As a human and a recovering therapist, I am keenly aware that the words “I want to” and “I don’t want to” carry a tremendous amount of meaning. I’m intimately familiar with the idea of teaching my clients to push beyond the “I don’t want” to achieve the results they desire. A leaner body, a new partner, more financial success.

But I’m also close friends with the notion “Don’t do it, unless you want to”. This concept is a bit closer to discovering our authentic self, but I now I am entirely confused.

Do! But only if you want to! Be careful pushing towards your goals blindly because you risk wasting time on building a false life! But push you must, or else you remain stagnant! My head is spinning, and I stand listless. I’m recognizing an interesting form of resistance within: If you override your “I don’t want to”, you end up with a false life that isn’t yours. You’ve done this for years. Don’t do it again.

Boom. There it is. And I’m paralyzed.

I hear another subtle voice behind this loud one: “But if you want a new life, new habits, knew anything – you HAVE to create consistently, even when you don’t want to”.

Ah!

Create consistently.

And what are we creating, exactly?

Pause.

So, maybe, the key here is to ensure first that your “goals” are selected by YOU, in fact, rather than by the programs that are running in your brain from your mother, father, grandmother, and the society around us.

Maybe the answer is to move carefully in the direction of your passions, your dreams, what makes your heart sing first, and then, and only then – once you inevitably collect enough puzzle pieces of the True You- only then do you create a discipline around that.

A discipline around watching birds, sailing the seas, a discipline around filming, writing, painting, singing. Not useful, not what looks good, not what will get you praise. Just creating for the sake of creating.

God only rested one day. The other days he created, created, created. He played and looked and said “This was good”, then created some more.

Now is your turn.