One question to ask yourself about what you actually want

Why so many of our desires aren’t actually ours

One of the most important lessons I learnt during my self-growth journey is this: mostly, we want the things we want because of how we think they will make us feel.

Whether we want to buy a house, get married, move to bali or write and publish a book, the desires often stem from believing these things will make us feel ‘better’, in way or another. But the key distinction is why it will make us feel ‘better’. Does it make us feel better because it genuinely lights us up, or because it’ll make us feel more worthy and validated?

The Worthiness Wound

If you grew up placing a lot of value on external validation and how people see you, then chances are, some of your desires might come from that place. And of course, it’s totally fine to want validation, because let’s be real, all of us need it sometimes – I know that I do. And it does feel good to be acknowledged for what we’ve done.

But when all of our validation comes from external factors, it’s so easy to lose touch with ourselves and our authentic desires. As a person who used to really care about external validation – there was one particular question that changed everything for me and it was this:

If no one was looking, would you still do the thing?