The secret of life is respecting and honoring your desires, trusting that they will lead to your best life.
Sounds simple right? It’s one of the hardest things to do. You won’t know what that phrase truly means until you go under the surface.
We grew up in a world that trains you, from the earliest age, to question what you want.
To make you afraid of your own desires.
To be skeptical of the clear plans that often bloom inside your mind which tell you, unequivocally, that they will lead to your best life.
You have a flash of a dream, a risky decision, a firm choice to implement changes in your life, and immediately your programming takes over:
It might not be what I’m meant to do.
It’s not what people in my circumstances do.
Catastrophe is assured if I follow that plan.
If I’m wrong, I will never forgive myself.
It’s not actually what I want.
It’s just a crazy thought in my mind.
Too many things could go wrong.
Right now is not the time.
Imagine 20, 30, 40, or 50 years of programming your mind in this way (building habits of doubt and mistrust in the things that you want).
Rejecting yourself becomes a way of life. You accept the belief that equally important things like stability, love, acceptance, and safety can only be found when you renounce your own desires. You convince yourself that getting everything that matters is only possible when you forget the things you want.
The deeper you bury your real self, the more the world rewards you. The more you forget who you are, the more honor and recognition you receive. Or so you think (or so you’ve been told).
What happens to a mind after years of being fed such confusion? It reaches a point where it no longer knows who it is or what it wants. It reaches a state where it must invest many years learning to trust and listen to itself once again.
Many in my life (and I too at one time), have claimed: “But I’m not even sure of what I want”. I don’t think that’s possible.
You have fantasies every day. You see them and feel them. They comfort you in rough times. You just don’t take them seriously. You would never share them out loud. You don’t think they’re yours. They come and go and you remain, believing you don’t know what you want.
The secret of life is respecting and honoring your desires, trusting that they will lead to your best life.
Does that mean living this way ends all sorrow, catastrophe, pain or loss? NO.
Going after what you want is not a path to permanent bliss. It does not immediately reward you, it never feels the way you expect it to, and it does not eliminate fear or sorrow.
The story you find is never the one you expect, but nevertheless, it IS your best life.
Why? Because when the ups and downs no longer become a judgement on your value, when defeat is no longer a reason to be ashamed or feel unworthy, when you understand that you have the power to dig yourself out of any hole you throw yourself into (gaining something valuable every single time), regret becomes a word that you no longer understand.
Regret is a feeling reserved for those who deny themselves what they want. When you go after what you want, catastrophe or no catastrophe, up down left or right, you will be happy.
And that is what all of this is about.
Andrew Gabelic is the CEO & Founder of Teledipity, a free pocket life coach with an eerie ability to send you the right self-improvement content at the right time (based on your personality and life stage). Check out what it says about you!