Do You Know What You Truly Want? Be Honest

[Super]

I’m not talking about the "cliché" desires society might impose on you, like becoming a businessperson, having a perfect body, buying a house, or starting a family. If these goals genuinely ignite your passion, that's great. But what if deep down, you're yearning for something else entirely? If you've forgotten what your soul truly desires, my experiences might be of use to you.

Realizing I Didn’t Know What I Wanted

I never really asked myself this question. I always seemed to want something—food, sleep, finishing a project quickly, going to the sea, buying a better car and a nice house, a washer-dryer, earning lots of money so my family wouldn't need anything. My list of wants was endless!

So, when people told me I wasn’t proactive or didn’t know what I wanted, it really hit me hard. I considered myself an entrepreneur, full of initiative, always ahead, coming up with where to go and why. But, to be honest (and this is painful to admit), the results were disappointing. Not disastrous—life went on, money was made, my family was provided for—but I felt out of place, like I was living in a box, doing things out of necessity rather than desire. Yet, I didn’t realize this at the time and defended my position.

The Turning Point

Around the age of 30, I started to ponder these thoughts. It’s a milestone when you think you should have achieved something significant. But as the date approached, everything seemed different from what I had imagined. What did I actually want, and why? It's easier to brush off these thoughts until you hit a dead end. Sometimes it takes reaching a breaking point to realize the need for change.

I had been seeing a psychologist to deal with my feelings and self-reflection. These sessions were meant to help me talk through my sadness and overthinking, and get back into my work rhythm. After one such session, I shared my depressing thoughts with a colleague. I told him I was building my life not based on my desires but on the needs of my family, clients, the opinions of loved ones, and rational thinking. My colleague asked me, “What are you going to do about it?” This question caught me off guard. I wasn’t ready to answer and said, “Nothing,” which was true.

“Why?” he asked.

“Because I’m afraid of ruining everything I’ve built. If I do what I want, I’ll break everything and quarrel with everyone.”

Acceptance and Letting Go

This conversation impacted me more than the therapy session. There, I was just thinking out loud; here, I admitted something to myself. After such a realization, it’s hard to do nothing. I was already feeling down, and this sent me into a tailspin. But interestingly, I didn’t stay in this paralyzed state for long. There was a deep relief in this realization, and I decided to let go.

Decision #1: Relax and Allow Everything to Fall Apart

I allowed things to fall apart rather than actively destroying them. If something fell away, it was meant to be. I would just observe. Initially, this happened in a state of apathy; I wasn’t consciously admitting anything to myself. I was searching for what I wanted but couldn’t find a response. Now, I would say I wasn’t hearing my inner voice.

Decision #2: Allow Myself to Do Nothing

Admitting to my apathy also helped me relax and stop the constant busyness and overthinking. I gave myself permission to just be.

For the next month and a half, I slept a lot, did nothing new, and worked minimally. I lived like a vegetable, but I enjoyed not worrying about anything. My work progressed smoothly; I set a goal to work 2-3 hours a day since I needed money for food. This regime turned out to be productive. I wasn’t tired and worked quickly. I stopped worrying if clients would leave and started speaking my mind honestly. 

This detached state made interactions easier and helped prioritize properly. I could easily tell a client if they were wrong and suggest they find another contractor if necessary. I was ready for everything to collapse, to lose money—it didn’t matter. This approach brought firmness to my decisions, not subservience.

Discovering True Desires

In my free time, I experimented. I walked alone, met old friends, and watched automotive videos on YouTube. I found joy in videos where people tinkered with cars, restored them, and drove them through forests. I couldn’t imagine myself doing it—it seemed irrational and even foolish. But there was something magical and heartfelt about it. So I thought, why not? I found a way, planned everything, earned the resources (without borrowing), and bought an old Jeep. It was fulfilling and still energizes me. This irrational but rewarding decision led to:

Decision #3: Allow Myself to Act Irrationally

Even if no one supports you and society or logic says otherwise, allow yourself to act on what feels right. Often, we reject our genuine desires in favor of practicality and external opinions. For instance, I once chose practical gray sneakers over the blue ones I loved because they matched more clothes. I never wore them—they just sat on the shelf.

There are many such examples in my life—taking on projects for money, meeting people I didn’t like. These decisions always backfired. If you want something that others consider foolish, remember they don’t know what’s best for you. It can inspire and energize you. I’m not advocating wasting resources; I carefully planned my purchase and knew what I wanted to do with it.

Giving Yourself Time

The experiences I described taught me valuable lessons, but it’s too early to say my life has changed completely. The detached state helps me live more fully, hear myself, and move in the desired direction. But I still sometimes revert to old habits, rush through work, and do unnecessary things. Recognizing what I don’t want has become clearer as I think more about what I do want. This led to:

Decision #4: Give Yourself Time

Rushing causes me to lose control and react automatically. Without haste, I can maintain calm, analyze situations, catch reactions, and make different decisions. Many moments in life pressure you to hurry, but I’ve decided to let things fall apart, so I have time to think. This doesn’t mean selfishly delaying work; it means avoiding automatic decisions based on others’ opinions.

Overcoming External Motivation

Continuing to work with my psychologist, I recalled past struggles with motivation. Anger from my tough upbringing motivated me to work hard and escape that environment. But once I achieved my goals, I faced apathy. The psychologist told me that anger had fueled me, and I needed new motivation. I didn’t listen and dealt with it differently.

I took on more projects than my agency could handle, missed deadlines, and dealt with unhappy clients. This tension created a sense of drive. Now, I understand I was creating a motivational environment. I lived like this for a while, and when I sorted things out, I felt uncomfortable and sought more problems. 

Pressure from clients kept me on my toes. If I eased off, I turned to other projects where clients were more demanding. Understanding how external motivation drives people led me to:

Decision #5: Make Decisions Independently

I realized I often relied on others’ opinions instead of my own judgment. Seeking advice from experienced people and partners is good, but it’s crucial to analyze deeply. I used to think, “This person is smarter, I’ll do as they say.” This approach shaped my life but removed my responsibility. Like parents making decisions for you, I relied on others’ wisdom. Now, I’ll make decisions myself, determine what to do and how independently.

Embracing Loneliness

Getting rid of external influences created a sense of loneliness. Clients no longer pressured me; I tried to catch external motivation. I rented a personal office near home. It was a deliberate choice; my previous workspace was home, noisy and distracting. The first week alone was tough, with emotional ups and downs. I couldn’t sit still, wanted to leave, and grabbed tasks only to abandon them. Social media was a frequent distraction.

In my next therapy session, I realized this new environment required new tools, customized for me. This phase was about building supportive structures for comfortable existence.

Do I Know What I Truly Want Now?

Yes and no. The process dismantled a whole system of values and habits, reliant on the external world. What remains is a sense of intuition, making better choices in the moment. This could lead to a path aligned with your true desires. But a more complete system of values and goals is needed for full progress. Answering "what do I want?" in different life areas and forming a clear path supported by habits is essential.

Reflection

A year after making these decisions, I realize maintaining this state requires effort. Taking ready-made solutions is easier, while forming your ideas is hard. You need to study more, gather information, and analyze deeply. Breaking old habits requires creating new supports, or you quickly revert. Having an external perspective, like a psychologist or mentor, is crucial but shouldn’t be overly relied on. Accepting responsibility for decisions increases. Knowing what you want doesn’t mean moving towards it easily; the path might be difficult, and you must be ready to pay the price.

Listening to yourself significantly boosts effectiveness. We often seek easy answers, but they don’t exist. Instead of a quick fix, you get tools to work with. Embrace solitude and seek mentors as tools to navigate this journey. If this resonates, I’ll write a follow-up to explore these topics further.

Final Thoughts

This journey of self-discovery and acceptance highlights the importance of listening to our inner desires rather than succumbing to

 external pressures and rationalizations. It’s a continuous process that involves breaking old habits, creating new supports, and taking responsibility for our decisions. Understanding what truly makes us happy requires time, patience, and sometimes the courage to act irrationally in the eyes of others. As we navigate this path, finding the right balance between external influences and our inner voice is crucial for genuine fulfillment and progress.

[Olga]

I’m feeling lost because I don’t have clear desires inside me. There’s no point in chasing abstract desires, so what should I do in this situation? This is precisely the kind of thing I’ve been talking about - the way we’ve lost the environment that used to shape the old version of us. In the past, people worked because of social pressure; there were expectations and goals set by society. You were pushed to get married, have kids, and find a job immediately after school. These external pressures created a structure in which we hardly even noticed our own desires; we were simply following the flow.

Take education and career paths, for example. Many of us didn’t really choose them - we just went where we were told. I never consciously dreamed of joining the army or being confined to a barracks. But these were the steps laid out for us, shaped by societal expectations. Our desires weren’t internal; they were crafted by external circumstances and social pressure. Now, that pressure has dissipated, and that’s a significant problem. Today, we are tasked with creating our own sense of purpose and meaning, which isn’t easy.

This loss of clear external motivators leaves us struggling to find internal drive. People often think that others have a natural sense of motivation, but that’s largely a myth. Our previous society had a conveyor belt of expectations that kept us moving forward, but now those demands have disappeared, even for adults. Most of us aren’t starving, and even when things get tough, we manage to get by. Yet, we still wait around for motivation, a motivation that was oversold to us, as if it’s something that just appears.

Everyone is chasing motivation, asking how they can find it or boost it. But what is motivation, really? It’s just desire. If I were to turn on the air conditioning and drop the temperature to -10 degrees, suddenly everyone would be motivated—to find warmth. Motivation often arises from a sense of discomfort or deficiency. Without external pressures like needing a job to survive or social expectations, we lack the deprivations that used to generate our desires. 

Today, there are technologies being developed to manipulate desires or behaviors, particularly in extreme contexts like criminal rehabilitation. In Scandinavia, for instance, there’s a startup exploring ways to alter criminals' brains in such a way that they might no longer need to be imprisoned. They call it the creation of “new memories,” but it’s essentially a form of brain intervention—blocking certain behaviors by altering neurological functions. Imagine a device that dampens aggression by acting on the brain's amygdala, keeping violent impulses in check.

Yet, outside of these experimental extremes, we have no such methods for the average person’s lack of motivation. Desire is born from scarcity, and without that scarcity, it’s hard to feel driven. We’re moving toward a future where work might not be a necessity, social pressure may vanish, and we won’t even have the urgency of survival pushing us forward. What happens when our basic needs are so easily met? We face a deep existential challenge: what will drive us when we don’t have to do anything?

We’re already seeing the fallout from this shift. There was a whole generation that emerged during times of rapid information overload and mind-numbing entertainment, and now many of them struggle with low motivation, an inability to focus, and a sense of aimlessness. This “informational degeneration” has created tangible problems in society, and these issues will only worsen unless addressed.

In the U.S., for instance, there’s data suggesting cognitive decline in younger generations, fueled by the endless consumption of shallow content. People are losing the ability to engage deeply or think critically. And if we don’t find ways to correct this, the impact on future generations will be severe. Imagine a world where people live longer, but fewer choose to have children, and those who do face the challenge of raising them at much older ages, lacking the energy or will to guide them effectively. Society will need to find a way to inspire action and desire among its people, or risk a future filled with individuals devoid of direction and purpose.

Final Thoughts:

We see a significant shift in how we understand motivation, desire, and societal structure. The old social contract, where external pressures guided our life paths, is crumbling, leaving us to navigate a complex world without a clear map. As technology advances and the pressures of survival lessen, the existential crisis grows: what motivates us when we don’t have to do anything?

The future might indeed be filled with unprecedented freedom, but this freedom can be paralyzing without a sense of purpose. We need to cultivate new forms of internal motivation, focusing on personal growth, community, creativity, and meaningful challenges. Encouraging self-reflection, setting personal goals, and reconnecting with deeper values are crucial steps. Society may also need to redefine success and worth beyond traditional metrics, embracing the idea that fulfillment comes not just from external achievements but from understanding and pursuing our authentic desires.

Ultimately, it’s about reclaiming our sense of agency in a world that offers both overwhelming choices and a troubling lack of direction. This is both the challenge and the opportunity of our time.