What Do You Really Want?

Figuring out what you really want is probably one of the most difficult and important realization you can make. I used to think for far too long that if you are lazying about doing something, you just don't want it enough and that's the only reason. But that's not true, you just don't want the discomfort to achieve it.

You can be stuck at various levels (waterfall) here:

• you are not very sure that this is what you really want
• you do not have a clear plan of action to reach a probabilistic successful outcome
• you are afraid of failure

But all these are just different levels of discomfort. Once you have found what you want, you need to be willing to go through the discomfort to figure out the plan of action. You need to be ready for discomfort when you fail.

But there is a worse thing than not doing the uncomfortable thing: basing what you want based on your environment. Everyone has regrets, you choose what you want to regret. I think, the regret of not doing the uncomfortable thing when you had the chance is pretty bad.

I recently thought of a nice analogy. Imagine you are a lion in a jungle. What you want is akin to your hunger. You should be willing and also have the ability to chase your prey. Now imagine, you are surrounded by other lions, now they are not hungry as you are, so they are sitting idly. Then as a result of seeing everyone idling around, you can end up sitting idle with hunger. And that's tragic.

Also a common saying: if you don't choose what you want, someone else will choose it for you.