Ep 100 – How to do what you want?

Have you ever told someone “Wow! You always manage to do what you want” or spoken about someone behind their backs “Oh Shreya! Yes, she always does what she wants. Some courage she has to go solotripping in Cambodia”

You may have meant it in a good way but such things are often uttered with a tone of wonderment/astonishment. Because deep down we all want to have the courage to pursue what we truly desire.

Seldom do we do that in life. When you think about it, it’s pretty straightforward, isn’t it? You set your eyes on a goal and start taking action and steps towards making it happen.

But we rarely exercise that choice in creating our lives.

Hello and welcome to a new episode of the Own Your Everyday series. I’m your host and self-awareness coach Shwetha Sivaraman. In this episode, we will discuss what comes in the way of us doing what we genuinely want and the 5 Cs to start doing it from today.

Most of us lead lives on instruction. We do the things we must, should, and are told to do. Time passes away, and we feel resigned to accepting our fate that this is our life. But that’s not true. The power to create and design your life at will is yours to take if YOU choose to.

It’s not that straightforward, either. We need to face many obstacles along the way:

We never quite have the clarity to define what we want in life. We get stuck in fear. What if I pursue what I wish to and fail? Or look like a fool? What will others think? We lack faith in ourselves. We think, “others can do what they want. But I’m not enough to do this.”

For the longest time in my life, I never made conscious decisions. I’ve gone with the flow and majority opinion from school to college to post-graduation to placements. Only when I found myself stuck in a deep rut did I wake up to realise many things in my life were not aligned with my beliefs and values. Only then did I dust my shoulders and start making the efforts of deliberately making choices that aligned with who I was, who I wanted to be, and what makes me thrive.

Fear-driven rather than desire-led

Many of us live a life based on our fears when we should base it on our desires. When we lead lives based on fear, we imprison ourselves in a cage of our own making. Over the years, we forget that we’ve imprisoned ourselves to the narrow lives we find ourselves trapped in. That becomes our world, and we forget the world outside of it.

We stay trapped, hoping someone will rescue us when it is we who need to muster the courage to walk out of that prison.

To truly do what we want in our life, we must have

1. Clarity – know what we want out of life without the influence of society’s expectations. This means we must spend time with ourselves, understanding our preferences, likes, dislikes, what we value, and what makes this life most meaningful.

2. Conviction. It’s not enough to know what we want but also to be convinced that we can have what we want. We need to hold that belief that it’s possible to not just dream but also live out our ideals in life. Without conviction, we cannot make any move in the real world.

3. Courage. Belief is of no use if it’s not acted upon. And to pursue what matters in life, we need a tremendous amount of courage. Courage to pursue what we want at all costs. Courage to stand our ground when things are going well and things can’t get any worse. Courage to see things through – good, bad, or ugly. This is not easy to come by, and you’ll probably never know how much courage you can muster without getting your hands dirty. This doesn’t mean there’s no fear of repercussions of our choices and actions. The courage is to pursue our goals despite the fear.

4. Communication. It’s not enough that we have the clarity and know what we are doing and why. We must also articulate and speak our minds and desires to our loved ones. We are social beings at the end of the day that cannot truly thrive in isolation. We need people in our corner; we can only have people in our corner if they know our dreams and desires and are equally vested in making them happen for us.

5. Consistency. Life is not a one-time shot. You can’t just take a swing every now and then and aim to live your best life per your dreams. You need to have the consistency to pursue what you desire every day persistently without giving up. That’s where the magic lies.

So if you are like me many years ago, sleepwalking through life and believing you must/should do things, here’s your wake-up call to make choices based on your needs and wants.

The message here is not to be reckless and go YOLO in life in a way that hurts you or others around you. But a reminder is that we do not have all that much time left in our lives, and we must make it meaningful for us right here and now.

There’s this tale about a man asking Socrates how he can begin to gain wisdom. Socrates took the man to the sea and held him underwater until he gasped. He then asked the man, what did you desire most when underwater? The gasping man whispered, “Air!.” Socrates said when you desire wisdom like you craved for air underwater, you will start to gain it.

Similarly, we can obtain anything and everything we want. The question we must ask ourselves is how badly do we want it? If we are clear about what we want from our lives and desire it all earnestly, we can find our way towards it.

So there’s your everyday tip for this week, Get clear on what you want from your life, dare to back yourself up to work towards it, and never give up. It’s never easy, but I can assure you it’s worth it.

Until we meet again, this is Shwetha signing off.