Unbound: A Woman's Guide to Power

Becoming aware of this primal “conversation under the conversation” is one of the most powerful communication tools we have. We cannot talk over what our bodies are saying to one another.

Congruence is what occurs when your attention—your body’s language—is aligned with your intentions and words. It’s hard to define but impossible to deny when felt or witnessed. You may have heard it called “embodiment,” “alignment,” “integrity,” “resonance,” or “the law of attraction”; I believe it to be a human being’s natural state. Practically s

You know when you’re really going to feel like you’re strong and powerful? When you can rely on yourself to speak, no matter how inappropriate the question or how badly it triggers you. When you can navigate another person’s opposition to your ideas with generosity and skill, recognizing it as an opportunity for intimacy or access to critical infor

But they are requests made using submissive language—“I” language, emotional language with an exclusive focus on the speaker and her experience.

Knowing that every complaint hides a desire is a useful insight, though, especially because it’s helpful at peeling back Good Girl conditioning to get at some of our deep-seated desires.

Knowing what we want is a prerequisite for moving powerfully through the world. Without an intimate, connected relationship to our own desires, all the money and all the resources you’re able to secure won’t get you anywhere you want to be.

That is the submissive state I want you to envision, one in which you are completely and safely held by someone else’s attention, and can therefore relax and concentrate only on what you feel. Your role as a submissive is to turn your attention inward, and to feel what you want so completely that every cell in your being is saturated with it.

Influence is the opposite of control. If you are able to powerfully influence someone, then you gain access to all of their inner resources: their smarts, their creativity, their passion. This kind of cooperation often creates a third possibility, a solution even better than either person involved could possibly have imagined by themselves. So the

The primary superpower of the submissive is her ability to connect to a deep inner signal and to communicate the truth of that signal to others.