What you want vs what you want to want

[00:00:00] You are listening to the Daily Five, an experimental podcast by Aurooba, where I talk about something for five minutes. So let's get to it, shall we? So, when you're in the middle of a situation, it's really easy to see the options that are available to you and what you like or don't like about that situation.

[00:00:31] and it can be easy to know what you want in that moment, and it may reorient what you want for your whole life, sometimes you might find yourself in a situation at work that makes you think, this is what I want to do at work, but that might change when the situation at work changes. And I was thinking about how what we want is often [00:01:00] very deeply tied to the situations we're experiencing right now, to the pains that we are experiencing right now, and how we can play a role in fixing them or addressing them.

[00:01:15] But is that what you really want? You know, what you want is something that can change very dramatically, very quickly. It's a surface level feeling that may be a deep feeling? But you won't actually know until you test it. And I guess I have found myself in multiple situations over the past few years where I think, oh, this is the thing that I want.

[00:01:47] This is the thing I've been looking for. And then I'm in another situation, I'm like, but wait, maybe it's this. And I find that I am learning more, discovering more options [00:02:00] for what I can want. You know, sometimes it's a matter of not knowing enough, and when you don't know enough, you still have to collect information before you make a real decision, before you feel like you can make a real decision.

[00:02:18] But other times we might know enough, but we are affected by the situation where we're applying our knowledge and our wants can change based on how we see ourselves being effective. But that's just what we want in the moment. So how do you decide what you really want, and not just what you think you want or what you would like to want, but what you really want?

[00:02:53] I've been thinking about that a lot because it's really easy to deceive yourself about what you want to [00:03:00] want.

[00:03:03] For example, lots of people want to be writers, but very few people wanna put in the work it requires day after day after day, year after year after year to be a writer. You know, they don't necessarily have the mettle or the desire to develop the mettle to become a writer. What they really want is that end result of writing, which is becoming a famous author or something, or creating something cool that is published.

[00:03:40] So how do you figure out what you really want versus what you want to want? You can't just sit in the quiet and think, this is what I would like to do with my life, because again, our minds can deceive ourselves [us] about what we [00:04:00] want and what seems like a nice idea. The only way to really discover what it is that you want,

[00:04:08] is to try a lot of things within reason. And you know, if you're even able to, it can be hard to experiment, especially if you have bills to pay. But without experimentation, I'm not sure that it is possible to figure out what you really want, what you really want in practice, what you really want to actually do day after day after day.

[00:04:38] So that's a little bit about what I've been thinking lately. Thanks for listening. Talk to you tomorrow.