What Do You Want?

Really. What do you really want that having it will make you happy?

Every day we are being told by way of advertisements what we SHOULD want. And, of course, there are people in our lives who also tell us what we should want, a better education, a better job, a bigger house, etc. Television and movies project images of people they think we should be like, what we should want. We are inundated by messages about what we should want.

But how many of us know what we really want? So few of us take time away from all the distractions to contemplate who we are and what we want.

Is that edge of anxiety you are experiencing a sign of dissatisfaction in your life? What area of your life are you least satisfied with? What is it lacking for you? No, not by someone else's standards. From your own inner senses, where is the most dissatisfaction? Is it from trying to live up to someone else's idea of what you SHOULD have or be? Is it from your bosses idea of who you must be to be successful in your job? Is it from not having all the things you see others have? What is missing that makes you feel good about you?

Where is the real you today? And what are your aspirations? Here are eleven aspirations or goals for many people as put forward in Colin Beavan's How to be Alive.

• Affiliation: to have satisfying relationships with family and friends
• Community feeling: to improve the world through activism or generosity
• Conformity: to fit in with other people
• Financial success: to be wealthy and materially successful
• Hedonism: to experience much sensual pleasure
• Image: to look attractive in terms of body and clothing
• Physical health: to feel healthy and free of illness
• Popularity: to be famous, well-known, and admired
• Safety: to ensure bodily integrity and safety
• Self-acceptance: to feel competent and authentic
• Spirituality: to search for spiritual or religious understanding

Take some time in the next day or two to decide how much of these are YOUR goals, how much would you like to invest in achieving them. Beavan's suggest using a clock face with twelve hours marked on it and you indicating how many of those hours you would want to invest in each of these goals. Try it.

And share what you learn in the comments below.