Good girl conditioning: why pleasure is the antidote
In the pleasure garden with Erika Chalkley
In the Pleasure Garden features monthly reflections from women solopreneurs about what nourishes them, from pleasure and self-care rituals to building businesses that sustain us rather than deplete us.
What if the strategies you've been pushing yourself to follow are actually working against you?
In this warm and deeply wise interview, Buddhist-informed somatic business mentor Erika Chalkley reveals how good girl conditioning shapes the way sensitive, ambitious women run their businesses and how pleasure, not pushing, is the path to real and sustainable success.
Can you share a glimpse into your world right now. What’s lighting you up these days?
I just got back from a 10 day retreat with my Buddhist community, so I’m still riding a wave of love from that and I’m feeling very nourished by simple everyday pleasures that I can often take for granted. Also, my cottage garden is so alive with spring at the moment, which is a joy!
What are three pleasurable words to describe yourself?
Luminous, devotional, unruly.
Is there a book, podcast, or resource that has deeply influenced you?
Being Bodies: Buddhist Women on the Paradox of Embodiment edited by Susan Moon and Lenore Friedman. It’s a beautiful and brave anthology by wise women. An elder gave it to me when I was 26 and I’m so grateful. It shaped how I approach spiritual practice, not as a method to transcend this world, but as a way to deepen into it, into this body, this moment, this experience - with all its messy complexities. My work is all about embodying paradoxes and I just realised that this book might have been the seed of that!
Name a person, past or present, real or fictional, whom you admire and look up to.
Maya Angelou. She is the embodiment of real power to me. So loving and yet so fierce. Smart, sassy and soulful. I admire so much about her, and how she lived out her values. When I think of her I can feel in my body how fully she belonged to herself, her dignity, and how joyful she was. She totally embodied paradox and was so powerful as a result.
What are the first things you do every morning?
First, I hit snooze! I’m not a natural morning person at all!!! These days, I don’t try to be, and I give myself 30 mins to luxuriate in bed before getting up, then I splash cold water on my face, make some chai and (on good days) meditate.
Is there a ritual you could not live without in your day?
I really cherish texting with my mum. The older I get the more I appreciate my parents and the more time I want to spend with them. We talk a couple of times a week, but if it gets to an evening and I haven’t had a text, I’ll definitely send a quick hello before bed, my day doesn’t feel right without it.
My younger self can’t believe I just wrote that!!
What are some favourite ways you nourish yourself?
Spacious scheduling! It took me so long to understand how to create an unhurried life but it’s the biggest gift.
I make a deliberate practice of daydreaming, which is really nourishing for our body-minds. I lead daydreaming gatherings too! They are so healing. The rebellious act of just ‘being’ together, in a group of women, doing nothing - it’s totally life-changing.
I also relish a weekday matinee at the cinema.
Your work and offerings are rooted in the idea that pleasure and success are not opposites. How did you come to believe that?
By achieving traditional ‘success’ through striving, pushing and overriding my limits too many times and realising that it couldn’t really be called ‘success’ if it felt so depleting and unsustainable. I started to notice how often I delayed my happiness until after I’d achieved a milestone: “after this next phase is over, I’ll be able to relax”. But my life was passing by and I wanted to enjoy it now. And so I started experimenting with following my pleasure and enjoyment, and found it was actually much more effective as a strategy for business and life!
You teach women to plan with their bodies, not against them. What does a pleasurable relationship with your calendar actually look like in practice?
Something really shifted for me when I started to think of time like a precious resource that belonged to me, rather than a scarce resource I was trying to find. This is huge for women.
I realised “this is as rich in time as I’m ever going to be” (because life is passing), so how do I want to spend this most precious resource? Suddenly, I felt abundant and powerful. I already held all the treasure! After that my calendar felt more like an act of devotion, sacred even.
In practice, a pleasurable calendar will look so different for every woman because it will be bespoke to her capacity, circumstances etc. A quick way to begin though, is to look through your diary for the next week and pay attention to how your body responds to each entry. Does it relax and exhale or clench and pull away? What would you do differently if you listened to that embodied wisdom and didn’t override it with a ‘should’?
Your work explores how "good girl" conditioning shapes the way women run their businesses and their lives. Good girls are often taught that pleasure is indulgent, even selfish. Do you have any suggestions or tips for how to begin to unlearn this?
Yes, women’s pleasure has always been feared by systems of oppression. Why? Because it is so damn powerful.
The most effective way to unweave deep embodied patterns is through small repetitions and experiments, so I would invite you to try doing something you usually do, maybe something you have a little resistance to and ask 'how could I make this more fun / pleasurable / enjoyable?’ and then try it with those added pleasures. And see what changes. You’ll probably find it was easier, more effective, took less time, and/or was done to a higher standard. Pleasure is the key to success because it is simply the most efficient way to get anything done. It's actually rather pragmatic!
You create containers where women can build businesses that feel nourishing rather than depleting. What shifts do you witness in the women you work with?
Oh so many.
The women who come into my world are usually already brilliant at what they do, their clients get results, people respect them, from the outside it looks like it's all fabulous. But underneath, they're over-working, never able to fully switch off, scattered and overwhelmed, their business feels heavy and hard work. And they’re exhausted by it all.
What I witness, again and again, is a profound recalibration.
As they unweave their over-working and over-giving patterns, they often reclaim 10+ hours a week for themselves, they don’t finish client calls exhausted, they say no to misaligned opportunities and learn to work with their fluctuating rhythms rather than against them. They become well rested, unhurried women, which unlocks a lot of ease and capacity.
Then we re-orient their work and lives with their pleasure and enjoyment at the centre, and I see energy and vitality come back - procrastination dissolves because they're finally doing things in a way that feels good, they break ‘the rules’ and follow their gut, creativity bubbles up and they embody a natural, easy confidence that comes from being who they are, rather than trying to perform. This all makes marketing and visibility so much easier and even fun! Their income increases almost as a natural bi-product of being in this kind of relaxed alignment.
Finally, I see them stop lone-wolfing everything and let themselves be supported, they lean into community more, ask for help, rest into being cared for.
Is there a pleasurable thing you now do that your former "good girl" self would have judged?
I’m so much kinder to myself than I ever have been, I call myself ‘sweetheart’ a lot and I give myself a lot of grace.
And I say no to so many things now, which previously I would have done because I thought I ‘should’ or I was worried what others would think etc.
I’d love for you to share about microscopic pleasures that you have recently experienced:
A taste: My friend's chocolate-beetroot cake.
A sound: The spring birdsong in my garden.
A sight: I have this crazy love of crows, I think it must be ancestral, so watching them fly overhead gives me this intense heart-opening longing that I cannot rationally explain.
A smell: Sandalwood incense from my morning meditation.
A touch: The weight of my duvet when I know I’ve got five more minutes before I get up!
More about Erika Chalkley
Erika Chalkley is a Buddhist-informed somatic business mentor, she helps ambitious, sensitive entrepreneurs stop overworking, overdelivering, and squeezing themselves into strategies that don’t fit. Her approach combines Buddhist philosophy, nervous system work, feminist truth-telling and practical business strategy to help women build successful businesses that feel spacious, nourishing and genuinely enjoyable to run.
Find her at: www.yourrighttobe.com
I highly recommend her newsletter. You can sign up here.
