What Do You Want?
What Do You Want?
The one question that leads to all the others...
“Well you wouldn’t know a diamond if you held it in your hand, the things you think are precious I can’t understand.”
“Reeling in the Years” – Steely Dan
Have you ever had a friend lose their job and ask you to help them find another one?
So you start off by asking them “Well, what do you want to do?” In response, they kind of look at their shoes and admit, “I don’t know.” Then they expand with “I really just don’t know exactly what I want.”
Or you and your friend decide to go out to eat. You ask, “Where do you want to go to eat?” And they have no clue. They respond, “Where do YOU want to eat?” And the death-spiral begins
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It’s the One Core Question
“What do you want?’
It’s really the core question to life! Once you’ve been able to answer it, you then need to ask yourself, “What am I willing to do to get what I want?“ And if you come up with an answer to that, you set about trying to do what will get you what you want. If you succeed, you grow. If you can’t come up with an answer, or fail to do what you came up with, you go. That’s it. Grow or go.
You may now be thinking, “Well, now, that doesn’t sound so hard…”
Think again.
“What do you want” is only the beginning of the sentence. Here are a few completed versions:
What do you want to have?
What do you want to do?
What do you want to be?
What do you want others to know you as?
What do you want in your life?
What do you want your future to look like?
What do you want to contribute to the world?
What do you want to achieve?
What do you want to do in service to others?
And these are just a few. In the course of this series we will examine each of these questions and many more in a valiant effort to develop a truly robust understanding of what we want, so we can make more informed decisions about what we really want our lives to be for.
Smart people like Dr. Wayne Dyer, Buddha, and others have pointed out that life is a series of choices, and those choices drive the path of our lives. We are, in essence, the sum of our choices.
Intention
Much of what we want is grounded in our intentions. We may be well-intended, or we may be poorly-intended or somewhere between the two.
If we are well-intended it is very likely that most of what we want will be of benefit to others around us. While this sounds great on its face, this is a signal that it’s time to beware. You must call your own honesty and your own integrity into question. Only you can know if you really feel the way you say you do and what you say you want is what you really want. Many have become hopelessly lost chasing something they thought they wanted, only to find out what is meant by, “Beware what you want, you might get it.”
You might try looking at what you want through the lens of your intentions. It’s neither right nor wrong to want any particular thing, except possibly harm to others.
Ask yourself whether or not your intentions include some good stuff for you. It’s a wonderful observation that to love someone else, you must first love yourself. It can take a long, long time to come to terms with whether or not you love yourself, and can show yourself compassion.
Some people have a sincere inner desire to live a life of service to others. When you meet one, you’ll know. Don’t be surprised, when you speak with them, to find them to be remarkably peaceful, calm individuals. Seems that when your intentions are good, you know it, and it brings a calm, quiet confidence.
Often, however, we may convince ourselves that we want something, and we may pursue it, only to later realize or have it pointed out to us that we only went after it for the sake of appearances. We want people to think better of us, so we take on the affect of wanting something that would be recognized as something good for us to want. Doing a good deed for someone, may be grounded more in what we want to make that person or other’s nearby feel than in what we truly want for ourselves. This may not be harmful to anyone, but its still insincere and that inevitably has an impact.
Famed psychologist Albert Ellis often said, “Thou Shalt Not Should Thyself.” We often do things because we think we’re supposed to, its something we should do. “That’s just how its done.”
It is all too possible for you to “should” yourself into resenting the people you think feel you “should” do things. They may not. They may have no expectations of you at all.
To maintain your integrity, trust yourself to want things that are good for you and good for others, and determine your choices based on those wants.
Let Me Tell You Something I Want
I want to live the rest of my life as a writer. As I am writing this I am about to celebrate the 14th anniversary of my becoming a working copywriter.
My biggest want is to be free to share everything I’ve observed, putting it all in a context that is easily accessible and valuable to my readers. Ultimately, I’d love to find myself communicating with many readers regularly to discuss my observations in hopes of developing them even more.
My personal passion is writing. Useful writing. Valuable writing. Writing that brings new insight to readers. When I’m writing I often fall into a “zone-like” catharsis that nothing competes with. I find real fulfillment in writing. Simply writing. I’m convinced its what I was born to do.
So if you find you’re getting something you want out of reading these posts, please let me know. Comment on the post. Share your insights with me and let’s strike up a conversation.
Please, tell me about what you want.