{"id":8819,"date":"2026-09-03T14:16:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-03T12:16:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ivarraav.com\/uncategorized\/most-people-dont-know-what-they-want-out-of-life\/"},"modified":"2026-09-03T14:18:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-03T12:18:11","slug":"most-people-dont-know-what-they-want-out-of-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ivarraav.com\/en\/eneseareng-en\/most-people-dont-know-what-they-want-out-of-life\/","title":{"rendered":"“Most people don’t know what they want out of life.”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

My Portuguese teacher made this claim to me so that we could discuss it and improve language learning. \u201cOf course they do,\u201d was my reply. That answer came automatically, without thinking, as if out of nowhere. As I reflected on this later in my native language, I realized that, indeed, perhaps everyone always knows this, but the difficult part is distinguishing the knowledge, desires, thoughts, ideas, and goals of others from one\u2019s own. And to distinguish others\u2019 desires from your own. Perhaps the key isn\u2019t what or whether, but how to access that information. We all come into this world with an awareness (and I don\u2019t mean intellectual awareness) of our role. So, on some level, we all know what we want, but we aren\u2019t always able to describe it on an intellectual level. The conversation with the teacher continued, and she asked, intriguingly, \u201cBut when will we know what we want if you claim that we all know, but simply can\u2019t distinguish our own desires from the stories others have planted in us.\u201dIt seems to me that we\u2019ll find that out when we\u2019re able to describe what we DON\u2019T WANT. Having worked as a mentor for years, I\u2019ve noticed that people have very clear convictions and plenty of words to describe what they don\u2019t want. However, there are fewer words and less clarity when it comes to what they do want. But if there is a \u201cdon\u2019t want\u201d part, then there is also a \u201cwant\u201d part. This \u201cdon\u2019t want\u201d part brings out precisely those themes, desires, goals, aspirations, missions, and visions that others have taught me or that I have unconsciously adopted from others. And not just at work, but first and foremost, of course, during childhood\u2014in the preschool years\u2014when most of a person\u2019s views on how life works are formed as a result of observation. That is when we learn \u201chow things work.\u201d We begin to cover our true nature with layers taught to us by our observations of the outside world, and our own will becomes buried beneath those layers. I see this in the case of corporate burnout as well, where the search for oneself begins when it becomes clear that achieving the goals and objectives set by others doesn\u2019t bring the joy and sense of fulfillment I was looking for\u2014or, in other words, \u201cis no longer in line with who I am.\u201dWe all know what we want and what our role is here on Earth, but we need to remove the obstacles and layers that prevent us from seeing it. We often address the problem of \u201cI don\u2019t know what I want\u201d in a superficial way, because we assume that we have to somehow learn this desire from an external source. However, if we approach the periods when we\u2019ve gone astray with the awareness that we always possess knowledge of our desires and actions, then we\u2019ll look for it where there\u2019s a chance of finding it\u2014perhaps right where we lost it. So we don\u2019t search in the dark for something right under the lamp\u2014because it\u2019s bright and convenient to search there\u2014but rather we look where it disappeared to. The photo shows my three pets, who, for example, are very determined to go into the bedroom \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n\n

\"In<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My Portuguese teacher made this claim to me so that we could discuss it and improve language learning. \u201cOf course they do,\u201d was my reply. That answer came automatically, without thinking, as if out of nowhere. As I reflected on this later in my native language, I realized that, indeed, perhaps everyone always knows this, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-eneseareng-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ivarraav.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ivarraav.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ivarraav.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ivarraav.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ivarraav.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8819"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ivarraav.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8819\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8820,"href":"https:\/\/ivarraav.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8819\/revisions\/8820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ivarraav.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ivarraav.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ivarraav.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}