“What Do I Even Want..?” Doesn’t Have To Be Such A Hard Question
Have you ever stumbled over this question — “What do you want?”
I know I have.
I have found it so much easier to answer what I don’t want in my life, to the point where I’d often fall into a crazed, uncomfortable silence when asked,
“Well, then what do you want?”
For years, I went down a rabbit hole of WHY can’t I figure out what I want?
Constantly asking myself why it’s so damn hard to know the answer to this Q of What do I bloody want!?
And then it hit me, the why just doesn’t matter.
The why was simply another trap, another way to spin, and over-think what should have been very simple to answer.
What do you want?
If you’re breaking out in hives over this question, keep reading, as this post is all about how I broke free of the turmoil these four little flipping words cause in my life.
What’s so amusing to me now, is that in getting quiet and in no longer asking the question, the answer came.
What I can now see with the clarity of a tropical tide pool on my little island paradise, is the stuck point.
The disconnect if you will.
The answer to this question — what do you want? — is a heart-centered one yet I was always approaching it from the space between my two lovely shaped ears.
And to make matters even more toxic, I was beating myself over the head, with that itty-bitty-critical voice who’s whisper was often louder than a megaphone shout, trying to answer that question analytically.
In keeping my head and my heart separate, I found it next to impossible to sink into any kind of answer.
Now, I’d have glimpses of what I’d want but only a ghosting of a vision, gone in the blink of an eye. So fleeting, so almost — only to leave me feeling despondent, broken and frustrated.
Yet, I was none of these things.
Despondent. Broken. Frustrated.
I was simply coming from a thinking place. A place of knowledge-ing the answer out of me and not from my most powerful center. The center of knowing.
Because I was coming from analytical thought, the process of answering what I do not want was simple. A snap.
The familiarity of what we don’t want can be analyzed.
The knowing of what we do want, well, it can not be thought because it’s all about being felt, and that’s the rub.
Maybe this resonates with you or maybe you’re ready to stop your scroll.
Either way, this topic is worth a few more words, is it not?
Because the need to get it, to be perfect, to figure out one’s life purpose is like this new viral epidemic choking the joy out of people’s day.
The external search for the answer to this single question of — What do you want?… is leading the masses on a never-ending search for more, more, more — more thoughts, more learning, more listening…
More externals…
When the answer is simply to go withIN…
And start asking who is it I want to be?
The answer only comes when we pause in the mad rush of life, when we drop all the balls we are juggling and realize we won’t die if the dishes don’t get washed now, and the laundry don’t get folded-right-this-second, and we don’t magically awaken to the answer that stumps us to the single most asked question of all time…what do I even want?
Often times, in guided meditation or visualization exercises, we’re told to envision what we want on a screen or in the mind’s eye.
To envision yourself creating the outcomes you want and to see, hear, and feel exactly what you want… And well, this baffles so many of us.
I mean, for reals, how do you see what you don’t know it is you even want?
What the bloody hell do you see up there on this stark white canvas of your mind’s eye while squinting your eyes closed with all your might.
If you’re like so many, perhaps you’re thinking “I’m doing it wrong…” or you’re even afraid to try.
What if thinking this way is “wrong” thinking...an interpretation or a story...and the exact thing holding you back from actually getting what you want?
See our thoughts can hold us hostage. Here’s why.
If you live in your head, the tendency to try or to force is present.
“There is no right way.
There is no wrong way.
To meditate.
To envision.
To be you.
There is simply your way.
This is where over-thinker’s hang out. Forever trying new things. Forever focused on making it work, being the best, or doing it right.
As if there even is a right way to mediate.
Hint: There is no right way and there is no wrong way. To meditate. To envision. To be you. There is simply your way. Just like there is no right way to living your life, there is only your way. But more on that in a second.
When we come from a place of right or wrong way to do something — whether meditate or live our life purpose or figure out the answer to this most annoying — I mean important — question, What do I want?, we are in our head not our heart.
And that is where we become blocked.
This analyzing of the process, making it “am I doing it right or wrong?” simply doesn’t work. Why?
Because the process of envisioning exactly what you want, in life or in a meditative state, is all about feeling and flow.
It’s all about allowing.
Flow and force cannot coexist.
And yet, we spend lifetimes forcing ourselves to flow — Square peg meet round hole.
And we try to make it work, fit, feel right. And it doesn’t. It never will.
Because that’s force. That’s conforming. That’s being who you are not to fit a version of you that quite possibly you believe you should.
Where in your life do you force flow?
The more we try to make something happen, the more we spin in the NOT happening. Why?
Because the secret sauce is withIN you already.
Which, when we finally get this, it’s like receiving the best gift ever given on the very specialist of days by the most important person in your life.
It’s like winning the flipping lottery of life.
It’s like diving off the highest cliff, knowing on the way down that you will be cradled in the splash of a warm pool of deep, silky water upon re-entry to the atmosphere-of-you.
It’s like looking in the mirror and knowing you got this — new job, promotion, client, first date, role of new parent…and the list goes on.
Suddenly, instead of spinning and seeking and searching and doing and looking under every nook-n-cranny, reading every book, listening to every podcast, enrolling in every course or following whatever guru…there is a space to hit pause.
And stop.
It’s that glimpse of withIN. That moment of utter calm, stillness, silence where one can hear the rushing in the ears like the sound of the sea in a seashell your parent may have once held to your head with a smile.
It’s envisioning, dreaming, creating and being you, the perfectly imperfect creator, and working from a place of BELIEVING it’s possible for you.
And the key ingredient in this secret sauce you can access at any moment... Well, it’s twofold.
Feeling The Feelings & Believing
Till You Just Know
Let’s start with the first.
It’s truly sinking into feelings…
Which I’ll admit I sucked at and I’ve coached many a creative who also have had trouble sinking into exactly what they felt.
Why do we have such trouble feeling our feelings?
Mainly due to our stories and interpretations and histories and traumas.
Mostly due to how we perceive right and wrong, our fear of being judged by another and our anxiety with the possibility of being abandoned.
Sound familiar?
Those stories that we CHOOSE to still drag around with us are more taxing than lugging an overweight suitcase up a flight of stairs when we find the elevator with an ‘out of order’ sign.
These stories date as far back as our childhood, some twenty, thirty, forty years ago or more. And yet we often see them in such vivid Technicolor clarity today and can recount with emotional urgency all the feelings as though trapped in a locked room with them, while also shouting from the hillside that we just can’t see any-damn-thing while meditating, envisioning or looking within.
See the contradiction here?
Gosh, is that so familiar to who I once was. Maybe you too can relate.
That overweight luggage of the past has a cost, much like when you go to the airline counter to check in and find yourself paying an astronomical fee just because of an extra pound or two.
But that pound or two, of emotional excess unpack baggage, carried around for a lifetime, well, it just gets heavier and heavier each minute, year, decade.
For me the cost was huge — as in I was huge. At one point, I weighed in at 299.5 pounds, mostly because I never let any of my baggage go. This added weight cost me a lack of trusting myself, knowing myself, and an inability to answer the simple question, “What do I even want..?”
The cost for me has been huge from the standpoint of starting and stopping in life.
Some would call it lack of focus, lack of confidence and what it resulted in was taking one step in and five steps back.
Maybe you’ve been there. It’s not a fun existence nor a productive one.
In fact, in this place, I always felt lost.
In my own, very heavy body, even I often felt lost.
And it wasn’t until I let go of all that baggage, all those stories, all those emotions I’d stuffed for a lifetime, that I was able to get quiet enough to hear the song of my heart and not the rumbling, mumbling and grumbling of my thoughts when I dared to answer that all consuming question — What do I even want..?
When we let this go and accessed our true feelings the ability to envision what was possible became, well, possible.
When I shed the layers of me that no longer served who I was or wanted to be in this life, the weight of the world lifted and magic started to become my new norm.
Because it’s this all-consuming, all-knowing BELIEF (the second ingredient) that it, what it is you want, already IS. Because it does exist. Already.
All the love, the joy, the money, the abundance, the health, the experiences... these aren’t created FOR you...
...they are WAITING for you, friend.
But most of us, we suck at answering this Q
What do I even want?
We can do a monologue for years, most of us, on what we DON’T want... and that too traps us.
But what do you want...?
Such a hard F-ING Q for most of us.
Why?
Why is it that knowing what we want stops most of us in our tracks?
Makes us draft a list of what we don’t want in life
Makes us stumble and stutter and waste so much time
What if the answer is as simple as power.
Follow me for a moment, down a twisted little path of childhood, domestication, and tapping into one’s power. Or not, in this case.
In childhood, we know how to dream.
To state what we want.
We do so with absolute certainty and conviction.
We are brilliant in our ability to KNOW.
To BELIEVE.
To ENVISION.
To DREAM.
To be a fireman
A doctor
A astronaut
A rapper
Baseball player
Movie star
A CEO
The first female president...
And the adults around us eat it up like cheap entertainment...
We are encouraged to share these dreams, as those adults around us smile and applaud and prompt us for more.
Typically in front of friends or other family members.
We are center stage at this point.
Applauded for dreaming.
Encouraged even.
Rewarded.
Hugged.
Cuddled.
Smiled at.
Loved.
The first few years in school, well at least in my day, we got to share this same story, to talk about it... sometimes even in front of the class. Maybe even as a show-and-tell moment.
Yet it was also at this moment, we may have started to hear laughter from other kids... laughter of a different kind. A different tone.
A confusing kind of snickering behind a palm. Whispers from one kid to another while stared at you.
We might have felt a sensation in our gut or somewhere in our BEING that simply didn’t feel so good. A sinking. A tremor of “wrong”...or yuck...or warning.
And we started to move away from those things that caused this horrible feeling…
Moved away from the sharing of our dreams.
The unapologetic “I want to be a....when I grow up.”
A shift from utter conviction
Unwavering confidence
Our own natural sense of knowingness.
And soon, even our parents may have unknowingly caused that horrible feeling...
Because quite frankly, at some point the child is no longer a cutie-pie to show off to friends so they can be entertained hearing “who we want to be” when we grow up.
Our adult figures have everyday sh*t to deal with and the “heaviness that is life”... as they are most likely trapped beings themselves... unaware of their own potential.
And let’s face it. Little kids shift from cute for others and “work”... a story, an interpretation, sure, but look back at your own life, look thru your parental eyes at your own...
Was the encouragement to dream always given,
forever present no matter what age you were…?
Your children were...are...?
So just as their potential was shut down in childhood...
They repeat the pattern, unknowingly more often than not, and shut down ours.
No blame.
No shame.
Simply is.
But now, with you, there is a new way, a new knowing...
so as a parent or grandparent you don’t have to continue the cycle of...
“Get a real job”...
“Need to make money”...
“Earn your degree first”...
Some of us conform. We get that law degree when all we wanted to be was a pilot.
Some of us rebel and spend our lives striving to prove someone wrong, often times missing the vibration needed to actually become that Rock God on a stage entertaining millions or that speaker filling the auditorium
or that ballerina,
Broadway star,
business owner
or successful person at whatever choice desired.
Some of us learn to hide. Never telling a soul about our secret dream to be a writer or an artist. We learn to stuff it down, not draw attention, reject praise and rejection at all costs.
Now besides, often times well-meaning but oblivious parents and adults, we also have our society.
Our domestication if you will.
See, a society has needs in order to survive.
And we are sold on these needs…through education..through media...through marketing...
We can’t all be president
We can’t all be rock stars
We can’t all be entrepreneurs
We can’t all be stay-at-home parents
And keep the economic ball-a-rolling.
We needed factory workers.
We needed soldiers.
We needed teachers, doctors, lawyers…
9-to-5-ers, employees, visionaries, and do-ers, hence, practitioners.
And maybe we even needed people to stay “dumbed down.”
Because what happens when we all start to wake up...
When we realize we are powerful beings...
Powerful creators...
That money does not come from working a 9-to-5 JOB...
unless you’ve been programmed to believe that it does...
That you don’t need to be in debt (enslaved) to get ahead...
That you are a cosmic F-ING being ...
That you are energy
That you are potential
That you are 100% possibility
100% of the time.
What if you stayed pure potential from childhood..?
What would be possible for you now in your
20s
30s
40s
50s
60s
And beyond.
Let me tell you...
Anything And Everything Would Be
100% Possible 100% Of The Time.
There’d be no BS feelings in you of feeling
Not worthy
Not lovable
Not good enough
Not powerful
Not... not... not...
You would not have a concept of “not”... would you not?
Instead, you’d envision on the movie screen of your mind,
creating the outcomes of exactly what you want and no longer be stumped by that all-consuming, problematic (story) question of…
“What do I even want?”
Those five little words would no longer
stop you…
spin you…
Would not have you drawing a blank on envisioning your own possibilities because you would KNOW you are nothing more, nothing less than absolute potential.
You would know
Without thought
That you are great
That now is all there is
That there is no right and no wrong
That exactly what you desire is already there for you.
Imagine that world for a moment.
It is yours.
The filter IS falling away.
Awareness IS within your grasp.
Truth is there for you to see.
The more you stay in the content...
The shame can be tossed aside.
The doubt can be dismissed.
The failures can be seen as priceless ways to gather data... to learn.
Triggers can be no more
(or a hell of a lot less!)
The love can bloom within you
For yourself
For others
The potential you have always had can finally
Come to light
Be acknowledged
Seen
Heard
Felt.
You can be free.
At complete peace
With you
With this world
With your existence
With your purpose.
All you have to do is SEE it
Feel it
Believe it
Known it IS already yours
And release it.
So what is it for you?
What is it you want?
Start small today.
Play with one thought.
One idea.
Stop the serious gripping
Controlling
Forcing.
And allow.
Flow
Find joy
And have some bloody fun.
How would you FEEL if free money
$100
$1,000
$10,000
showed up for you in the very near future.
What would it LOOK like to open your online statement and SEE that unexpected addition of funds…?
Would you bounce your booty up and down in your leather chair and shout SWEET..?
Imagine tearing open an envelope, one just delivered to your door, to find a wad of cash within…?
Can you SMELL it…
That new money smell...?
Can you HEAR the cha-ching in your mind...?
The SOUND a crisp stack of bills make when you run your thumbnail through the thick pile like they’re a deck of cards…?
If disbelief hits you
Shove that sh*t away.
For real.
Flood your being with YES.
With of course.
With joy.
With love.
With a shiver of how fun!
And booty dance around your kitchen.
Knowing it’s already yours...
Maybe you have a slow-ass bank, but that doesn’t matter, because you KNOW…
And you live, breathe and vibrate from this KNOWING!
And laugh at the thought of your slow-ass bank.
Feel into the joy
The abundance
The please that is this life.
And love it.
Vibe high and watch it come to be
Because
it
already
is!
Then play again.
Find a new LITTLE thing to KNOW is yours.
Practice.
Envision.
Feel.
Sink in.
Flow.
With JOY
With LOVE
With KNOWING
That it already is
And dance that sh*t out!
No right no wrong
No seeing this
Not seeing that.
Just feel joy...
And focus on what it IS you want?
Big. Small.
Know it’s already yours...
Focus on who it is you want to be?
And the rest will flow
It is the law.
The law that has been kept from you...
Your heritage.
Your truth.
It’s time you allowed it to flow back to you...
You will recognize it
When you stop resisting
When you start BEING
Who you wish to be
Not who others want you to be.
So what do you want...?
Hmm, sink in like a two-year-old
And play with that Q.
Play in your meditation,
your quiet moments.
And envision what already is on that screen of your life.
It doesn’t have to be hard.
Find the JOY in this work,
of self growth,
self exploration
In your life
In this moment
And breathe.
All is as it should be.
All is fine
Always has
Always will be.
When you get quiet with you
You’ll recognize this as your truth.
Just like you’ll soon recognize your own pure, unlimited potential as your truth.
It’s time you get out of your own way, is it not?
All you have to do is listen to your guide.
All you have to do is get quiet and listen to that inner you…
The one who doesn’t beat the crap out of you…
The one who bubbles with joy…
Who KNOWS that all is possible.
The one who knows this work as absolute truth.
All you have to do is stay in the work of loving you, getting to know you…
And be...
You.
💜
If you enjoyed this read, please share the message with a friend today…
And do leave a comment below because speaking truth into where you are in this moment, after this read — that’s pure power.
Photo Credit: Pawel Szvmanski @szvmanski
