When we’re super young, we know exactly what we want. We want food, we want sleep, we want snuggles.
OK wait…we still want those things now.
But the difference is, we unabashedly want – and request (albeit unskillfully) – those things when we’re too young to “know better”. We cry loudly and often until we get what we want. Over time, we lose our connection to what we want, trading it in for what we think we should want. And that’s where it all goes awry.
When I was in middle school, I got a new back-to-school outfit that I was so excited about. It was all kinds of neon, all over the place. (Roll back your judgments, folks – it was the 90s). I proudly wore it to school, was teased about it from some merciless middle-schoolers, and promptly buried it in the back of my closet. I’m not sure it ever saw the light of day again.
We can write this off as the silly insecurities of a young kid, but let’s be clear – adults of all ages do this all the time. We don’t try for jobs we want, we don’t ask that cute person at the bar for their number, we don’t move to that amazing city we’d love to live in…all because we’re afraid to want what we want.
We worry we’ll hurt our families, hurt our careers, hurt OURSELVES, if we go after what we want. We’ve built up such strong reasons and stories why we can’t have what we want that, goshdarnit, it becomes downright impossible.
And as long as we believe our stories – these “truths” that hold us hostage – we’ll stand in our own way of having exactly what we want.
So how do we GET what we WANT?
I’ve written several blog posts about how to live our best life, have it all, etc…
But it all starts with…WANTING WHAT WE WANT. Not what we think we should want, but what we actually want.
If not a single person would have an opinion or judgment about it…what would you let yourself want??
You know what I want? I want to eat pie STRAIGHT OUT OF THE TIN!!! Forget this slicing business…so limiting…