I’d bet you money that you don’t actually know what you want.
You might think you know what you want, but the reality is… you’re not as aligned with your honest desires as you think.
Ask yourself this: Is your life going how you want it to?
Okay, now be honest this time…Is your life going how you want it to?
Are you achieving the things you’ve always wanted? Are the visions for your life what you want or what others want?
Discrepancies lie in what you think you want for your life and what you truthfully want for your life…here’s how to bridge that gap.
What’s The Difference?
You can truly desire something, but not because it’s what you want.
Desires and visions for your life can be so deeply ingrained in you by outside factors that you don’t even know if they’re your desires or someone else’s.
Maybe what you desire is a vision of what your parents want for you. Or maybe you want something because some past version of yourself wanted it, but the present version of you actually has no desire for it anymore.
The discrepancy between what you think you want and what you actually want lies in three things:
Who you are trying to satisfy by making your desires a reality
The internal motivators you have that drive you to succeed in achieving your desires
How your individual desires contribute to the overall vision you have for your life
The ‘What I Truly Want’ Map to Discovery
Step One: Reflect and Align
Think about what you used to want in your twenties or when you were in elementary school. Now, think about how those ‘wants’ have evolved and what’s influenced them to do so.
In kindergarten, I wanted to be an art teacher. For a long time, I considered being a biology teacher.
Newsflash: I didn’t get a degree in education and I’m not currently a teacher.
So…what happened? If I had a desire for several years to be or do something…what changed?
For one, I realized that my passion for working with kids could be fulfilled when I had children of my own.
Secondly, I knew how unfairly teachers were compensated for their work and I simply didn’t want to be in that position.
Finally, I know how emotional I am and knew that the things I experienced at school as a teacher would impact my personal life and I didn’t want that.
Suddenly, what I wanted became exactly what I didn’t want. So then, I had to understand, what do I really want?
First I asked myself: Why did I want to become a teacher in the first place?
Probably because my aunt was one and every summer I would help set up her classroom for the next school year and I loved doing that.
Or maybe it was because I had some experience teaching young kids to dance at my studio and enjoyed that as well.
But most of all…perhaps it was because other people said I would be good at it. Family, friends, peers…you name it. They all told me I would be good at being a teacher.
I had to come to understand that just because I had the potential to be good at something, doesn’t mean it was what I actually wanted.
Sure, I could be good at teaching. In fact, I think that I would be a fantastic teacher. However, I knew it did not align with the vision I had for my life.
To understand what you truly want, you need to know what you value in life. What makes you happy. What your long-term goals are.
All of those things come together to form the basis of what you truly desire in your life.
Step Two: Try & Check
It’s okay to be alive and not know exactly what you want to be doing with that life.
It’s okay to take the time to explore different options, trying a variety of paths.
Taking the time to explore different options allows you the freedom of choice.
When you are on the path of discovery and come to truly understand where your heart is leading you and what satisfies your soul, you have greater assurance, security, and confidence in the path you choose to endeavor.
Even if you can’t physically try many things, try learning as much as you can or reading about many different things. This can help you find out exactly what piques your interest, what brings you joy learning about, and what gets you fired up to make a change.
Experimenting and exploring different paths allows you to gain a better understanding of what truly excites and motivates you.
This can help you discover new passions or interests you didn’t know you had and lead you to what your heart and soul truly desire.
Step Three: Give Yourself Grace & Move On
Be open-minded and willing to adjust your expectations and goals as you learn and grow.
It’s important to learn how to be okay with wanting something different or new from what you originally thought you wanted.
If you wanted to be a vet when you were a kid but have come to realize your true desires lie in becoming a Philosophy professor, then you need to fully let go of your past desire to be a vet.
Whether the desire you’ve had in the past was strong or weak, it was still a desire. It requires some intentional thought to let go and move on so you can channel your energy toward your present and true desires.
Being stuck in an unrealized desire can be a blockade to knowing what you want now. Being in that old mindset prevents you from growing and understanding how your desires have shifted and changed and what they are now.
Move on from the old to create space for the new.
Real Talk
Figuring out what you really want is hard and is a process that is ever-evolving.
Sometimes you don’t know what you want until an opportunity is presented to you or you live through and experience something.
Other times, it seems you know exactly what you want from the moment you were born and that desire sticks with you for a lifetime.
The point to be made here is that it takes a deep understanding of yourself to be aligned with what you want in your life.
It’s hard because sometimes what you want or what you feel is right goes against cultural norms or people’s expectations of you.
I, however, don’t want you to live your life only to realize you have been working towards desires that weren’t really yours. Achieving things you didn’t really want in the first place.
So maybe these exercises are not so much for your logical understanding of what you want- but for your heart.
To know what lies in your heart. What speaks to your heart. What satisfies the yearning of your soul.
To understand what you want in your mind is one thing…to know in your heart and feel in your soul, a completely different thing.