The Answer to How is “What”

There’s nothing wrong with the question, “How?”  So it’s not that “How do I become more effective,” for example, is an inherently bad question.  It’s that we keep asking the question “How?” as if we don’t already know how to create what we want, but we do.  How do I know this?  We created what we’ve got.  And at one time, what we’ve got was what we wanted. 

Right now, your life is an outcome.  You have the job you have, the relationships you have, the amount of money you have, and so on.  But that’s not all there is to the outcome of your life, right?  There are also the unintended consequences of what you created.  You worked hard to get that promotion and now that you’re the boss, you’re forced to deal with issues that you didn’t bargain for and couldn’t have imagined.  Plus, with your new raise, you finally bought a house, but now you are stuck in that promotion you no longer want even though there’s another great opportunity out there but the salary for that opportunity won’t allow you to make the mortgage payment.  Consequence after consequence of the choices we make in our lives just seem to pile on, and our lives are spent in one form or another trying to survive those consequences.  We’re so quick to identify what’s wrong that needs fixing, but seem to become tongue-tied if someone looks us in the eye and asks, “What do you want?  What do you really want in your life?”

Why is that?  Here’s my answer: we’ve come to believe that we don’t know how to create what we want.  There’s this subtle conversation in the background of our minds humming along saying something like, “There must be something wrong with me.  If there weren’t something wrong with me, I wouldn’t have this life.  I should have known not to take this job or marry this person or buy this house or have kids.  I should have known, something is wrong with me, and I’m not to be trusted.”  So when that person looks us in the eye and asks us that dreaded question, “What do you really want?” it’s very likely that we don’t know because we’ve spent so much of our time and energy just trying to survive our lives with very little time devoted to really thinking about what we want.  Or we do know what we want, but are too afraid to say because after all, we’re not to be trusted with our lives. 

The thing we seem to forget is that we wanted the job, we wanted the house, and we wanted the relationship, AND we got those things.  We created those things in our lives.  Sure, we didn’t want the unintended consequences of what we’ve created, but rather than just create what we want from where we are; we beat ourselves up for not being able to predict the future.  Guess what?  There are almost always unintended consequences.  There’s always something that comes out of what we create that we weren’t anticipating and/or didn’t want. Instead of just including unintended consequences as part of the result – part of the creative process of life – we resist them.  We’ve made these consequences mean that we don’t know how to create, and so, we live stuck with what we don’t want; instead of joyously creating what’s next.  And if that doesn’t sound like much of a choice to you, if the thought of creating what’s next for you seems more a burden than a joy, then all that means is you’re experiencing the impact of the cultural story we’ve inherited around creating our lives.  You’re listening to that voice saying something is wrong with you, and “Oh by the way, all one has to do to know that something is wrong with me is look at my life.”

What if nothing is wrong with you?  What would the implications be of that conclusion on how you live your life?  What would you stop doing today that you only do because you live like something is wrong with you?  What would you start doing today that you’re not doing because you’re certain something is wrong with you?  What things have you been putting off just waiting for the day that you’re fixed?

What if you know how to create what you want?  What beliefs about yourself and about life would just fall away if you could really get that you know how to create what you want in life?  

And that’s really the point, there’s a world of thought that lives on in your thinking consistent with the beliefs, “There’s something wrong with me and I don’t know how to create what I want.”  There’s a world of concern that naturally arises with those beliefs and that world of concern gives the life you lead moment to moment.  This is not some abstract theory.  Look at your life and examine how many things you do day-to-day that result from the fact that you’re sure something is wrong with you and you don’t know how to create what you want in your life.  The ironic twist is this all results not because you don’t know how to create; it results because what you’re creating is the world of “there’s something wrong with me and I don’t know how to create what I want.”  

So I ask again, a question I’ve asked many times before (and will continue to ask).

I’m looking you right in the eye.

“What do you want to create?”

Would love to hear from you.