How to Articulate What You Want

What do you really want? It’s a question that tends to look different depending on the light, sometimes appearing laughably straightforward, intimidatingly complex, or at times even unknowable. I find it’s most effective to hold the question lightly: treating our dreams less like the meaning of life, and more like a hypothesis or preference for what should happen next.?

The truth is pursuing our dreams is deeply meaningful, but the dreams themselves are often silly:

• When I was 13, I really wanted to kiss a girl.?
• When I was 23, I really wanted to be cool.?
• When I was 33, I really wanted a big important job.?
• Now that I’m 43, I really want to write a book people love (and beat my friend Jeff at tennis someday).?

Some of these dreams I made real, others I didn’t, some remain to be seen (I’m coming for you, Jeff). They all seem pretty silly now in retrospect, but I don’t regret pursuing them! I cared so much about them at the time, pursuing them gave my life purpose and meaning. The alternative would have been a paler shade of life, full of regret and thoughts of what might have been.

To me the real risk is not pursuing the wrong dreams, it’s forgetting our dreams because of fear. Dreams seldom feel urgent, while fears almost always do. So it’s shockingly easy to check in on your progress and find you’ve been spending all your time running from your fears instead of towards your dreams.?

So take a moment right now to name a dream or two: what do you really want??

Remember, your dreams are just your preferences for what happens next. If you find yourself struggling to name them, what are your stories about why? These stories are almost always manifestations of fear. So get to know your particular fears and how they show up! Here are a few common examples I’ve heard from clients:

• Fear of being vulnerable: “I’m actually totally fine with the status quo, thank you though.”
• Fear of getting it wrong: “I have no idea what I want or how to figure it out!”
• Fear of upsetting others: “I wouldn’t feel comfortable saying anything, it’s too much to ask.”
• Fear of failure: “My dream is impossible—or extremely unlikely, anyway. Why bother pursuing it?”
• Fear of losing control: “OK, it seems possible. But how can I make sure I get what I want?”

All of these speak to the fundamental vulnerability of admitting that you want something you may never get. For many of us, it feels safer to put our dreams on hold or—heartbreakingly!—convince ourselves we never really wanted them in the first place.?

But knowing the future in advance is one thing none of us get: is it worth abandoning your dreams for fear of not getting them??

No one gets what they want all the time, so you’ve already proven you can handle it. Dare to name what you want anyway. Here are four techniques I use with clients when they’re ready to start changing their lives—even if they’re not sure exactly how.

• The dream behind the complaint
• The big, ridiculous dream
• The meaning behind the dream
• The fuzzy dream

The dream behind the complaint

In my work with clients, I’m often asked for advice on how to figure out what they want. But no one yet has ever asked me for advice on how to complain! For better or worse, that seems to be something that nearly all of us already have plenty of experience with, we just don’t always voice the complaints out loud.?

That’s why I love the dream behind the complaint, a technique from the ORSC framework . Because every complaint implies a dream: the potential future where that complaint is resolved. So rather than focus on the complaint, focus on the resolution. What would your ideal outcome look like? How might you start moving towards it right now?

Really this technique is about tapping into your feelings as a source of inspiration. I work with plenty of people who say they’re 100% fine with the status quo, insist they have no idea how to find their path forward, or that they’re fine abandoning their dreams when they seem too hard. Yet all these people are positively bursting with emotion! And everything they’re feeling points to potential dreams.?

In the book The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership, they teach that our emotions point us towards specific lessons. Anger shows us there’s something that needs to stop. Sadness shows us there’s something that needs to be mourned and released.? Fear shows us there’s something that needs to be faced. Attraction shows us there’s something to be created or explored. Joy shows us there’s something to be appreciated. Especially in the professional world, it’s common to see emotions as inconvenient or unprofessional. But they are a rich source of data about what needs to happen next! So get curious about your complaints, no matter the emotions they stir up. What do they have to teach you about your dreams?

The big, ridiculous dream

Another important element of articulating what you want is finding the right level of specificity. There isn’t a universal answer here because it’s quite personal! For some of us, a big, ridiculous dream is really inspiring: fame, fortune, world peace, wild success however you define it. It can actually take the pressure off to know our dream is unlikely: when the odds are against us, any progress can feel meaningful. If you’ve been thinking small and making only timid moves forward, a big ridiculous dream can help open up the range of what might be possible for you.

Getting really specific about our ideal outcome can also help uncover unreasonable dreams. Sometimes we don’t realize how ridiculous our dreams sound until we say them out loud! Are you asking to control other people’s behavior or beliefs? Grasping for control is a really common expression of fear—but we can’t control other people. All we can do is ask in the best way we know how. I’ll be writing more about this in the future! But even with the most skilled ask, few of us are so convincing we can change minds on demand. So take a moment to check: is your big ridiculous dream inspiring? Or unreasonable?

The meaning behind the dream

Understandably, some of us want better odds. Maybe for you, it doesn’t feel inspiring working towards an unlikely goal—it feels pointless. For these folks, I ask them to dig deeper for the meaning behind the dream. Let’s say you did get the big, ridiculous dream: what would it mean to you? How would you feel? Often there’s a subtler, deeper dream hidden within the big, ridiculous one.?

Maybe it’s about making an impact on the world. Would that impact still be meaningful even if its scale was smaller? Maybe it’s about knowing you did your best. Would you still be proud you gave it your all even if you didn’t quite meet your goal? Maybe it’s about relationships. Do you really need to control others, or are you just dreaming of a healthy relationship with them? It’s easy to think our dreams are all about the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. But usually we have far more regret about not pursuing our dreams than not achieving them. Often it’s enough to try: and articulating that giving your all is the goal—not necessarily achieving every outcome—usually makes it far more realistic to get there.

The fuzzy dream

Then there are the people who truly feel lost. Often they have an intensely felt absence: a yearning for purpose and meaning that feels both familiar and far away. For them, I offer that dreams are supposed to be fuzzy—it’s a feature, not a bug.?

As we just discussed, big dreams are often brittle: the more ambitious and specific they are, the less likely we are to achieve them. Nothing’s more flexible than a fuzzy dream: it happily adapts as you discover more about what you want and what the world has to offer you. It can even teach you what you want! I often use the metaphor of scent: even if you don’t quite know what you want yet, sometimes you can smell it when it’s close. Maybe it’s a person who makes you feel a certain way. Or a memory of a team or project that felt so fulfilling. Or certain activities or environments that fill you with joy. Pay attention and your fuzzy dream will get sharper over time! So a fuzzy dream offers a lot of benefits: ease, flexibility, learning and discovery. Fuzzy dreams aren’t just OK: they might be the truest, most nuanced expression of our desires.

So let’s revisit that important question one more time: what do you really want? I hope your fears feel more tolerable and your dreams feel clearer. It’s a question worth revisiting weekly or daily or hourly as your dreams evolve over time with these techniques. When you feel stuck or lost, your dreams will always be there to help you find your next step forward.

Got questions? Please comment below! In the meanwhile, make sure you’re following me on LinkedIn and subscribe to the AFWYW newsletter to stay in touch. Finding meaning in this work? Please share it with your network so we can build this community, I look forward to the conversations!