What do I want?

Let's talk through one of the most powerful questions any one of us can ask ourselves in life.

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One of the most powerful questions

'What do I want?'.

This is one of the most powerful questions we can ask ourselves.

All coaching sessions (can) start off with this question.

All design work can start with this question.

You do what you want to do

Anything we do in life ought to be what we want to do.

In fact, everything we do in life, is what we want to do.

Right now, you are reading this text because you want to read it.

There is some sort of curiosity going on in your mind driving you to find out what this text says.

The power of want

Knowing what we want is a very powerful realisation.

It can be tricky to work it out in the first place.

Often a time people are masters of knowing what they don't want.

I find this to be the case all the time.

It's not about what you don't want

This might sound like an obvious statement.

But it isn't.

There are many things we don't want in life.

We usually don't want: war, death, punishment, suffering, pain, hard work, etc.

Saying that we don't want those things isn't very helpful.

Our mind is a very powerful tool.

There is a reason why it has a subconscious functionality to it.

Those things which we don't want we can keep in our subconscious.

It is great at protecting us from those things and helping us avoid it.

In our conscious mind we need to focus on things we want.

These things are often fewer in number.

Define your future

Defining the things we want in as high a fidelity as possible is a powerful tool for success.

Your future ought to contain the things you want.

At least in theory, they will make you happy and satisfied.

So by focusing, defining and eliciting that which we want we enable movement towards the future we ... want.

One our conscious mind gets focused on our wants, we can act upon it all in full force.

By doing what we want in a consistent way, we will realise what we want.

That is the only possible outcome.

Without giving up on it.

Giving up

Giving up is a powerful concept.

It is worth an article of its own.

We will only give up on those things which we don't want.

After a while, we get bored of things.

We lose interest.

So giving up is a powerful notion.

And when we realise that we only give up on what we don't want, we won't be sad about it.

It gives us more scope to focus on what we want.

So, giving up isn't bad at all.

It means we have realised that the thing we gave up on was not what we wanted.

That's all.

And it is beautiful.

'Don't want' as a leverage

If you are stuck on defining what you don't want and cannot focus on what you want, there is still hope.

An important aspect to remember here is that a 'don't want' may not define a want in a direct way.

'Money doesn't buy you happiness.'

In this belief, we can conclude that we don't want money, because it is the cause of unhappiness.

This is wrong.

Money isn't related to happiness.

It just doesn't buy it.

That's all.

But it is important to note here that if we don't want money, it doesn't mean we want happiness.

Many 'don't wants' can lead towards one 'want'.

For example, I don't want: hard work, long office hours, menial work, low pay, reporting to other people, etc.

All these 'don't wants' lead to one 'want', which is that I want to run my own business.

So we can leverage 'don't wants' into realising what we want.

From that want we can derive other things we need to do to realise that want.

Wanting it strong enough

Since the way the world works is that thing move from Be, to Do to Have, there is doing required for having what we want.

This gestation process is the key to realising success of any kind.

I don't make up the rules.

It just is that way, so embrace it.

If we want something strong enough, then we will Do anything to Have it.

We won't give up.

If we don't want it strong enough, we will at some point stop Doing towards it and won't Have it.

There it is.

Be is about knowing what we want.

Do is about doing what we want.

Have is about having what we want.

Embrace those things you want and do it to realise it into having it.

Enjoy the ride.

It's of your own design.

Published on: 02 Jun 2017