the profound art of knowing what you want—& asking for it
the first step to getting what you want is knowing what you want
The advice is everywhere: if you want something, ask for it. But beneath that simple directive is a deeper truth—most people don’t even know what they want.
We talk about ambition, clarity, goals. But many of us are walking around without a map, chasing shadows, mistaking borrowed dreams for our own. Getting what you want starts with knowing what it is. And for a lot of people, that’s the hardest part. But bridging that gap—between want and action—can change everything.
the roots of disconnection—
Imagine trying to navigate a vast, unknown wilderness without a map or compass. You move, but without direction. You search, but don’t know what you’re looking for. That’s how a lot of people live: in motion, but unmoored.
The disorientation isn’t random. It’s by design. Ads, algorithms, childhood praise, subtle shame, every well-meaning piece of advice from family—all of it pushes us toward desires we didn’t choose. Success becomes a formula. Fulfillment becomes a brand. We follow paths without ever asking if we picked the destination.
So when someone says “I don’t know what I want,” it’s not a personal failure. It’s the natural result of a system built to confuse you.
The roots of this disconnection often run deep, intertwined with the very fabric of our upbringing and societal conditioning. From an early age, many of us are taught to prioritize the needs and expectations of others over our own desires. We learn to be "good" by being selfless, by putting others first. While altruism has its merits, taken to an extreme, it can lead to a profound alienation from our own wants and needs.
This conditioning acts like a veil, obscuring our true desires from our conscious mind. Those messages accumulate. They shape our behavior, bury our instincts, distort our internal compass. We become fluent in meeting others’ needs while staying vague about our own.
And in the digital age, this machinery is industrialized. Platforms predict our wants before we even name them. Desires get preloaded into the feed, disguised as discovery. Your phone knows what you want before you do—and it has a vested interest in keeping it that way.
the work of remembering—
