What Do You Actually Want?

What Do You Actually Want?

Last episode, I talked about the problem with manifestation.

We spend so much time trying to create some future version of our lives that we can completely abandon the present moment—the only place where we can actually experience our lives, make choices, notice opportunities, or change anything.

But coming back to the present creates another question.

And honestly, I think this one might be harder.

What do you actually want?

Not what should you want.

Not what would look successful.

Not what would make sense to everybody else.

Not what you're supposed to want at this age, with this career, with these responsibilities.

What do you desire?

I've been thinking a lot about three words lately:

Passion. Desire. Imagination.

And especially desire.

When Did Wanting More Become a Bad Thing?

Somewhere along the way, desire got a bad reputation.

Wanting more can sound greedy or ungrateful. Like appreciating your current life and imagining something different can't possibly exist at the same time.

I don't believe that.

I can love my life and desire more from it.

I can appreciate my home and imagine another one.

I can be grateful for what I've built and still wonder what else I'm capable of creating.

I can love who I am right now and be wildly curious about who I'm becoming.

Maybe desire isn't evidence that something is missing. Maybe desire is information.

Maybe it's showing us where our imagination wants to go next.

Maybe You Don't Need to Find Your Passion

We've also made passion way too freaking complicated.

Find your passion.

Discover your purpose.

Figure out what you were put on Earth to do.

Good Lord. That's a lot of pressure.

What if passion is simpler?

What if passion is anything that makes you feel more alive while you're experiencing it?

I recently bought a convertible—something I'd wanted since I was a teenager.

Is a BMW convertible the secret to enlightenment?

Probably not.

But give me 72-degree weather, the top down and a good playlist, and I'm willing to hear the argument.

What surprised me wasn't the car itself.

It was how much more fun ordinary life suddenly felt.

I'm driving roads I've driven hundreds of times. I'm running errands. I'm picking up kids.

Nothing extraordinary is happening.

But I'm enjoying being there.

And after spending so much time thinking about presence, that feels significant.

Maybe passion is gardening.

Reading.

Cooking.

Traveling.

Teaching.

Building something.

Being around people you love.

And here's a radical thought:

You don't have to monetize it.

It can just make you happy.

Who Taught You What to Want?

I'm watching my kids navigate their teenage years, and you can almost see the outside world beginning to compete with their internal compass.

Is this cool?

Is this embarrassing?

What should I wear?

What will people think?

Adults do the same thing.

We're just much better at disguising it.

We call it being practical.

We absorb ideas about what success looks like, how much money we're supposed to make, what kind of house we should have, what our bodies should look like, what relationships should look like and where we're supposed to be by a certain age.

Eventually, it's possible to become incredibly successful at building a life you never consciously chose.

Which is why I keep coming back to this question:

What do I actually want?

Ask What—and Then Ask Why

There's another question underneath desire.

Why?

Maybe you desire a huge house.

Why?

Maybe it's not really about the house.

Maybe you imagine Thanksgiving dinner with everyone around the table, kids running through the rooms, friends dropping by and people staying way too late.

Maybe the actual desire is connection.

Maybe you want more money.

Why?

Security?

Freedom?

Generosity?

Adventure?

Maybe you want a relationship.

Why?

Love?

Intimacy?

Partnership?

The what gives your imagination a picture.

The why tells you the feeling underneath it.

I think we need both.

Sometimes You Have to Borrow Belief

Recently, I was talking with my friend Bonnie, and I was spiraling.

Taxes. Budgets. Businesses. Things I didn't understand and thought I should.

And I realized my vision had been getting smaller.

Not because I wanted less.

Because I was becoming afraid to imagine more.

My dreams felt bigger than my current skill set, and somewhere along the way I'd started interpreting that gap as evidence that maybe I shouldn't dream that big.

Bonnie reminded me that I'm not supposed to possess every skill necessary to build everything I imagine.

People are puzzle pieces.

We bring different strengths.

At one point, I told her:

"I need to borrow some of your belief right now."

And she had enough to lend me.

I haven't stopped thinking about that.

Sometimes fear makes the dream blurry.

Sometimes someone else has to hold the bigger version of it until we can see it again.

Your Brain Is Looking for Broncos

My daughter recently binge-watched Outer Banks and decided she wants a Bronco.

So naturally, we've turned seeing Broncos into a game.

And apparently every person in Texas suddenly owns one.

Except they don't.

The Broncos were already there.

We started noticing them.

That's one of the things I find fascinating about manifestation when you remove the magical thinking from it.

When something becomes meaningful, your attention changes.

Desire says:

This matters to me.

Suddenly you notice conversations, opportunities, ideas and possibilities you might have filtered out before.

You didn't magically create the Bronco beside you on the highway.

You finally noticed it.

Everything Exists Twice

I love the idea that so much of what humans create exists twice.

First as an idea. Then as a thing.

Before Disneyland existed, someone imagined Disneyland.

Before your favorite book existed, someone stared at a blank page.

Before a house existed, someone imagined what could stand on an empty piece of dirt.

Before a business existed, someone asked, What if?

Creation requires imagination.

Not because every thought magically becomes reality.

But because it's incredibly difficult to intentionally create something we've never allowed ourselves to imagine.

And imagination needs something we're becoming terrible at giving it:

Space.

Every empty second gets filled with our phones, podcasts, emails, music, notifications and content.

Maybe adults don't lose their imaginations.

Maybe we stop giving them enough quiet to speak.

Don't Use Desire to Torture Yourself

This is where desire gets tricky.

We identify something we want and then immediately start asking:

Where is it?

Why hasn't it happened?

Why does she have it?

Why don't I?

What am I doing wrong?

Suddenly something that once felt exciting becomes evidence that our current life isn't enough.

And we're right back where we started.

We've left the present moment again.

What if desire could be lighter?

I would love that.

That's it.

No emergency.

No deadline.

No demand that the universe provide a tracking number.

You can desire something without believing you need it to become whole.

You can be grateful and desirous.

Content and imaginative.

Whole and still expanding.

Try This Without Making a Plan

Take a piece of paper and divide it into four sections:

My body
My home
My relationships
My work

For each one, answer two questions:

What do I desire?

And:

Why do I desire it? How do I believe it would feel?

Then comes the important part.

Do not write how.

Don't turn it into a goal.

Don't reverse-engineer it.

Don't create the spreadsheet.

Don't make the freaking action plan.

Not yet.

Just practice wanting something.

Practice imagining it.

Practice noticing how it feels.

Because maybe the first step isn't figuring out exactly how you're going to build the dream.

Maybe the first step is getting quiet enough to remember what the dream actually is.

Last episode was about returning to the present.

Maybe this is what we do once we get there.

We listen.

We remember what makes us feel alive.

We notice what we've stopped imagining because it felt too big, too impractical or too far away.

And sometimes, when our own belief gets shaky, we borrow a little from someone else.

You don't have to make your current life wrong to desire another chapter.

Maybe desire isn't proof that something is missing.

Maybe it's simply evidence that you're still expanding.

And isn't that kind of the whole freaking point of being alive?

Cut the BS. Build the dream.

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