What You Don’t Want Is What You Want in Life
You might avoid what you don’t want in life specifically, which leads you to what you really want in the first place
What do you want?
You might have heard this question a lot in goal-setting or planning. This is a common question and a pretty powerful question that started all successful people, CEOs, and other people that already achieved their big goals.
All started from the foundation, which is goals, aims, and what you really want in life.
I love to think about that question, even though sometimes I don’t know the answer. Well, I “feel” like I know the answer, but mostly, I’m not sure. It can’t just randomly guess my answer to that question because it’s the foundation of my journey in the future.
Even so, I didn’t get the answer and might never get the answer.
Other forms of question
The answer sometimes could be found in your childhood.
For example,
“What do you really want when you are a kid?”
This question is aimed at hitting your inner self to know what you really want in life. When we were kids, it was easy for us to really know what we wanted because we didn’t know about addiction or negative things that well.
The other form of that question is,
“What do you really want if money doesn’t matter?”
This might help you get to that answer. Sometimes, we are blinded by money when we are trying to dream about something. Reality hits pretty hard and just throws us down to the bottom to not “dream big.” While dreaming actually doesn’t cost you anything, money could be blinding you to what you really want. We want to be rich fast and quick in order to leave the place you are struggling at, to achieve fame, etc.
This question is about focusing on what you really want to do without distracting you from the negative effects of social media.
We “feel” like we know it
We might know what the answer is, or we might “feel like we know the answer.”
Setting something like a purpose or goals that we want to achieve for the rest of our lives is not a trivial thing. To answer this question and find the right answer to what you really want in life, you need to understand this.
Most of the time, it’s not what you want, but it’s what you don’t want.
What you avoid, what you don’t want to get, and what you don’t want to sacrifice are actually what you want.
We love to focus on positive things, while we might actually avoid negative things all along. Find your memories, experiences, and other stories that you had in life. Find out what you avoid from the first place that gets you into moving or achieving those stories or goals.
This is probably where you end up right now; you don’t want to be “negative” while you seem to be trying to achieve “positive” things.
I’ll give you an example to easily understand this.
I have an organization, and I was a leader of that organization.
At first, I really wanted to become a leader because I wanted to know what it felt like. I start to work and make plans and goals to achieve that “leader” status in an organization. After I achieved that, I started to make many programs.
I sometimes failed to make programs but successfully made at least one program. I’m not a good leader, actually.
I want to make my lecturer happy with the programs that I make, and I want to become a “great” leader. If I could make a program that makes my lecturer and my officer happy, people would like me. I want to become more than just an ordinary college student.
Other than that, I want to become a leader because I don’t want to lack leadership skills, people’s interest, or public speaking in my career. This actually leads me to work, work, and work.
I successfully completed some programs, and I have completed my term of service in the organization.
If you look closely at my story, I wasn’t really focusing on what I wanted, even though I said that I wanted to become a leader.
- I was actually avoiding becoming someone who was not special.
- I don’t want to become an ordinary person who just enjoys the program of an organization, even though it’s not wrong to be like that.
- I don’t want to have a lack of skills that are useful for my career and become someone who doesn’t know what to do in the future.
Other than that, I’m just avoiding what I don’t really want, which is not making my lecturer happy or making people not interested in me.
Be aware of yourself, understand yourself, and find that what you really want is already within you all along.
You might be confused about what you really want and ask the same damn question about what you want. Stop and try the opposite question of what you don’t want. This might help you to really know what you want in life.
This is how I find what I want by knowing what I don’t want:
1. I ask myself first what I don’t want to be.
This helps me become aware of what I don’t really want and what things I need to avoid.
You can do this by writing it down as many times as you can; the more you write it down, the easier it will be for you to find what you really want.
2. Connect the things that you don’t want into something you really want.
Once you list down what you don’t want, you have actually found what you want.
For example, you might not want to be bullied. Then, find things that make you less easily bullied by people. It could be working out to make you look better or finding a positive environment and friends. This helps you know what the solution is that you really want. The problem might be that you are confused because being bullied is still too general.
So just like I said in the first step, write it down as many times as you can until you get the specific answer.
3. Start taking action.
Knowing what you want is not enough.
You need to start taking action before it fades away. Make a plan and set some goals to improve in that certain area and achieve what you want. I recommend setting small goals so that you can have enough confidence to achieve bigger goals.
An example that I could give you from myself is this: I don’t want to waste my time every day and every hour of my day. Then I start researching things that could make my time worth it. I found out that studying, reading, and writing hit on the point of that.
As you can see right now, I write and read every day in order to fulfill what I want and avoid what I don’t want.
This is just a tool that could help you find what you want in life.
There are many ways you could use to find what you really want. Use this one if you find it helpful and think it might help you get closer to what you really want.
Start taking action, and you will know that the more you seek it, the more you will find it.
What you don’t want could lead you to what you really want.
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