This is a copy from an exercise that I did in my journal and I encourage you to do it as well. Take some time and really think about what you want in life and then follow that thought trail deeper and deeper. When you figure out what you want, you'll feel a weight lift off your shoulders and a true sense of empowerment...
What Do I Really, Truly Want?
Austin, here's the thing.
There's a lot in this world.
More than you could ever do in a lifetime and even more pushing you to look one way, be some way or do something else.
All in all, there is a lot.
Although, let's start by determining our ultimate goal...
Success Fulfillment
Laughing, cheering, shouting, loving, happiness, joy and living.
Living.
I want to live.
As Oscar Wilde said,
"To live is the rarest thing, most people just exist."(Cat licks my face)
So we have a start. You want to live.
Living is what though? What does it mean to you?
Living means experiencing the richness of life.
Richness is the things that make me happy and fulfilled, while not having a shell blocking who I am.
So that means we:
- Stop acting like anything for anyone
- Target happy and fulfilled
Happiness can't happen without some type of fulfillment (internal bliss), and fulfillment will never come without happiness.
With that target set...
What makes me happy?
- Coffee
- Friends and family (time spent with)
- Achievements
- Learning
- Creating
- Impacting a life
- Retreating to the absence of who I am (meditation)
- Freely expressing myself through movement (dance and play)
- Music
- A great conversation
- Poking holes in my mindset and remaking who I am
- Bettering myself
- Helping others
- Teaching
- Adventures, god I love adventures
- Getting to know someone and developing a personal connection.
- Having a task or something to work on and accomplish
- Creating something daily (or however long it takes)
- Bettering myself
- Living in the now/meditation (the absence of the I)
- Teaching and helping to form aha moments
- A great stimulating conversation
- Time with close ones
- Creating personal connections
- Moving my body (Movement and Dance)
- Doing and stopping
- Being me, fully
- Reading
- Adventures and enriching the map
But... Let's face our fears.
What could be a danger or more specifically what do we not want?
Greed, sadness, monotony, death, lies, malicious intent, ill-willed behavior, self helplessness, to be who I am not, to get trapped in fame, to be afraid of information even that which breaks apart my way of life, to isolate people, to belittle others, to fight, to waste my time and life, to be stuck.
Wow. It's almost easier to minimize what we don't want, then say what we want.
I want a lot because I hold myself to this standard, but I know that often what I don't want will happen.
So, I have an idea.
Let's maximize happiness/fulfillment and minimize what we don't want, the dreaded list above.
Now, where do we go from here?
Let's create a list of what we want so we know what to focus on.
I want:
- To spend time with those close to me
- To create, often
- To learn from everything
- To teach my learnings
- To always be me and never censor who I am, but make sure I am clear about who I am first.
- Truthful
- Intellectual Honesty
- Passionate
- Happy
- A champion
- Powerful
- Always moving
- A lifetime learner
- Loving
- Courageous
- Abundant
- Helpful
- Me
- To better myself
- To go on adventures
- To have great conversations....(podcasting)
- To connect the dots (a past time of mine)
- To develop personal connections
- To move (Dance, play, crawl)
- To laugh, more
- To impact everyone I interact with
Now, centered in this reality, the tangibility of it all, what do I want?
- Enough
- Quality
To me, money isn't a collectible, and the one with the most does not win. Instead, the one with enough wins.
A fear of mine is ever to be a slave to a tool. Just because a hammer has sat in the garage for years doesn't mean we have to use it or even need it anymore.
So, when I say enough, I mean enough to support my fulfillment and happiness.
Enough money to take out friends for dinner live in a place that allows destressing and peace of mind and to be able to better me.
Enough time to spend it with those I love, on what makes me happy and fulfilled, and to be me.
Return to that word richness.
I have to have some of what I hate. Otherwise, I will NEVER experience what I love.
Starting with 100% dark chocolate makes milk chocolate sweet as hell, but begin with it, and it is just chocolate.
Enough to support happiness and fulfillment resulting in abundance because enough means that you will always have X for Y.
Quality
Enough is a precursor to quality.
By not having enough you settle for what isn't quality and by having to seem much to do the same (I.E., Warren Buffet eating McDonald's.)
Now, with enough, we can always opt for quality.
So quality plays on both happiness and fulfillment.
Without quality in being happy or fulfilled, I can never truly be me and experience the richness of life.
This means opting for the best quality with the enough that I have.
Quality time for friends and family, to do what makes me happy and fulfilled.
Quality in work, creating enough wealth to live with quality around me.
And most important a quality life.
Fuck Settling
1-Life (as I know) and I'd settle?
Try letting the water settle and see what happens...
Disgusting right?
Exactly.
Austin that's why we need enough drive, enough of everything to support growth and lead to a quality life.
More is almost never better.
Quality and enough are.
Wow, that is a tangent.
Okay, so what do I want?
To be happy and fulfilled by always reaching or the highest quality using just enough.
What that means is that we don't have to do anything!
But literally can do anything that gets us enough to achieve the highest quality of being happy and fulfilled.
I'm realizing that what I do now may not be what I do five years from now, but following my bliss and really making sure that I'm happy and fulfilled with enough at the highest quality is what I want in life.
Thanks for thinking through this Austin.
Now stop talking to yourself and go do what you just learned or realize it's okay if you change as long as you are happy and fulfilled.
Talk soon,
Austin
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Posted from my blog with SteemPress : https://heightenedliving.com/want/
A really useful exercise to do regularly. Checking back in with yourself. It is so easy to get taken off track. It creeps up on this, Exercises like this return you to your core purpose. Now, I need to scribble down mine! (thanks for the nudge!)
I love this! Thanks for sharing :)
very motivational post...gud sharing..