What Do You Actually Want?

But keep asking why and sometimes something interesting happens.

They don't really know.

Maybe your parents thought being a doctor was success.

Maybe everyone around you is building businesses.

Maybe your friends started making more money than you.

Maybe somebody you follow on Instagram has the house.

Maybe your industry decided that becoming CEO was the top of the mountain.

Maybe you set the goal when you were 25 and you're now 45.

And you've never really stopped to ask whether the person you are today still wants what the person you were then decided to chase.

That's quite a thought.

You can spend twenty years successfully climbing a mountain only to discover you don't particularly want to be standing on top of it.

If you tell me: “I want £10 million.”

Fine. But why?

Freedom. Okay. What does freedom mean?

Control over my time. Fine. What would you do with the time?

Spend more time with my children. Travel. Choose the projects I work on. Not answer to anybody.

Now we're getting somewhere.

Because perhaps you don't actually want £10 million.

Perhaps you want Tuesday afternoon.

And maybe Tuesday afternoon doesn't cost £10 million.

Here's something else I've started thinking about.

Imagine you get exactly what you say you want. But nobody knows.

You can't post it. Nobody congratulates you. Nobody is impressed. Your friends aren't jealous. Your parents don't finally tell you they're proud of you. Nobody on LinkedIn knows you've done it.

Would you still want it?

Hopefully the answer is yes.

But perhaps it isn't. That's interesting too.

Because we're all influenced by other people. Of course we are.

The problem starts when we spend our lives trying to win a competition we didn't consciously enter.

Ask somebody what matters most and you'll often hear: family, health, friends, freedom, doing something meaningful.

Fine. Now show me your calendar.

That's where things get uncomfortable.

If your family is the most important thing in your life but they get whatever time is left after work, that's worth noticing.

If your health matters but you never find three hours in a week to look after it, that's worth noticing.

If you say you desperately want to start a business but you've spent twelve months talking about it and no Saturday morning doing anything about it, that's worth noticing too.

I'm not saying your calendar is always right. People have responsibilities. Bills need paying. Children need looking after. Life isn't a blank sheet of paper.

But there can be a big difference between what we say matters and what our behaviour says matters.

I want this exercise to look at both.

This may be the bit nobody particularly wants to hear.

You can't have everything. At least not all at once.

You may want to build an enormous company. You may also want complete freedom.

You may want to travel constantly. You may also want deep roots.

You may want extraordinary financial success. You may also want to be home every evening.

Perhaps you can find clever ways to combine some of these. But eventually life contains trade-offs.

Every serious yes is also a no to something else.

So I'm less interested in a list of everything you want.

I'm interested in: what matters enough to choose? And: what aren't you prepared to sacrifice to get it?

We spend a lot of time imagining the big moments. The exit. The wedding. The promotion. The new house. The holiday. The award. The day you finally make it.

But those aren't most of your life.

Most of your life is a Tuesday.

You wake up. You have breakfast. You go somewhere. You spend time with certain people. You do some work. You come home. You eat. You think. You sleep. Then you do it again.

So I don't just want to know what your dream life looks like.

I want to know what an ordinary Tuesday looks like in a life you'd actually enjoy living.

That might tell us considerably more.

There's one other possibility.

Maybe you're not confused. Maybe you know exactly what you want. You just don't particularly like what admitting it would mean.

Maybe you'd have to leave something. Start something. Stop something. Earn less. Disappoint somebody. Move. Stay. Say no. Accept that something you've spent years pursuing isn't important anymore.

Sometimes “I don't know what I want” is true.

Sometimes it's safer than saying: “I think I know what I want, but I'm frightened of what it might cost.”

We should find out which one it is.

We're not trying to design a perfect life. I don't believe one exists.

We're trying to get closer to understanding: what you genuinely want, what you think you're supposed to want, what you've probably outgrown, what enough might look like, who you want around you, what role work should actually play, what money is actually for, what you're willing to sacrifice, what you're absolutely not willing to sacrifice and what you may already know but be avoiding.

And then we'll look at several different futures rather than pretending there is only one right answer.