Don't Let Them Tell You What To Want
“I need to get paid well at a job. I need a degree to get paid well. My parents and friends will be so impressed when I get that job. They need to accept me before I can do the work I want to do. I need to have these objects and achieve these things before I can consider myself successful. I need to be successful before I can be happy…”
How did you end up thinking like this?
Because from the very beginning, you were tossed onto the hamster-wheel of society and told what thoughts to run through your brain, what was good, what was bad, and what you must and must not do.
You learned by example what a normal life looked like, and were told that your life would look very similar.
You learned the virtues of “working for a living,” “success,” and, if you were good, the eventual promise of “retirement.”
They never told you what you were trading in exchange…
Stop for a moment.
Write down what you think success looks like. Now… who told you that this is what success and happiness looks like?
Ask yourself this question. It’s one of the first steps to waking up, and deciding what you truly want in your life. Or rather… what you truly don’t want.
You will find one of two things.
You know exactly what you want and are on your way to creating it.
What you think you want was planted there by your upbringing, culture and conditioning until your conscious mind believed it.
Doesn’t matter if the implanted vision is just you wanting to make your parents happy or Gary Vaenerchuck-flavored glory. It didn’t come from you. And living someone else’s dream will make you miserable.
“I work 18 hrs a day including weekends and make millions a month and I want to own the Mets and if you don’t hustle like me you’re a loser!”
Your subconscious knows that you are lying to it. And it will tell you by making you feel a little dirty every time you tell it, “I need this before I can be happy.”
The longer you’ve been telling yourself this, the deeper that lie is entrenched in your being, the quieter your true inner voice may be. The deeper you’ve allowed it to be buried, the harder it is to hear.
Until you look at a picture of a car and actually think, “That is what success looks like.”
Until you look at a picture of a model in a business suit, made-up, filtered, and edited and think, “That is what success looks like.”
A number on a piece of paper or digital screen. “That is what success looks like.”
And you believe it.
It's as if society wants to force you to strive for this type of success (rather than simply encouraging you to make choices that help you thrive), while at the same time making it hard for you to achieve it.
This is the hamster-wheel we get stuck on.
The part of you that’s real, the true You, is crying. You never asked it what it wanted. You let someone else tell you to hush, you’re wrong, this is what you should think when you see this. This is what you should feel when this happens. You should feel good when you get X. If you don’t feel good when you have it, there’s something wrong with you.
If you feel good without it, the feeling can only be temporary, because you have to get back to work to get success. You have to have this version of success to be happy.
You can barely hear the part of you that’s real.
We are nearly unlimited beings, made from the same fundamental stuff as stars, our bodies have their own magnetic/energetic frequencies that interact with the world around us, we can make anything we set our ingenuity and persistence to, we can create any circumstance or object we desire.
We can do anything we want with the tools we have. If we don’t have a tool we can make our own.
We are freedom embodied. All else is construct.
And we actually think that someone else can tell us what to want? What to feel? What to do with the time in our lives that is OURS and only ours?
Even children know that this isn’t true.
So how do we break free from this mess?
Understand that EVERYTHING ANYBODY EVER TOLD OR IMPLIED THAT YOU SHOULD WANT has nothing to do with you and everything to do with what is going on inside of them. What’s going on in your friend? In your mother? In society? You can tell by what they are telling you to do. You’ll never learn anything about yourself from them.
Take control and understand that you are responsible for what you want, think, feel, and do. Nobody else can be responsible for you. We’re infinite beings with limited time. Are you going to let someone else decide those things for you?
It’s convenient to allow outside influences to decide our choices for us. It’s easy to just go with what’s considered “right” or “correct” or “virtuous.”
And so it’s convenient to be unhappy.
Are you going to allow convenience to dictate what you do with your limited time? Are you going to allow convenience to keep you from being happy?
Or are you going to shut out the noise, close the door, turn off the screen, uncover that smothered voice, the one that loves you, the one that is really you, and ask it—ask yourself—who am I really? And what do I really want?
Do this.
Take a pen and paper. And write what your ideal day looks like. Then your ideal week. That’s it. ONLY write what you feel you need for your wellbeing.
Now… how does thinking about that lifestyle make you feel?
How do you feel about it compared with what you thought you “should” want?
How do you feel about it compared with how you live now?
What changes would it require to live the way you envisioned in your ideal?
Ask yourself these questions, seriously. If you want to take this to the next level, write what the steps would be to achieve that lifestyle.
Want to take it all the way? Actually do the first step. And see where it takes you.
If you feel anxious about trying for the life that makes you happy, that is completely yours…
Ask yourself: Is it harder to take control and create the life you need to thrive? Or is it harder to continue to serve someone else’s dream?
Then remind yourself of this: You own your life. You own your time. Even if you are renting it to someone else at the moment.
As the owner of your time, you are responsible for it.
You own your time.
You own your life.
You own your happiness.
You own your choice.
So choose.
I always think that most of the successful people do not have proper education and profession. It is not coincidence that they have a different path from others.
I do not underestimate educated people with great professions.
However, when you let system teach you some guidelines, you have hard time to go out of that circle and make a spectacular change in the community and business world.
On the other hand, successful people deny system's command and resist to make something else. They hear what system tells, but they do not care.
They do exactly what they want to do, and result is success.
Great post motivating and encouraging.
Agreed @societyengineer. You and I both know people who have trouble un-learning the caged-in thought patterns they were conditioned with.
And we probably are both familiar with the rebels ;)
Here's to them.
I found myself in the writing. Excellent one :)
Here is actually a good quote from Gary: