Ep24: Prioritizing Goals, Wants & Desires, So You Can Achieve Harmony In Your Life

ASM Ep 24: Prioritizing Goals, Wants & Desires, So You Can Achieve Harmony In Your Life

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You guys welcome to today’s show. I’m recording this at the end of February, headed into March. And this is notoriously the time of year where folks are thinking about what they want to do, thinking [00:01:00] about their goals and fulfilling our goals. Okay.

Other times of the year, especially towards the end of the year or in January for instance, we have the thoughts we’re putting the plans together, but let’s just be honest. I mean, January is just not the most conducive time to be like, yes, let’s go for it. 

 In our minds, we may be thinking that, but a lot of people, including myself, have low energy during that time of the year, we’ve just come off of a high season of a lot of social activities and we just need a moment to hit pause. Gather ourselves before we can start taking action again. 

 You guys. My voice is a little bit scratchy today.. So just bear with me. I wanted to talk about the difference between our wants goals and desires. A lot of Action takers, multi-passionate folks, entrepreneurs, creatives, [00:02:00] people who are just determined to live their best life. 

We can go, go, go. And along with that, we generally have many wants, many goals, many desires. And it can be a little bit. Daunting to figure out which of your wants goals and desires you should be pursuing first. So hopefully by the end of this episode you’ll have answers to those questions and a little bit of a strategy to get crystal clear on how you can best do this with ease and flexibility.

 The first thing I want to talk about are our wants. I think that our goals and our desires really start from our wants. We usually have heard the word want before we hear the word goal, or we hear the word desire.

And so when I’m talking about this, I’m sort of thinking in my mind too, about the [00:03:00] parent child relationship and how as a child you learned the word want from a parental figure or a parent so like you’re a child and you’re reaching for something. And what is your parents say? Right. What’s wrong. What do you want? You know, tell me what you want. Oh, you want that? You want this right? 

I know for myself as a parent with my son, you know, you’re trying to figure out what a baby wants. Are you hungry? Are you wet? Do you want to play? Like, what is it that you want? And so even taking that a step further, I think, you know, as, as we’ll discuss this in the show, It’s almost like to, that’s why that’s probably how God feels, you know, I’m pretty sure of it. 

Again, these are my thoughts, my opinions, but I’m pretty sure God is like, Okay, listen. What is it that you want? Because I can give, I can provide you with [00:04:00] anything, right. I really can. What is it that you want though? Have you taken the time to really think about what you want. And whether you use, or you resonated with the word God or the word universe, your relationship with God, your relationship with the universe, the universal laws of attraction, universal laws of success, all of those things. We got to get down to what we want. 

 Identifying what we want is so, so important. And also to you, let me say this before I get started I do not think there’s anything wrong with Wants. So as I’m differentiating wants, and goals and desires I want you to know there is nothing wrong with Wants. As I described, we all have them. 

 But when I think about the difference between a want and a goal is that Wants, generally our fleeting right. You can [00:05:00] recognize your wants because they are things that are a little more surface level, it’s a little more you know, fleeting it’s, it’s more seasonal if you will. 

Wants are things that are, again, I think a little bit more surface level. It can be trendy it’s not always trendy, but I think it’s a little bit trendy and I think when we talk about Wants it’s not as grounded, maybe as a desire. But our wants do serve a really good purpose. It’s usually like the springboard too goals, right? 

So before you make a goal to buy a certain car or have a certain experience or work on your relationship with yourself and developing self-trust, before you make a goal out of, I want to learn to trust myself [00:06:00] more and make better decisions you have to want to make better decisions. You have to want these certain experiences. So, this is a perfect segue into how I like to define goals. 

 Goals can be a few different things and stay with me, stay with me I’m going to bring it all back around. But goals can be something that you decide you want. It can be things that you want because you want to please others. Or it could be a thing that you’ve been conditioned to think that you want.

 I’m going to break each one of these down. So what would it look like if you have a goal that you decide you want.

 You decided you wanted a certain kind of car. You decided you want to have a better relationship with yourself. You want to be able to trust yourself and your decisions more. You want that for yourself? You have [00:07:00] decided that. So that’s an example of you decided that that is something that you want and because you want it now, you’re, you might create a goal to work towards that in a very intentional way. 

The other way I described a goal. Was things that you want because you want to please others. 

So that could look like you may have created a goal to become a doctor or a scientist. Or a musician. Or a dancer because someone else who was probably well intentioned and who loved you kind of kept saying or showing or pointing out to you they think this will be really great for you. 

It may be because they see you have a great talent in a particular area. They may see your God given [00:08:00] gifts in a particular area. And they might be saying or they might have said, This would be really good for you and because they hold a certain statue in your life again a parent a parental type, a mentor, someone that you just highly respect and love because they hold that stature in your life you want to please them.

This can also apply to your spouse if you’re married or in a long-term relationship. Sometimes we want to do things to please our spouse, our mate. You could even do this with children. How many of you right now listening have a goal to save money, to go to Disney world. Because you want to please your children. Again, nothing is wrong with any of these scenarios. 

I just want you to be clear on why you have the particular goal, right? So those are some examples of you having a goal because you want to please someone [00:09:00] else .

And then lastly, you might have a goal that is something that you’ve been conditioned to think that you want. So this is really close to the, you want to please others, but where it’s a little bit different is you’ve been conditioned to think that you want it. Just because that has been in your environment. You know, well, everyone in my family has done X, Y, Z so I need to follow suit. That’s a conditioning.

A lot of people of color have been conditioned too have to work harder than everyone else. That’s a conditioning. That’s a thought that is based on experiences, where in that past we were made to do things that others weren’t. 

 So now that we’ve talked about Wants and goals, Let’s talk about desires. I think that desires are like Wants on steroids. Desire feels a lot stronger than just a want. Desire can [00:10:00] also feel like a calling. It’s almost something that is reaching out to you just as much as you are reaching out for it. 

Where a want is maybe a little surface level or of a moment. Desire is a deep deep, longing and desires tend to stick with you for a longer period of time. Those are the things that you find that you’re a little more o experience or create or build. 

 Desires

become like piece of the puzzle that make up the life you’re destined to have the life that is the highest version that you could possibly have. I think desires become that piece of the puzzle. 

And again, this is not about bashing, like Wants. We all have Wants, just like we all have needs maybe that’s a better way of putting it. Like everything that you [00:11:00] want is not a desire. 

So if you have multiple of these, if you’re like, okay, I got it, Sonja, I’m following you. I’m just a little confused on which of these I can really focus on. How do I decide? How do I figure out which ones to take action on first? I’m going to give you a couple of prompts that you can use. To help you do this. And it’s one of the tools that I use, when I work with my clients.

Every single client that I work with we go through this process and I’m going to tell you why, because at the onset of us talking about coaching or, deciding that we’re going to work together, I’m going to support you in fulfilling your personal development or professional goals and desires is we got to get clear about what you want. 

 I would, I would dare to say about 99% of individuals I ask. Talk to me about what you want. People cannot articulate what they really want. And I’ve been there before. Some of us [00:12:00] can more easily describe what we don’t want first. Which helps you get clear about what you do want.

 So the prompts that I’m going to share with you look like this. List out your goals that you have right now, list out the wants that you have let’s take a look at them. If you’re driving or you’re doing something where you can’t do that, make sure you come back to this.

The second prompt that I would share with you is now that you’ve listed out all of your wants use a highlighter or sort of make another column out of those ones, which of those came from within you. Which are the ones that you want because you can identify that you decided you wanted this. 

When you’re looking at that long list of all the things and all the experiences that you want, I want you to now separate sort of weed out and pick the ones where are the [00:13:00] wants that are on that list that actually came from you. 

Let’s take your top one or your top three, which of those out of the top three, do you feel like would give you the greatest sense of fulfillment and help transform your life right now. I want you to use your feelings use your body, use the information coming from your body as a as a compass sort of to answer that question because sometimes your mind and what you think. It’s not necessarily going to steer you in the right direction. 

So, which of those do you feel? 

 Just being able to identify the goals and desires that came or come from within you versus those that are external to you really does give you the clarity to know where you can begin. 

 Because your life [00:14:00] is all about you. Your life is literally here and is meant for you to experience in the fullest way possible.. It really is. God, universe is. Infinitely abundant. And so it is our duty, this is my opinion. I feel like it’s our duty. To really get clear about how each of us can individually experience this life to the fullest. And that’s going to look different for everyone. There’s no, like here’s how, here’s what it looks like. Here’s how you do it. No, we’re all individual. We all have our own paths. We all have our own lessons to learn and we all have our own rewards and transformative life-giving experiences that make our lives worth living. 

 If you’re listening to this and this has resonated with you and you [00:15:00] want to go deeper into this process with your specific goals, your specific desires so that you can take action on your personal development or professional goals in a holistic way, I want to invite you to book a call with me so that we can discuss the goals that you desire in this season of your life. 

You can find the link to book a free consultation call with me. This is just our sacred time, our quiet time, where you get to share and express what’s in your heart, what’s on your mind, in order for you to live the life you desire and the life that you have been destined for. 

Thank you guys so much for listening. if you have it already, make sure you subscribe and download this podcast. And if you’re feeling extra, extra nice, I would love for you to leave a review so that the different platforms can share this particular podcast with the world so [00:16:00] that we can continue to have greater impact and and, and. grow this sort of philosophy. 

Thank you so much for being here and I look forward to the next episode.