TTM #18 WHAT DO YOU WANT?
You are listening to me talking to myself. Welcome to the podcast, where I share useful tools to create more space, more freedom, inner peace, connection, and life on purpose.
What do you want?
I think it's one of the most important questions, knowing what you want.
There is a difference between wanting and liking. There is a difference between wanting and knowing what you think you can have.
Sometimes we want what we have. Sometimes we want what we do not have. Sometimes we want something because we like it, or we like the idea of having it. Sometimes we want something because we think we should want it because everybody wants it. Or it's just something what everybody does, or it's just what the society tells us we should want, our religion, our culture, our upbringing, our friends, our teachers, our parents our school.
And sometimes we do not even know why we want it.
And we spend a lot of time lying to ourselves and justifying our lives that are creations of things that we do not genuinely want.
Well, let's talk about the idea of wanting and desire.
And it's really important that we differentiate between false desires, false wants, immediate fixes, and genuine ones that come from deep inside.
So many people hide their truest desires from themselves, saying, Well, I don't know what I want. That's not true. You have probably not asked yourself this question enough. You have not taken time to listen, to reflect, to feel, to be with yourself. You haven't had the courage to hear the truth.
So if you don't know what you want, what do you want? If you did know?
What do you really want?
In a perfect world if you could have and do whatever you want? What what do you want?
As if wanting what we want is not allowed in this world. We just do not give ourselves the opportunity and option to want.
Sometimes we say well, I want to be a professional gymnast, but I'm 40 and I have never done any physical exercise, so I can't.
So this is where you might like the idea. Your truest desire will match with what's possible in your life. When you go to those genuine wants within you they align with what's possible for you.
There is a difference between wanting to want something and actually wanting something. Some people like the idea of wanting to go to the gym every day. Some people like the idea of wanting to eat healthy. Some people like the idea of being in a relationship or being married. Some people like the idea of having a dog. It does not mean they actually want it.
So thinking about this question for a minute. In a perfect world, what do you really want? What do you really want?
If you remove the doubt, if you remove the confusion, if you remove the question of possibility and you just answer, what do you really want and allow the answer to come up. If you have the courage to let the answer come to you, so what's coming up?
One of the important things to do as you're asking this question to yourself is to let yourself know that no matter what answer comes up, you don't have to act on it. You get to still decide. You have complete power in your life.
And you don't have to let the knowing of what you truly want make you feel a certain way.
Allow yourself to be curious. What might come up might sound ridiculous and impossible. Do not judge, just watch your brain producing an answer.
So if you have a belief system that you can't have what you want, knowing what you want can end up hurting you, can make you feel uncomfortable, because you create a story around lack, deprivation, scarcity, and not being able to have what it is you genuinely want.
Our desires are the map to our destiny. Our truest desires, what we truly want are our calling. This is what's calling us forward. And it's important to understand why we want what we want to make sure it's not a false desire, to make sure it's not just something we want to get that dopamine hit from, also not something to prove our own worthiness, to prove that we matter, to prove that we are good people, good children, good parents.
But from the place of true worthiness, what do you want? from a place of abundance, what do you want? Is it everything that you already have? When you look at your life, would you rechoose everything? Or is this something different that you want? And do you have the courage to allow yourself to see it and to know you don't have to act on it? And just the knowing will change how we see our life.
Knowing what you want is scary. awareness can be scary sometimes. Awareness can be uncomfortable. Truth can be uncomfortable. Without awareness we can't create change. We can't create on purpose.
It is scary only if we're afraid of feeling negative emotions. If we let go of the judgement, if we allow ourselves to notice what comes up without reacting to it, without resisting it, without escaping it, but being with it, it is a very useful information. Who am I and what do I want? What do I genuinely want?
It's scary to bring the truth of what you genuinely want into the forefront of your mind and your life. Because for most of us, what we want is beyond what we currently have in some ways. We want more, we want bigger, we want different. There's something inside of us, that urge from the universe to push us forward, to evolve, to create.
Yes to being content and grateful and appreciating what we have and celebrating our accomplishments, but as long as we are alive, there will be always that push to grow, evolve and explore what is possible and what else.
So do not ignore that push, saying ‘it's working, is fine’. Now what do you really want? What is your dream? What is your perfect relationship? What is your ideal job? what friends do you want? What do you want to create?
Get to a place where what you want brings up a little bit of fear, brings up a little bit of excited fear. Like ‘Wow, I want this and it could actually happen! I could actually create this”!
If you know that your wants and your desires will bring up fear, fear of failure, fear of not having it, fear of having it when it happens, fear of what people will think when you do have it, fear of what you may have to change in order to have it, spend some private time telling yourself the truth about what it is you want and why. Spend some time feeling the fear, take it with you and know that it is part of the deal.
Knowing what you want is scary and exciting on purpose.
Create that self awareness, awareness and understanding what you're thinking, understanding and allowing what you are feeling, understanding and knowing who you are, what you are capable of, how you interact with the world and what it means.
What do you really want? In a perfect world, if you could have whatever you want, what do you really want?
You can sit down, close your eyes, be still and listen. I use meditation in many ways and very often as a tool to listen to the guidance, the inner guidance, and the guidance from the universe, to listen to some answers to any questions that I might have. There is nothing more intimate than being with yourself, asking important questions and listening to the truth that might be uncomfortable.
What do I really want when I go beyond the surface, when I go beyond the expectations, when I go beyond the social constructs? What do I really want? And be specific. Not just ‘I want a good job’ or ‘I want a good friend.’ How does it look exactly?’
I want a job where I work this much time, where I work with people, where I work from home, where I travel, where I am responsible for projects and people, where I'm physically active, where I work in different languages, where I'm free to decide how I plan my time and my time off work, where I make this amount of money, where I support the values, where I spend a lot or not much time with the team, where I am alone most of the time, where I can grow and learn, where I can meet interesting and like-minded people, where I can wear whatever I want, where I can make a contribution.
I want a friend who shares my values, who I can have deep conversations with, who is present and can listen, who is interested in growth and self-development, who is reliable, who is able to take care of our friendship, who is telling the truth and is willing to have uncomfortable conversations, who knows when to talk and when to be silent, who is giving without expectations, who is fun and adventures, who is taking responsibility, who is proactive, who I can plan and do projects with, who I can travel with, who I can go to exhibitions with. It might not be all in one person, but just good to know.
So what qualities, what energy, how does it look like exactly?
I want peace. I want love. I want freedom. Be specific. What does it mean specifically for you? What does peace, what does love, what does freedom mean for you? How do you know if you have it? What exactly would it be? What exactly does it look like? How will you know?
And as you become more self-aware of your wants, you start to know yourself on a deeper level. And you see your relationship with your own desire. And sometimes our relationship with what we want brings up fear and doubt. So we do not want to deny ourselves that self-awareness because we're afraid of negative emotion. We want to encourage it to come up and tell ourselves the truth about what we want. The truth is ‘I don't want to be friends with this person. The truth is I don't want to live in this city. That truth is I want to write a book. I want to be alone. I want to have a different job.
You want to tell yourself the truth about what you want. Even if you don't like the truth, even if you wished the truth was something different.
There is a difference between wanting to want something and actually wanting something. There is a difference between liking, liking the idea of having it or doing something and actually wanting to have or do it. Important to know you can tell yourself the truth. You don't have to act on it.
But you want to tell yourself the truth when you say ‘I don't want this’ or ‘I want this but I'm not going to act on it.’ That is the truth and own the truth knowing that you have the choice to decide whether you're going to go after it or not.
That's very different than lying to yourself and telling yourself you don't want something that you want, it will show up in urges, escaping, false pleasures, and other things.
When you avoid the fear that's associated with your desire, you start to deny your own desires. You start to deny what you really want and it will show up in urges in your life. Go back to Episode 14 on escaping negative emotions.
And it will show up in lying to other people too. If we are not able to tell ourselves the truth, if we don't know what our truth is, it will show up in relationships with other people too, like people pleasing.
So the first step is you create the-self awareness to understand and hear your own voice about your true wants and your true desires. The second step is you tell yourself the truth, the honest truth about it, knowing that you don't have to act on it, but that you can feel that feeling inside. Whatever feeling might come up, it is a vibration in your body. You observe that vibration without judgement.
The third step is to let the fear come up.
Knowing what you want is scary. It is scary on purpose. It's like this is your mission. And we all have our own specific one. Which is different from everybody else's. And it is scary because we will want something nobody else wants.
And as humans we all want to belong. So the brain just tries to protect us from isolation. Our brain is programmed for survival, for being part of the tribe and doing what is comfortable and familiar. Our brain is not programmed for desire and growth. Our brain is programmed for survival. We have to overcome our primitive brain to evolve, check out episode 16 and 17 on the topic of growth.
So let your want hurt a little bit. Let it be fearful, let it scare you.
And the fourth step is now that you know what you want, you can choose to go after it. Are you courageous enough to consider it.
So once you have created the self-awareness and you have told yourself the truth and you feel the fear, the next step is to make a choice. Make a conscious choice in your life whether you will pursue the want, delay the want or deny the want. And this is the power you have to make a decision.
Even if you make a decision not to pursue the want, even if you make the decision to let the fear overcome you and to not pursue the want, it will be a conscious choice. ‘I am to afraid to do that. I'm too afraid to leave this job. I am too afraid to start my business. I'm too afraid to write that book. Even though I really want to, I am afraid.’ Make the statement. Tell yourself the truth. Make the decision. And it doesn't mean that's the decision forever. It's just good to know.
When we follow our true desire, when we make decisions to follow our true desires, we will fail. That's why it's so scary. We will be challenged. We might not accomplish that desire straight away. So do we have the courage to continue to make the choice because our desire matters?
And the fifth step is ‘Are you willing to change to honour your desire? Are you willing to honour your desire? Are you willing to fight through the fear to get to the place of that desire?
And what determines that, is your belief in your own want.
Do you believe that your want is possible? Do you believe that your desire matters? Do you allow yourself to consider that you can have exactly what you want in your life?
You don't have to make compromises. You don't have to make sacrifices in what you truly desire. You can pursue your desires in an evolution of yourself to create a better life. And what that may mean in terms of choice and change is that you might disappoint other people. It may mean that you change your mind about something, it may mean that you become a different version of yourself that other people are not supporting or are not liking.
That's where the courage comes in to honour your desire, to honour your want, to tell yourself the truth about it to become self-aware enough to even know it.
So what are you afraid to know because it's so scary? What is a want that you don't even acknowledge because it makes you so afraid. That deeper desire that's always been there that you have never acknowledged because you're afraid.
But what if you knew you were supposed to be afraid when you acknowledge your wants and your desires? What if you knew that that was part of the process? Too many people give up on their desires because they're so hard to accomplish or other people get upset about them. What are you willing to do to honour your own desire? How much fear are you willing to feel and go through, and why does it matter?
Once that is in awareness and you tell yourself the truth and you honour the fear that comes along with it, then you can make the choice to change. When you take action on a true desire, you're living the purpose of your life. If you are a person who is trying to find purpose, you're trying to find your magical important purpose in your life and you're not taking action on your true desires, you're always going to be left unfulfilled and most likely escaping your pain in some way with false pleasures.
Because there will be that uncomfortable emotion that comes up when you're not following your wants and desires. That feeling of ‘I could do so much more.’
If you're willing to become aware of your wants and to live your life in accordance to them in truth, you will always be growing, you will always be changing.
I have accomplished many of my desires. Many of my true desires I have created for myself, and I have so many more to go, so many things that I don't quite yet believe I can have that bring up fear in me. And my awareness brings purpose into my life.
In a perfect world what do you want? Tell yourself the truth. Follow the direction from within. This is what I want. This is why I want it. Make the choice to change to go after it. No matter what anybody thinks about to you, no matter whether you succeed or fail. And no matter if you are afraid, especially if you're afraid.
Thank you for being curious. If you enjoyed listening - rate, review, subscribe, share and join the conversation. Do not miss out on yourself, your power, and what is possible for you!
