What Do You Want—Really?

What Do You Want?

That has been a tough question for me.

Way harder than I often think it should be.

What do you mean, what do I want?

Obviously, I want to be happy.

To be loved.

To have financial freedom.

Work I enjoy.

Friends.

A happy family.

You know.

What most people want.

The struggle for me is that I have had many of those things—

just in different forms, at different times.

But—

and I’m not even sure how to articulate this fully,

or if I’m strange for noticing it—

Even when I had those things,

I didn’t always feel good on the inside while they were happening.

On the surface, life looked fine.

Sometimes even great.

But inside, something felt off.

A heaviness in my stomach.

A quiet longing for more.

A persistent pull that told me something wasn’t right.

Insecurity where peace and contentment should have been.

I’ve been on a journey of self-exploration, growth, and discovery for over a decade now—doing the work so I can live a life that actually feels good to be in, not just one that looks good from the outside.

I began to notice that the issue wasn’t whether I was getting what I wanted—

it was that I wasn’t paying attention to how I felt inside of it.

I was skimming the surface instead of going deeper.

Focusing on what my life looked like,

rather than what was happening inside of me as it unfolded.

For a long time, I could name the things I wanted.

What I didn’t always know how to do was listen—

to my body,

my nervous system,

the subtle signals that told me whether something was actually right for me.

Now, what I want isn’t only defined by outcomes.

It’s not just I want to be married to a man I love.

It’s how do I feel inside that life?

Who do I become there?

Do I feel at ease—or am I bracing myself?

So I’ve started refining the language from the inside out.

Now it sounds more like this:

I want to be in a supportive, loving, reciprocal, emotionally and psychologically safe partnership—one where I feel prioritized, valued, peaceful, and secure most of the time.

Love, by itself, is not enough to stay.

The way I feel inside of love matters more to me now.

(This definition is still a work in progress. I refine the language often. But hopefully you get the idea.)

So I’ll leave you with this:

What do you want?

And how do you want to feel inside of it?

What brings out those feelings in you?

And then—

what might you need to do,

let go of,

open up to,

or choose differently,

to make sure your life is filled not just with the things you want…

but with the emotions you actually want to live in?

Because the real answer to what do you want might begin with how do you want to feel.