Now, I don’t want you claiming the fake pleasure of shopping, scrolling or numbing out with wine or Netflix. Also, please don’t claim the temporary relief of distracting yourself from how empty you feel.

I want you to choose the real pleasure of being engaged in something that makes time disappear, of feeling your body relax instead of tense, of experiencing genuine delight instead of becoming mindless.

When I talk about pleasure as a compass, I am talking about the feeling you get when you are doing something that is so aligned with who you actually are that it does not feel like work. It feels like play, like you could do it for hours and not get tired. It feels like the most natural thing in the world even if it is also challenging or requires effort.

I am talking about the pleasure of sitting down to write and looking up two hours later realizing you forgot to eat lunch because you were so absorbed. I love this. The pleasure of having a conversation with someone where you are so present and engaged that you lose track of time. The pleasure of creating something with your hands and feeling your whole body settle into the rhythm of the work. The pleasure of teaching something you know deeply and watching someone understand it for the first time.

That kind of pleasure is not frivolous. That kind of pleasure is information. It is your soul telling you that you are aligned; your body telling you that this is what you are meant to be doing. And if you have lost access to that kind of pleasure— if you cannot remember the last time you felt it, it is not because your soul has nothing to say to you. It is because you have been ignoring the signals for so long that you have stopped being able to hear them.

Don’t feel guilty or ashamed. You were busy taking care of business for everybody else. But now, it’s your turn.

When I work with women who are trying to figure out their purpose, the first thing I ask them to do is not to think about what they are good at or what they should be doing. The first thing I ask them to do is pay attention to what gives them pleasure. And most of them struggle with that question. Because they have spent so long in service and sacrifice that they do not know what pleasure feels like anymore.

They know what responsibility and obligation feel like. And they know what guilt feels like when they try to do something just for themselves.

But genuine pleasure that is not tied to productivity, approval or meeting someone else’s needs? They have no idea.

And that disconnection from pleasure is not accidental.

Women are trained from a young age to see pleasure as selfish, indulgent or something you earn only after you have taken care of everyone else. You are taught that your worth is tied to how much you give, how much you sacrifice and HOW LITTLE YOU NEED for yourself. You are taught that good women prioritize others and that wanting pleasure for yourself makes you selfish, shallow or bad.

So you learn to disconnect from pleasure. You learn to ignore the signals your body is sending you about what feels good and what does not. And you learn to override your own desires in favor of what other people need from you. You spend decades like that. Giving and sacrificing and ignoring yourself until one day you wake up and realize you have no idea what you actually want or what actually makes you feel alive.

And that is when you start searching for purpose. But you are searching with a broken compass, because the compass that would show you the way is PLEASURE. And you have spent so long ignoring pleasure that you do not even know how to recognize it anymore.

Here is what reconnecting with pleasure actually looks like. It starts small. It starts with paying attention to your body and what it is telling you.

— When do you feel relaxed?

— When do you feel energized?

— When do you feel present?

— When does time disappear?

— When do you feel like you are doing exactly what you are supposed to be doing?

And, of course, you have to also look at what’s moving you away from your purpose…

— When do you feel tense?

— When do you feel drained?

— When do you feel like you are faking it?

— When does time drag?

— When do you feel like you are betraying yourself?

Your body knows the difference between work that is aligned and work that is not. It also knows the difference between obligation and purpose and between sacrifice and service. But you have to be willing to listen to what your body is telling you and you have to be willing to honor pleasure as valuable information instead of dismissing it as selfish.

When I reconnected with pleasure after years of ignoring it, what I noticed is that I felt pleasure, not when I was OVERindulging, but when my presence was drawn forward. Bad food brought zero pleasure. Good food in the right portions brought immense pleasure.

— When I was working one-on-one with women and helping them have breakthroughs I felt immense pleasure.

— I felt pleasure when I was writing about transformation and spirituality and healing.

— I felt pleasure when I was creating structure and frameworks that made complex ideas accessible.

— I felt pleasure when I was teaching.

But here’s the thing, it’s not that I felt no pleasure when I was doing administrative work or managing a team or trying to scale a business in ways that required me to be less hands-on with clients. It’s just that my soul wasn’t lit up with violet fire.

I felt no pleasure when I was doing anything that felt inauthentic. I felt no pleasure when I was doing work that other people told me I should be doing but that did not actually light me up.

And once I started paying attention to that information, my purpose became clear because I followed the pleasure. I structured my work around what gave me pleasure and I let go of what did not. And the more I did that, the more my work felt like purpose instead of obligation.

This is what I mean when I say pleasure is a compass.

Pleasure points you toward what you are meant to be doing. And the absence of pleasure points you toward what is not your purpose.

Let me be clear— I have to do the admin work and I like it. But it is not my purpose to be the administrator of somebody else’s grand enterprise or my own. I have a team to do my admin. Admin is not my purpose.

Most women have been trained to ignore their pleasure compass and to make decisions based on what they “should” do or what other people need.

While those things matter, building your entire life around obligation and responsibility blocks out your true purpose.

Purpose is not found in sacrifice, although you may be called to sacrifice for your purpose. Purpose is found in alignment, which feels like pleasure.

Here is what a life built around pleasure as a compass looks like. You wake up in the morning and you have time that belongs only to you. Maybe it is an hour. Maybe it is just twenty minutes. But it is yours. And you use it to do something that gives you pleasure.

Maybe you write, sit in silence, or move your body in a way that feels good. Maybe you drink your coffee slowly and actually taste it instead of gulping it down while checking email.

You structure your work around what lights you up instead of what you think you are supposed to be doing. You say no to opportunities that look good on paper but that you know will drain you. You say yes to work that might seem risky or unconventional but that makes you feel alive.

You have relationships where you can be yourself. You spend time with people who energize you instead of people who drain you. You let go of relationships that require you to be small or compliant in ways that betray who you actually are.

You move through your day with presence instead of just checking boxes. You notice the light coming through the window. You taste your food. You feel the water on your skin when you shower. You are in your body instead of constantly disconnected from it.

And at the end of the day, you feel tired in a good way. Not depleted or drained, but satisfied because you spent the day doing things that mattered to you and being present in your own life.

That is what pleasure as a compass creates— a life of alignment… A life where your purpose is not something you have to SEARCH FOR because you are living it every day.

This is a tough one for many of the women I work with. They start to see this shift within the first few months. The aim isn’t to completely restructure their lives, but that they really start paying attention to pleasure again. They notice when they feel alive and when they feel dead. They start making small choices based on what feels good instead of what they think they should do. And those small choices start to add up to a life that feels like theirs instead of a life they are living for everyone else.

In my 12-month program, reconnecting with pleasure as a spiritual and practical compass and using it to guide you toward your purpose is part of how I help spiritually-aware women move from feeling powerless and invisible to becoming sovereign women who have stabilized their bodies and minds, authored their own stories, and claimed ownership of their dreams. We also work on grounding yourself when you feel scattered, reclaiming your voice and learning to say no without guilt, clarifying the vision your soul is calling you toward, bringing that vision into the world as work that sustains you, and building sustainable income from your wisdom.

If you have lost access to genuine pleasure and you are ready to reconnect with the compass that will show you your purpose, send me a private message with the word “interested” and we will talk about whether this program is the right fit for you.