Question 2: What Do You Want?
Posted by Moses on Apr 7, 2007
Previously, I covered the first question of the 4 questions for your life. This post will cover the second question, which is What Do You Want? Discovering what you truly want is at times a difficult question to answer. It’s easy to understand what you want materially, but once your basic material needs have been met (ex. food, water, housing, clothes, Xbox 360) you can feel free to address your spiritual needs. Spiritual needs are those needs that are at the core of who you are.
The question what do you want, forces you to look inside of yourself and discover what is most important to you and then focus on achieving or acquiring that desire. Often it’s difficult to understand what you truly want because of the all the random noise that we encounter everyday. Examples of noise includes messages from the media (take this pill and your life will be happy), messages from peers (you should do buy a house near me so you can be happy just like me) or your basic hectic schedule of shuttling kids, working and trying to find a quiet moment for yourself.
The first step in discovering what you want is to realize that whatever you want is already yours. If you can conceive that you are already in possession of what you want then you no longer need to attempt to acquire something that is outside of your control. You must visualize yourself in possession of your desire.
The second step in discovering what you want is to visualize the person that you want to be and ask what she wants. In my discussion of the first question, Who are you, I stressed the importance of thinking of yourself in the present as though you have already become the person that you want to become. By doing so, you allow yourself to think and understand what that person would want. This allows you to enlarge your vision so that your vision is not constrained by your current surroundings.
The third step is acceptance. Let’s say that you understand what the person you see yourself as wants, but that you are not comfortable with it. There are several reasons why you might be uncomfortable
- You might not really believe yourself to be the person that you want to be. If this is true, you may simply be uncomfortable with the change in mindset that is required for you to truly become the person that you want to be.
- You might not want to be the person you that you think you want to become. If this is true you need to reconsider the question who am I?
- You might be afraid to want what the person you see yourself becoming would want. If this is true, then you need to learn to accept your fear and have faith that what you want is right for you.
The last step in determining and ultimately having what you want is to take action. It is only through action that you are able to be sure that what you want is true to yourself. If you begin to take the steps necessary to achieve or acquire what you want and you find that it’s too painful or seems as though it is not worth it, you may be right. You may have instead chosen something that is not in alignment with who you are becoming and is instead a reminder of who you used to be.
As a Christian, my faith in God bolsters my decision about what I want. Through him I have a level of comfort in my choices, as long as those choices are consistent with his word and what I believe that he wants for me. It is a different place to be in when you know that God cares for you and watches over you. I will admit that I still struggle at times to understand what is best for me. I have many examples in my life where something that at one time I believed to be good for me, in the end turned out to be destructive to my well being. I must admit in most of those examples occurred when I was living a life that was not in alignment with God’s word.
God gives us free will and so leaves in our hands the ability and responsibility to answer each of these 4 questions for our lives. This one of the most empowering acts he could have possibly bestowed upon us. We have the power determine our own destiny and choose what we want.
Next we will examine the third question Why Are You Here?
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