The importance of regularly reflecting on what you really want
We were at our favorite Korean spot on Haight Street. In between bites of soft tofu stew, he said, "It actually takes quite a bit of work to realize what you want."
It resonated with me.
I think we spend a lot of time and energy doing stuff that doesn't get us closer to satisfying our desires.
At least one reason for this is that we don't know what our desires are in the first place.
In The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, the second habit is beginning with the end in mind.
“To begin with the end in mind means to start with a clear understanding of your destination. It means to know where you’re going so that you better understand where you are now and so that the steps you take are always in the right direction.” — Stephen Covey
If you don't know where you're going, it's hard to tell if you're making progress in the right direction.
If you don't know what your desires are, it's hard to tell if you're making progress toward satisfying them.
As you're reading this, you might be thinking: Of course I know what my desires are.
If so, I encourage you to ask yourself, "What do I want in this life?"
Then try to write down 1-2 sentences in response to that question. Is your response to that question top of mind enough that you can write down those 1-2 sentences in less than 30 seconds?
Why people don't know what they want
From self-reflection and conversations with others, I've found that most people don't know what they really want for at least one of these reasons:
Lack of clarity: You have a vague sense or feeling of what you want, but you haven't clarified it into something actionable or achievable.
External influences: You're pursuing what your family, friends, and/or society want you to pursue. You're not pursuing what you want for yourself.
Fear of failure: You're not allowing yourself to be honest and clear about what you really want because you're afraid that it won't be achievable and you don't want to fail.
Focus on outdated goals: You wanted something in the past. And you've been working on achieving it for a while. But you've been so focused that you haven't realized that your desires have changed.
Limited perspective: If you stay in your hometown and never travel or stick to what you know and never try new things, you might be keeping yourself from having experiences that you realize you want to have more of.
How to figure out what you want
You can go on a vision quest around the world or try a bunch of new hobbies, but I don't think drastic measures like that are necessary.
You already know what you want. You just have to create time/space when/where you can listen to yourself. One way to do this is by following the self-guided therapy process I describe here.
Here's an edited version of that process specifically for realizing what you want:
Find a quiet place where you can be alone.
Lie down or sit down.
Open Otter on your phone and start a new recording.
Set your phone where it can still hear you.
Close your eyes.
Ask yourself, "What do I want in this life?"
Think about.
Talk aloud as ideas come to you.
Why it's important to regularly reflect on what you want
You enjoy your life more when you're satisfying your desires. And you want to enjoy your life, therefore you want to satisfy your desires.
But you don't always satisfy your desires. Why is that?
Most self-help literature seems to focus more on productivity and efficiency once the goal is already set. Sometimes the goal even seems to be presupposed.
Allow yourself to spend more time in the phase of self-reflection when you're feeling into what you really want. Spend weeks or months in this phase. It's worth the time. You don't have to succumb to the external influences that want you to rush into productive mode.
Three signs that you didn't spend enough time realizing what you wanted:
You're lacking motivation to work toward a goal that you set for yourself a while ago because your desires have changed since then and the goal is no longer aligned with what you really want.
You can't clearly communicate why you're doing what you're doing when people ask you.
You get what you were working toward but you're not satisfied because it's now what you actually want.
It's important to regularly reflect on what you want because you enjoy your life more when you're satisfying your desires and you can only satisfy your desires if you know what your desires are in the first place.
Manifestation: when realizing your desires results in literally making your desires real
I read a book called Ask and It Is Given as my introduction to manifestation.
Here are some quotes from the book:
"Every thought vibrates, every thought radiates a signal, and every thought attracts a matching signal back. We call that process the Law of Attraction" (25).
"The key to bringing something into your experience that you desire is to achieve vibrational harmony with what you desire. And the easiest way for you to achieve vibrational harmony with it is to imagine having it, pretend that it is already in your experience, flow your thoughts toward the enjoyment of the experience, and as you practice those thoughts and begin to consistently offer that vibration, you will then be in the place of allowing that into your experience" (26).
"That which is like unto itself is drawn, so the vibration of your Being must match the vibration of your desire in order for your desire to be fully received by you" (29).
And here's my interpretation:
If you regularly reflect on what you want, you achieve a concentration of your energy on that which you truly desire. Once you achieve this, things start to happen that some would call "luck" or "coincidence."
For example, you're in a conversation at a party and you start talking about what you really desire. That other person offers to provide you with a resource that will aid you in satisfying your desire.
When you focus on what you truly desire as a thought in your mind, it has a way of manifesting in the material world. Think and Grow Rich is another book that talks about this idea.
So, regularly reflecting on what you want is at least important because it allows you to focus your working time/energy on directly pursuing what you really want. But taking that one step further, the process itself of reflecting on what you want might actually be a significant portion of the work.
Part of me believes that if you sit down into a deep, long meditation and focus on your desires and pretend that you are already living in the satisfaction of your desires, you can generate a magnetic pull of attraction strong enough to make your desires a reality, without ever getting up from your meditation.