From “Need” to “Want”

I recently read a brilliant post by Alex Vermeer on managing time, and how being busy is a choice. The post deeply resonated with me, so I wanted to give my own angle on the subject. My angle — the stories that I tell myself about the actions that I take in my daily life. The reason I’m sharing this is that I suspect that I’m not the only person who does this.

“I need to…”

I’m very used to directing my life with thoughts, or stories, of what I should do, or what I need to do. “I should exercise”, “I need to keep a healthy diet”, “I’d better return that call”. I create these thoughts, but they don’t always represent what I truly want — They might be things that other people want me to do, they might be ideas, and sometimes they’re just things that I wanted but no longer do.

Telling myself that I need to do these things makes me powerless to face the changing consequences of my life. If it has to be done, I will do it, no matter the price, no matter what gets pushed aside. In other words, I am removing the element of choice from my life.

You may be asking yourself, what’s wrong about that? If I have a plan, and I’m keeping up with it, then I’m probably doing pretty well! The thing is, I’m terrible at planning, as I tend to “need” to do much more than is possible with the time I have. Or sometimes, half-way through a project I might realize I don’t care about it so much. But I’m not going to stop now. What am I, a quitter?!

Having Choice

Having choice means that in the moment I may take any action I desire, while being fully aware of the expected positive and negative consequences of that action.

I know this is a bit vague, so I’ll try to illustrate: A friend of mine lived out of the country for 2 years. When she moved back I called her up and we decided to hang out the next Friday. Come Friday, I was super-exhausted from a packed week at work and wasn’t really up to meeting her. But anyway, I said to myself, “I can’t cancel, we haven’t seen each other in a super long time. And besides, I don’t want to hurt her feelings”. Of course, I went and saw her. Now, what if, instead of just being exhausted, a pipe burst in my apartment? An easy choice now, isn’t it? It’s true that in this case I also have a better excuse to tell her, but it doesn’t change what I wanted to do in this situation, which is to go home.

This applies to many situations in our lives. You don’t have to believe me — try it out for yourself: Think of a time that you told yourself “I need to…”. Do it now. Now, take this thought, and change need into want. How does it feel?

You are invited to share your thoughts below.