What You Want Matters
Being intentional in considering your needs and wants will reveal the path.
“If anyone at my funeral says 'it's what he would have wanted', I'll kick the lid off my coffin and throttle them. Or, if I've been cremated, I'll flip the lid off the urn and become a dust storm in their eyes. Only you know what you truly want. Anything else is presumption skewed through personal agendas.”
― Stewart Stafford
A recent experience got me thinking about why many of us neglect to consider what we want when making a decision.
Think about it for a moment.
How often do you consider this question when facing an important decision:

From DepositPhotos.com
Chances are you seldom do, especially when you know your decision will impact others. We skip the question because it feels self-centered. We worry focusing on our needs will create conflict or lead us to an impasse. We look to others to tell us what they think we should do because we lack confidence in our ability to make the right choice.
I wish I could say this is not something I do not know much about, but I would be lying. As a natural-born people pleaser, I always struggle with balancing my wants, needs, and desires against those of others.
So I shift to seeking the ‘right thing to do’ response, juggling the pros and cons in the context of who will be impacted and how.
And I often end up in a place where I am unsettled as best and frustrated at worst.
Why I do this (and perhaps you do too?) is a mystery to me.
Our needs, wants, and desires are perhaps the most critical consideration in every decision we make. They should not be the only consideration, but they do need to enter the picture. When they don’t we unconsciously compromise, making a personal sacrifice to satisfy others that will ultimately come back to haunt us.
Pardon me if this all sounds a bit melodramatic, but my experiences with clients have revealed the adverse impacts of ignoring the “what do you want” question. It ratchets up the internal tension. It creates personal discomfort that can only be hidden for so long. It sets the individual, the team, and often the organization up for failure when the dam ultimately breaks.
It is just not worth it.
We have the responsibility to take care of ourselves first in any situation and being clear on what we want is step one.
Today’s Action Advice
I challenge you to think about this subject a bit. To dive deep and consider how well you are tuning in to what you want when making decisions. To step back and examine what makes you feel less than fulfilled and whether it is the result of not considering what you wanted when making a decision.
We don’t need to become selfish in the way we see things, but we do need to acknowledge what we need and want at least as much as we try to figure out what others expect us to do. It is the only path to living in alignment with who we are and delivering our most significant impact, and isn’t that why we are all here?
P.S. There’s a good chance you thought of someone when you read this — someone who needs the reminder to acknowledge what they need and want when they make decisions. I hope you’ll share this post with them to help them make better decisions.