How to Know What You Really Want: Let Delight Point the Way

How to know what you really want begins with your body. Your true desires announce themselves as delight: a lift in the chest, a softening in the belly, a small smile you did not plan. When you ask yourself who you want to become, what you want to do and what you want to have, and you follow the answers that light you up, you find what you really want.

Most people have never been asked this question in a way that lets the real answer through. So let me ask you now, and let me show you how to listen.

What do you want, dear one?

Notice what happened just now. Did an answer leap up? Did your mind go blank? Did a list of “shoulds” march in first? Every one of those responses tells you something precious.

Why the Real Answer Hides

Wanting is the most natural thing in the world. Children want with their whole bodies. They point, they reach, they say “that one!” without a flicker of doubt.

Then life layers things on top. You learn which wants earn approval and which earn a frown. You learn to want what is practical, what is safe, what your family can understand. Over years, the borrowed wants get louder and the soul’s wants grow quiet.

Your Tiny Mind, the part of you run by ego, fear and survival, is excellent at borrowed wants. It wants the title that impresses people, the house that looks right, the plan nobody will question.

Your Giant’s Heart holds something else. It holds your soul, your delight and your mission. Your heart is 10,000 times more powerful than your mind, and it has been quietly wanting the same few things for a very long time.

So when you say “I don’t know what I want,” here is what is usually true. You know. The knowing sits under layers of other people’s voices, old disappointments and fear of wanting too much.

If you sense that fear underneath, read how to identify limiting beliefs. Those beliefs often sit right on top of your truest desires.

Your Desires Are a Map of Your Soul

My father ran NASA programs for thirty years. He taught me the holographic universe principle: every part contains the whole.

I came to see desire this way. Each true desire you carry is a fragment of the whole picture of your soul. Hold enough of them up to the light and the full image appears. Your mission, your gifts, the life you came here to live.

That is why I treat desire as sacred. Desire is a catalyst for quantum leaps. It is the soul’s way of pointing.

And delight is how you recognize which desires belong to the soul. Delight is your natural inner resonance, as unique as your thumbprint. When a desire is truly yours, it resonates. When it is borrowed, it feels heavy, flat or anxious, even if it looks good on paper.

Step D: Decide Your Dreams and Desires

The DELIGHT Roadmap is the seven-step path I teach for creating a life from delight. The first step is D: Decide Your Dreams and Desires.

Everything else rests on this step. Enlightened Epiphanies, Love and Light, Inspired Intuitive Action, Growth and Gains, Higher Focus and Awareness, Total Transformation: each one needs something to move toward. Alignment needs something to align to.

And in my teaching, Step D maps to your soul’s Mission I’mPossible. Your desires and your mission are woven together. When you get clear on what you want, you are also getting clear on why you are here. I go deeper into this connection in soul mission.

Here is a question I invite you to sit with, slowly, with your hand on your heart:

“If you knew it was safe to want it, what would you want?”

Watch what that question does in your own body. It moves past the planning mind. It goes straight to the place where the real want is waiting, and it gives it permission to speak.

Become, Do, Have: The Three Doorways

Most people start with “have.” The car, the house, the number in the bank. That doorway is beautiful, and it is only one of three.

I invite you to walk through all three, in this order.

Become

Who do you want to become? Think in qualities and states. Calm. Bold. Playful. Respected. Free. Radiant. Generous. This doorway reveals the self your soul is reaching for, and it is often the most emotional of the three.

Do

What do you want to do? Experiences, contributions, adventures, creations. Write a book. Swim in a specific ocean. Lead a team. Teach your grandchildren to paint. This doorway reveals how your soul wants to move through the world.

Have

What do you want to have? Homes, money, objects, relationships, time. Let yourself be specific and generous here. Desire for material things is holy too. Your soul lives in a body, in a material world, and it delights in beauty and comfort.

When you look across all three lists, patterns appear. The same longing shows up in different clothes. “Become free,” “do travel,” “have a business I run from anywhere.” That repeating thread is a soul desire.

A Practice to Find What You Really Want

Set aside thirty minutes. Bring paper and a pen. This practice uses your body as the compass.

1. Write freely. Make three columns: Become, Do, Have. Set a timer for ten minutes and write everything that comes, big and small, without judging. Include the wants that feel silly or too big.
2. Read each line aloud. Slowly. After each one, pause and notice your body. Lift, warmth, smile, tears? Or tightness, heaviness, a shrug?
3. Mark the delight. Put a star beside every line that produced a lift. Cross out lines that felt heavy or obligated. Those are usually borrowed.
4. Ask the safety question. Look at your starred lines and ask, “If I knew it was safe to want this fully, how big would it be?” Rewrite each one at its true size.
5. Find the thread. Look for the longing that appears in more than one column. Write it as one sentence that begins “My soul wants…”

Keep that sentence close. Read it in the morning. Notice how your choices begin to bend toward it.

Return to the practice every few months. Desires evolve as you do. Some stars fade because they were stepping stones. New ones appear because you have grown into someone who can hold them. The thread usually stays the same, and it grows richer each time you write it.

If you would like more prompts, 50 Questions to Your Unstoppable Best Self is a free companion to this practice.

When two desires seem to pull in different directions

Sometimes the practice reveals desires that look like they compete. Freedom and family. Adventure and a deep home. A quiet creative life and a big public mission.

Look closer. Usually both desires point at the same soul longing from different angles. Freedom and family can both be love expressed through time. Adventure and home can both be a longing to feel fully alive. Ask each one, “What do you give me?” and listen for the shared answer underneath. That shared answer becomes your compass, and creative ways to honor both begin to appear.

When a desire feels too big

Your Tiny Mind will shrink a big desire before you finish writing it down. It edits in real time. “A million readers” becomes “maybe a few people.” “A home by the sea” becomes “something affordable.”

Catch the edit. Write the desire at full size, then notice the flinch. The flinch shows you exactly where a limiting belief lives. That is useful information, and it is also a doorway, because the flinch softens every time you let yourself want fully and nothing bad happens.

What Happens When You Know

Clarity is creative power. When you know what you truly want, your decisions get faster, your energy stops leaking into the wrong things, and opportunities you would have missed start to stand out.

I have seen this again and again. A startup founder I sat with landed $15M in funding in under 30 days of our 1:1 sessions together. A client went from minimum wage to a six-figure business in under 6 months. Each of those results began with a desire that was named clearly and claimed fully.

This is the Law of Delight in motion. “Delight yourself fully in life and you will be given the desires of your heart.” The desire that delights you is the desire that moves toward form. My complete guide on how to manifest shows the whole path from that first clear want to its fulfillment, and how to manifest your dream life takes it into every area at once.

And if your desires feel uncomfortable to admit, if some part of you wonders whether wanting is even allowed, read is desire bad. The answer will set you free.

Questions You May Be Asking

How do I know what I really want?

Your body tells you. True desires produce a felt lift: warmth, lightness, a smile or tears. Write what you want to become, do and have, read each line aloud, and follow the ones that delight you.

What do I want in life?

Start with who you want to become, then what you want to do, then what you want to have. Look for the longing that repeats across all three. That repeating thread is usually your soul’s deepest desire.

How do I find out what I want to do in life?

Ask yourself, “If I knew it was safe to want it, what would I want?” Let the answer come without planning how. Notice which activities make time disappear and leave you lit up, because those point toward your soul mission.

Why don’t I know what I want?

Your real desires are usually buried under other people’s expectations, old disappointments and fear of wanting too much. The knowing is still there. When you give yourself permission to want, the true answers begin to surface.

Your Wanting Is a Gift

Your desires were placed in you on purpose. They are the soul’s handwriting, and they spell out the life you came here to live.

Ask the question today, dear one. Listen with your body. Star the lines that delight you. And let yourself want them at their true size.

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When you are ready to clear what keeps your truest wants hidden, book The Shift, one private session with me where we find the pattern underneath your desire and clear it together, live.