Why You Don’t Know What You Want

“Make up your mind!” Well, it’s the mind that’s doing all of that so we can’t tell it anything.

If you live in a free country, you can do pretty much anything you want as long as you’re not harming others.

This freedom and having many options often puts us in analysis paralysis. And we end up not knowing what we really want to do. Isn’t that one of the biggest paradoxes in the world?

We can be anything we want but we don’t know what we want!

I’ve been reading the book, Think on These Things by the Indian philosopher, Jiddu Krishnamurti. And I find his insights helpful for everyone who wants to examine their wants and goals in life. Krishnamurti explains:

“What does it mean to be free? Is freedom a matter of doing what happens to suit you, going where you like, thinking what you will? This you do anyhow. Merely to have independence, does that mean freedom? Many people in the world are independent, but very few are free.”

Real freedom requires self-awareness. Without it, we’ll live our lives thinking we’re free, even when we’re actually just following the herd.

We always encounter forces that try to limit our freedom. For example:

• Pursuing a career to live up to society’s expectations. Think about those who pursue medicine or law purely because of prestige and parental pressure.
• Having a limited perspective because one never left their hometown and never tried to see the world beyond.
• Being too focused on security and stability that one forgets to explore and discover new things. That’s why even if I’m a frugal person, I avoid excessive budgeting. A scarcity mindset won’t make you rich.
• Thinking one has a miserable life because one sees all these influencers on social media living glamorously.

I’ve seen too many people live on autopilot, including myself. They don’t take the time to be self-aware. And they end up doing the above.