Svaha: the time between seeing lightning and hearing the thunder
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What do you want?
I mean, what do you really want? Not what do you want for dinner, not what do you want to do next off your lengthy to-do list, not even what do you want for your birthday.
What do you want, for your career and for your life?
When was the last time you asked yourself that? And when was the last time you stopped to listen, deeply listen, for the answer?
As the economic upheaval (or, more accurately, downheaval) continues to disrupt jobs, careers, and lives, a lot of people are stopping to ask themselves what they want. And a lot of people are wondering why they didn’t ask themselves sooner.
It’s time.
It’s time to ask yourself what you really, deeply want. Time to explore what that means, time to live with the question and let the true answer come to you.
That answer may be hard to find at first. It may be buried deep inside you, waiting until it’s sure you want to know. It may have spent so long whispering to you, unheard, that it’s difficult to hear now.
And it’s an important question. It may feel so big that it scares you, or threatens to overwhelm you.
All of that is okay and natural. Remember that just asking the question doesn’t commit you to taking action. (I happen to think you’ll want to take action once you’ve found the answer, but it will be a choice, not a requirement.)
If you don’t ask now — when will you ask?
Here are some things to consider as you begin your exploration.
Notice your expectations, whatever they are, and then set them aside. Let yourself just hang out in “I don’t know” for a while, with intense curiosity about what might happen.
The first answers that come to you are likely to be cloaked in, “Well, so-and-so said I’d be good at ...” or “My dad always wanted me to ...” or even, “The aptitude test I took in college said ...”
You may want to jot them down, just to clear them out of your thoughts, but they’re not the real answer.
The real answer won’t come with anyone else’s opinion attached.
Searching inside yourself for the answer to this question of what you really want isn’t selfish or irresponsible. And it isn’t a waste of time.
Remember, you don’t have to take action. And when you are moved to take action, it won’t be like flipping a light switch. Nor will it mean you’ll suddenly be making big adjustments in how you live your life (though you might, if that’s what you want!).
Change can happen at any speed that’s comfortable for you, whether that’s slow and steady or cheetah-fast.
When I was working as a business systems analyst and designer, I constantly reminded my clients that how wasn’t allowed during the initial brainstorming process.
When you’re first exploring ideas, how is a roadblock. It inevitably leads to thoughts of “this won’t work, can’t be done, too difficult.”
So don’t go there. When you get to the real answer, that will be time enough to start exploring how.
No, I don’t mean you have to start speaking French or Greek — or that you should stop swearing!
But notice what happens when you say “I want to” instead of “I need to” or “I have to.” There’s a tremendous energetic difference. “Need to” and “have to” feel externally imposed and create a sense of pressure, responsibility, and obligation.
“I want to” is a spontaneous moving forward of something within you, something purposeful and joyful, something inspired.
Even as you explore what you really want on the larger scale, notice what you want, and how you talk about it, on the day-to-day scale as well.
I hear so many people saying “I need to” and “I have to” about things that I’d expect them to want to do. Fun things, creative endeavors that they enjoy — and yet they’re using this obligation-ridden language to describe how they feel about doing them.
Notice when you do this — and notice what happens when you change to “I want to.”
As I said above, curiosity is a wonderful tool to use in your discovery process. But don’t let it carry you off into impatience. This question of what you really want is a big question, and it deserves time. Live with the question for a while.
You may find that you wake in the morning (or even in the middle of the night) with ideas. You’ll certainly find thoughts, feelings, and more ideas coming to you during the course of your day.
Allow the ideas to accumulate, writing them down as they arise. Let the answer develop, ripening over time. Don’t rush it.
After all, if you’ve waited this long to ask the question, the least you can do is give yourself the time you need to really answer it!
“We do not know what we want and yet we are responsible for what we are — that is the fact.” Jean-Paul Sartre, 1905-1980, French existentialist philosopher, author, and political activist.
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