How Do I Know What I Really Want?

I’ve always found it fascinating that one of the simplest questions we can ask ourselves can also be one of the hardest to answer.

What do I actually want?

Not what would be sensible. Not what would make everybody around me comfortable. Not what I should want at this stage of my life, or what makes the most financial sense, or what would look impressive when I explain it to someone else.

What do I want?

As a toddler I would have answered that question very quickly - teacher. When we’re young, our dreams are not edited and influenced by the world around us. We simply wanted to do something just because it felt good doing. We want to travel somewhere because we saw a photograph and it looked magical. We want to paint because we love the feeling of colour on paper. We want to dance because a song comes on and our body wants to move. We decide we're going to live on an island one day without needing to produce a spreadsheet explaining how we intend to make that happen.

Then we grow up and wanting becomes considerably more complicated.

We learn to consider consequences. We become responsible for other people. We have mortgages, children, careers, businesses, ageing parents, relationships and bank accounts. We become very good at understanding what everyone around us needs and remarkably efficient at organising our lives around those needs.

Somewhere along the way, many of us also learn that wanting too much is slightly dangerous. Be grateful for what you have. Don't be selfish. Don't throw away something good because you think the grass might be greener. Be realistic. Be responsible.

None of those messages are inherently wrong, but after hearing them for long enough, it can become difficult to tell where responsibility ends and self-abandonment begins.

I see this so often in conversations with women.

Ask her what her children need and she'll answer immediately. Ask her what needs to happen in the business this quarter and she'll probably have a plan. Ask her what her partner needs, what the family needs, what needs fixing around the house or what everybody is doing over Christmas and she'll have fourteen tabs open in her brain before you've finished the question.

Then ask her what she wants the next few years of her life to look like and suddenly there's silence.

I don't know.

I don't think that means we don't know ourselves.

I think sometimes we've simply become so accustomed to filtering our desires through practicality that we've forgotten how to hear them before they're edited.

We ask “Can I?” before we've even allowed ourselves to ask “Do I want to?”

And those are two completely different questions.

I’ve been thinking about this because I believe we place enormous pressure on ourselves to have some grand vision for our lives. We're told to know our purpose, find our passion, create the vision board and write down exactly where we see ourselves in five years.

I've taught versions of those exercises myself.

But I also think there are seasons when asking yourself what you want your entire life to look like is simply too big a question.

Sometimes you need to start much smaller.

What are you curious about?

What have you caught yourself thinking about lately?

What conversation makes you lean forward instead of checking your phone?

When did you last completely lose track of time?

What have you been saying “I'd love to do that one day” about for the last five years?

I don't think our desires arrive carrying a giant sign saying THIS IS YOUR NEXT CHAPTER.

Often they're tiny.

A place you keep wanting to visit. A class you keep looking at. A business idea scribbled into the back of a notebook. A woman you meet whose life makes something inside you stir. A sudden desire to learn to paint, live somewhere different, work less, start again, spend more time outdoors or do something completely impractical simply because it sounds like fun.

We dismiss those things because they don't look important enough.

But perhaps curiosity is one of the ways we find our way back to ourselves.

The strange thing about trying to figure out what you want is that sitting alone thinking about it isn't always particularly helpful. Your mind can only work with what it already knows. It reaches into the same filing cabinet of experiences, beliefs and possibilities and keeps rearranging the contents.

Sometimes you need to give yourself something new to respond to.

You need to go somewhere you've never been.

Talk to someone whose life looks nothing like yours.

Make something with your hands.

Try something you're terrible at.

Spend an afternoon without being productive.

Stand somewhere so beautiful that you forget whatever problem you were trying to solve.

Experience yourself outside the environment in which you've become so accustomed to being you.

I think that's one of the reasons travel has always changed me.

Whenever I step outside my normal environment, I notice different parts of myself. I'm not surrounded by the same routines, the same responsibilities or all the little cues that tell me who I'm supposed to be that day. There's space to become curious again.

And perhaps that is why adventure matters so much, particularly as we get older.

Not because we need to run away from our lives, but because sometimes we need to encounter ourselves somewhere new.

I think about the women who will be joining me in Africa this October and I have absolutely no expectation that everyone is going to arrive knowing what she wants from the next chapter of her life.

Quite frankly, I hope some don't.

Because what a wonderful place to not know.

To wake up in the African bush and watch the sun rise over a landscape you've never seen before. To sit in an art class and discover that you love painting even though your elephant looks suspiciously like a large grey potato. To have a conversation over dinner with a woman you didn't know a week earlier who says something that changes the way you've been looking at your own life. To move your body, walk through nature, laugh until your stomach hurts, sit quietly, try something new and remember what it feels like to experience your life rather than constantly analyse it.

Maybe somewhere amongst all of that, an answer appears.

But maybe it doesn't.

Maybe you simply return home a little more curious about yourself than you were when you left.

I think we've become so obsessed with clarity that we underestimate curiosity.

Clarity wants an answer.

Curiosity is willing to explore.

And if you're standing at a point in your life where you genuinely don't know what you want anymore, perhaps you don't need to force yourself to figure it out.

Start noticing what makes you lean forward.

Notice what gives you energy.

Notice what you keep coming back to when nobody is telling you what you should want.

Follow those tiny threads without demanding that you know where they're leading.

Because I don't think we always decide what we want next.

Sometimes we discover it.

With love,

Alka xxxx

What If You Could Spend Eight Days With Women Asking the Same Question: “What Do I Want for My Next Chapter?”

The beautiful thing about not knowing exactly what you want next is that you don't have to figure it out alone.

Imagine stepping away from everyday life for eight days and surrounding yourself with a small group of women who are asking themselves the same question. Women at different stages of life, with different stories and different dreams, but all giving themselves the time and space to consider “What do I want my next chapter to look and feel like?”

That is what I want The Shift Safari Retreat to be.

A week of extraordinary safari adventures, yoga, creativity, nature, laughter, beautiful conversations and thoughtfully guided workshops, where we get to explore that question together—not with the pressure to have everything figured out by the time we leave, but with the freedom to imagine what else might be possible.

If you'd love to be part of that conversation this October, download The Shift Safari Retreat brochure and come meet us in Africa.