Читать книгу The Most Important Question - Peep Vain - Страница 14

So what happens if “What do you really want?” remains unanswered?

Then you are more vulnerable to the influence of others and you allow them to passively or directly make your choices for you and also control your time. This can mean that you live a life that doesn’t really satisfy you and that you do things you’d really prefer not to do. You are then a prisoner of other people’s influence.

You become even more the prisoner of your past. I am mostly talking about the poor choices you have made in the past that have brought you to where you are now. If you don’t ask yourself time and again what you really want, then you will deprive yourself of an opportunity to reevaluate some past choices. And you stay prisoner to “past programming” that neither serves nor satisfies you.

And you will make more and more choices for the wrong reasons. You end up getting what you thought you wanted, but you feel empty. You could quietly ask yourself: “Is this thing really it? Is this what I really wanted?” Chasing the approval of others (which we thought we wanted), we miss out on love (which we really wanted). Chasing status may not give you the inner satisfaction that you really want.

And then really strange things start to happen. You start to feel that more and more the things you do are in the “have to” category. You feel like you are falling into a trap that you yourself have somehow set up. Your choices narrow. You start to feel that control is slipping away. You quietly start to accept that some of your past dreams will never come true. To really paint the whole thing in dark colors, you even feel that future has nothing good in store for you. And you give up and “start waiting for death to relieve you,” while still being a good person and doing all the mundane things other good people expect from a good person like you. These are the things that, when all put together, many people call life.

I very much hope that these dark scenarios are not familiar to you. But if they are, then don’t take it badly. Welcome to the club. Noticing the problem and acknowledging its existence is already half the solution.

Sooner or later it happens to all of us when life, without asking our permission, not so gently forces us to make a fast decision or even makes one for us. Like when you get fired. Or when you finally pass a threshold of being sick and tired of something and take a radical step, like abruptly ending a relationship. And even though you know that every bad thing ultimately turns into something good, it is still a poor consolation. There is a better way that takes less time, less trial and error and involves less pain.

That’s what this book is about. This book is about how to best understand what it is you really want. And how to get what you really want. And how to honestly enjoy it.

This book essentially asks you how your life would be if everything was just like you wanted. This book also asks what you can do today or tomorrow to work toward this change, and how to feel good about the things that are already good.

When you know what you want, then you are able to make better choices. You can more easily figure out what is most important for you and what is not. Then you can go about your everyday work and activities with confidence (and a lesser feeling of “have to”). Then you can compare your own progress with your plan and feel good that things are moving in the right direction at a good enough pace. And even when progress is poor, you can change something to get yourself back on track. Only when you have a target and when you keep your eyes open will you have a real shot at hitting the target.