When I was a young woman, I had a REALLY hard time figuring out what I wanted to do with my life.
There was a girl I went to both high school and college with who knew the whole time that she wanted to be a teacher.
I was so jealous of that clarity.
Meanwhile, I chose to major in linguistics at Duke partly because linguistics wasn’t even its own department.
Every single class was cross-listed with something else.
Psychology! Anthropology! Computer science! Literature!
Perfect.
I didn’t have to choose.
I used to think some people were just clearer than others.
My boyfriend’s mom at the time tried to put a kind spin on it:
She said something like, “Maybe God just didn’t choose for you.”
Sweet, but not exactly comforting.
Other people had been issued a Calling, apparently, while God had looked at me and said:
Eh. She’ll figure something out.
I still think some people do come with clearer visions than others.
But here’s what I believe now that I didn’t understand then:
Knowing what you want is a skill.
And whether or not it comes naturally to you, I think all of us have both the ability—and the duty—to get better at it.
Because you’re the only person who can bring your wants to your life.
Nobody else can do it for you.
And if you don’t know what you want, it’s remarkably easy to build a life out of other things:
- What makes sense.
- What you’re good at.
- What someone else wants.
- What won’t disappoint anyone.
- What seems safest.
- What you think you should want.
I meet a lot of people who have gotten very, very good at those things.
And then they come to me miserable.
They have a life that seems like it should feel good.
A good job. A good relationship. A good family. A life they worked hard to build.
And yet something feels wrong.
Something feels missing.
So I ask:
Okay. What do YOU want?
“I don’t know.”
I had two conversations this week that reminded me how complicated that question can be.
One person genuinely couldn’t yet see what she wanted the next chapter of her life to look like.
Another initially said “I don’t know” when a friend asked what she wanted to do for her birthday. But when she made herself investigate, she found something she was excited about. And then more wants appeared: who she wanted there, what she wanted to do afterward, what help she wanted from her friend.
There was a wanter in there after all!
And I see this all the time.
We think we don’t know what we want.
But often, we’ve accidentally bundled “What do I want?” together with a whole bunch of other questions:
- Is it realistic?
- Can I actually have it?
- Will someone else be upset?
- What will I have to do if I admit it?
- What if I change my mind?
- Can I guarantee this is the right choice?
- Am I safe if I want this?
Well, shit.
No wonder we don’t know.
Knowing what you want is not the same thing as knowing what you should do.
You can want to quit your job without deciding to quit your job.
You can want to stay married AND want to leave.
You can want to move to Portugal without needing to call a realtor.
A want isn’t a plan.
It isn’t a decision.
It isn’t a demand.
It’s information.
And if every little tendril of desire has to make it through a gauntlet of practicality, morality, other people’s feelings, and certainty about the future before you’re even allowed to acknowledge it…
Of course your wanter starts to seem broken.
So here’s a practice.
For one moment, take everything else off the table.
You don’t have to do anything about the answer.
You don’t have to justify it.
You don’t have to know how it would work.
You don’t even have to decide whether it’s a good idea.
Ask yourself:
What do I want when it comes to this one thing?
And listen.
Maybe you get an answer.
Maybe you don’t.
That’s okay too.
This is a skill.
And skills get stronger with practice.
Start small.
- What do I actually want to eat?
- Do I want to go to this party?
- Do I want to stay in this conversation right now?
Then ask bigger questions:
- What do I want from this relationship?
- How do I want to spend my time?
- What kind of work feels worthy of my life?
- What would make this particular life feel deeply mine?
Your wanter probably isn’t broken.
Maybe nobody ever taught you to listen to it.
Maybe you’ve had excellent reasons not to.
Maybe yours speaks more quietly than someone else’s.
Maybe God didn’t choose for you.
But you still get to choose—and doing that means wanting.
Longingly yours,
Rachel
PS — If your wanter feels especially hard to hear around one particular part of your life, that’s exactly the kind of thing we can untangle together. Hit reply or book a free consultation here. We’ll look at what’s getting in the way of knowing what you want—and what it might look like to actually create a life based on what your truest, wisest parts are pointing towards.
