What is it that you “Truly Desire”
There’s a show on Netflix with name “Lucifer”. It is a good drama, a funny one. I am not here to promote it but to focus on a character in it whose name is “Lucifer”. Now this character has unique capability. He can identify what is the deepest desire, true want of any human. You must be thinking by now “what kind of stupid power is this” but to be frank that is the best sort of power anyone can have. To know what they truly want.
In our previous article “Not feeling motivated enough, ask yourself this” we have seen that motivation cannot last unless you want that thing truly. Yes, that’s the harsh truth. Unless you are into something, you cannot stay motivated.
Knowing what you want is not only required to stay motivated but also needed to derive joy out of anything. Those, who engage into anything without wanting it don’t enjoy the outcomes. See the world around you, you will find lot of people who have access to good money, who have a good family, a stable job and what not. Yet, they are miserable. They don’t know what they want from life.
Once we have seen the importance of knowing what we want, the next question is “how can one find what he/she wants?”. If you go ahead and type how to find your goal, your desire, your want — you will probably find more than 100k books & blogs available on web. To me it is most depressing thing, because my lifetime is limited and i am not sure which resource to trust. Each person is explaining something that can be used to find that want. Adding to that existing data, i am sharing one simple way to identify what you truly want and reading this won’t take more than 5 minutes of your time.
First: there is no such thing as “true want”. Yes, i understand this is hard to digest. All fuss about nothing. There is nothing like “true want”. There are wants, desires and likes. Some are strong and some are weak but all are true. The best way to look at it is. You are learning, knowing and growing. Every moment your brain is making sense of the acquired data and relating it with the already existing data silos within it. With that analysis, it desires something which it believe will enhance your joy of living. All these desires are true. Some are more strong than others depending on how your brain perceives the outcome if those desires get granted.
Each desire is nothing but an influence from the data that your brain has analysed. Once you understand how your brain functions then the second thing you should know is, “the more the brain focuses on something, the stronger the desire becomes”. Opposite is also true “the less your brain gives attention to certain thought, the weaker it will be”. You happiness majorly is when your brain indicates that it is getting what it expected.
Now, when you have identified what your brain done. You can find joy by doing two things.
a) Spot the pattern on how the brain has built that desire.
b) Know your brain and enlighten it. Make it free of the desire
Talking about A) Spotting the pattern of desire formation
Irrespective of your age, your brain has picked up some data. The more your have aged, the more data it would have picked. It has picked the data consciously and unconsciously, It has associated the data with happiness, sadness, anger, joy, anxiety and other emotions. For someone who was appreciated for their looks in childhood, the brain associate good looks with joy. If the same appreciation was also present in early youth and the brain would typically feel more comfortable in anything that has to do something with beautiful looks. Similar things happen with a negative emotion. If the brain has felt disrespected due to miserable drawing skills, it would want appreciation. Thus, the desires would be to either not indulge in drawing or make a drawing that can earn appreciation. Of course, if it has already identified another skill which can earn appreciation, then it will give less attention to drawing and more to that skill.
In simple words “whatever you call as true desire is nothing but a long history of association of various experiences with various feelings and life events”.
Knowing how your brain is generating a desire is empowering. Now, you understand that desire is only an outcome of association and not something that the almighty has himself made for you. It is something that you have decided for yourself (consciously if you were aware and unconsciously if you weren't). The second thing you can do is to enlighten your brain. Enlightening your brain is not some meditative exercise but only becoming aware of how it was functioning. To enlighten it is not simple but we can try. We can try to uncomplicate life and be aware.
