How To Get Clarity On Your Needs, Wants & Hidden Desires.

In order to reconnect with who you really are, deep down, you need to have clarity around your wants, needs and hidden desires.

The KMB Coaching strategy of asking the simplest (but totally unfamiliar) of questions helps to elicit the truth of who you really are.

Now, I know you are really YOU. But you are also not necessarily living out that true version of being you.

Say what? Let me explain.

Many of us are so disconnected from the authentic version of ourselves that we have no idea what it is we actually want, need, and hope for.

We don’t know what lights us up, energises us, fulfils and connects us.

We are acting purely on auto-pilot.

For example, you might resonate with ‘I grew up knowing I had to make sure those around me were ok, so that I felt ok’. Being a former people-pleaser myself and working with people who identify with these tendencies, this is a common one.

This continues into adulthood, because we either don’t know we’re doing it, or we don’t know how to stop doing it.

Cue the questions I mentioned.  You see, nearly everyone I speak with in a coaching capacity knows what they don’t want or need. I don’t need / want to:

• have more things to do
• any more busy-ness in my life
• feel so exhausted all the time
• never have any time for me and the things I want
• keep avoiding conflict at all costs

You get the picture.

But what DO you want?  Well, good question.

Try flipping the negatives (eg I don’t want..) to positively framed things.  This might be swapping out ‘I don’t want to feel so exhausted’ and instead stating ‘I want to feel energised’.

Or another common one is ‘I don’t want to be so busy’. We can flip this to ‘I want to be more productive’. Or even ‘I want to have choice in terms of how I spend my time and what I say yes to’.

Once you know you want to be more productive and energised, well you can make decisions with these things in mind.

Will saying ‘yes’ to another project, client, after school activity or boozy dinner leave me feeling more productive and energised?  Or busy and exhausted?

Decision made – tick.

The trick is in the way you frame what you want and need. 9 times out of 10, people revert to thinking about what they don’t want instead of what they do.  So try these hacks:

• If you’re writing ‘less’ you’re most likely stating something you don’t want.  Eg I want to procrastinate less.  That’s something you don’t want (ie procrastination).

So what DO you want? Productivity?  Focus?  Action? Commitment?

• If you write ‘stop being so’, it’s going to be something you don’t want. Eg I want to stop being so stressed.

Instead, try ‘I want to feel more peaceful and calm’.

See how this works?

By the way, if you’d like to geek out on this and get some more insights into how something stated positively vs negatively can impact the brain and how we feel, you can take a look at this article to learn more).

Now your turn.

• Write a list of your wants, needs and hidden desires (that last one might be things like: to feel worthy; to feel appreciated / love myself / trust myself more).

• Step 2 is to make sure they’re all stated in the positive of what you DO want.

• And then step 3 is to start to make decisions with your wants, needs and desires in mind.

In this way, you move off auto-pilot, choose your own adventure and get to start living life with choice.

I don’t know about you, but I’ll give an ‘amen’ to that.

Kylie x

If you missed my blog on ‘Who Were You At 2?’, you can take a read here.