How to know what we want…and go for it!

Something I hear often in my practice is the challenge of making decisions and changes in our lives when we don’t know what we want.

Which way to go?!

How can I choose or change if I have no idea what I want to change or what is good for me?

Maybe you experience this as feeling stuck, lost, or confused. Perhaps you are unhappy and dissatisfied in many areas of your life, but unsure how to change them. Sometimes we stay, stuck or indecisive out of fear, anxiety, or a series of experiences that left us doubting, questioning, or mistrusting ourselves and others. Many adults who spent their childhood catering to, or accommodating others, often parents or siblings, learned at a very young age to distance or disconnect from what they truly want or desire. This may have been in service of staying connected to and preserving the relationship with the most important people in our lives. Over time, however, we lose connection with ourselves and end up, unsure of who we truly are, unsure of what we want, and doubting our decisions. I often call this self abandoning- when we abandon or disconnect from ourselves to maintain relationships, please others, and avoid conflict or disappointing somebody else. We stop trusting our instincts and lose confidence in our ability to make good decisions and choices for ourselves and our lives.

Through therapy, we offer ourselves space to begin to explore these patterns and ways of relating to uncover our true selves and build confidence in our decisions. We may uncover deeper negative beliefs that get in our way, such as, “I can’t have what I want,” “I don’t deserve what I want,” or “If I have what I want it will hurt someone else.”

We work on connecting to our wants and needs and expressing them in a way that preserves and strengthens our relationship to ourselves and to others. We may do this by exploring past experience and hurts, and unlearning the survival strategies and negative beliefs we had from a younger age. We build an an awareness and ability to observe and catch ourselves acting these patterns out to make lasting change and move towards what we want with clarity, confidence, and direction.

If you are challenged by uncertainty and confusion about what you want and how you can trust it, here are some creative, experiential, and maybe even fun, ideas to try:

1. Write or Make Art

We spend so much of our days thinking about other people, observing our external environment, questioning if we said or did the right thing and how people perceive us, we  we don’t give ourselves a real chance to check in with our internal worlds. 

Writing is a quick way to try and connect to what might be happening inside ourselves. We don’t have to write many pages or paragraphs for this to work, we can write down a sentence or two, or maybe write a stream of consciousness first thing in the morning or last thing at night before bed. The act of writing and creating for oneself can help us uncover what it is that we might be holding or feeling inside and start to develop a relationship with ourselves. If writing is not for you, try drawing, doodling, painting, collaging, or any other form of art making.

The act of deciding what colors we want to use, shapes we want to draw, words we want to write, is a way in which we are build confidence in our choices, asserting what we want on a page or through the materials we use, and we learn what we like and dislike. Just remember not to judge, critique, or assign a value to what we’ve written or created!

2. Cook without a Recipe

This might sound scary, but is a great way of practicing trusting your instincts, making small decisions and sticking with them, and starting to get comfortable with the possibility and potential of success and failure. Notice how it feels to choose the ingredients, make decisions about what to make and how to cook it, and let yourself be curious, rather than critical, in the process. Even if we create something that is not exactly tasty and delicious, it is an opportunity for learning, reflecting, and practicing being gentle with ourselves for this low stakes activity and creative exploration. And if it does come out tasty, well, then you’ve got your own recipe that no one has made before, but you!

3. Wander a park or the city streets without a set route, go with where your feet lead you

Enter a park or a neighborhood without a plan or destination. Let your feet, body, and mind wander and take you on different paths and direction, maybe one you haven’t tried before. Stay open, curious, and intrigued by what pulls you in certain directions or on certain paths, and if you change your mind or direction after choosing it, remind yourself that is okay too.

4. Choose a show, movie, or book not because it is a best seller, or a recommendation, but because it looks interesting to you.

It contains topics and themes that excite you, or inspire curiosity-even if it is not popular.

5. Suggest an activity, restaurant, or event that you want to do or go to next time you are making plans with friends or family.

This might be hard if you tend to go with what someone else wants other chooses, but practicing this is the only way to not only build confidence in our own choices, but let someone else know what they are to. If this feels uncomfortable, remind yourself that discomfort is not a sign we made a wrong choice, but a sign we are breaking patterns!

Other Tips

-Observe and pay attention to how we know what we want and choices we make during low stakes, and day to day decisions. For example, how do we know what we want to eat for breakfast or what clothes we want to wear? Is it a gut feeling? A craving? A body sensation? An image that pops into our mind? When we start to notice the cues our bodies offer us during these daily decisions, we may become more skilled at noticing and listening to our intuition and body wisdom when we face bigger life decisions and choices.

-Notice when you are making a decision out of fear, rather than what you want. If a decision is made out of fear (of failure, disappointment, expectations), it is probably not truly what you want

-Make lists of what we don’t want-and then do the opposite!

A clear path awaits!