Why you can't answer the question 'what do you want?'
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Hi Reader, How many times have you been asked what you want and genuinely can't answer?
These seem like innocuous questions on the surface. But if you aren't able to answer them, they can feel a whole lot like anxiety. And here's what I want you to know: it's not because you don't have dreams. It's not because you're broken or playing small or lacking vision. It's because you were never really taught to listen to yourself. You were taught to follow the rules. To follow the path that was laid out before you - the education, the career, the relationship, the life that looked right on paper. Every inch of society has some semblance of this step-by-step plan. And if you're a founder, you traded one version of that plan for another - the frameworks, the mentors, the proven paths, the strategies that worked for someone else. You got so good at following the right guidance that somewhere along the way, you stopped being able to hear the quieter voice underneath all of it. The one that was always yours. So now when someone asks you what you really want, you hesitate. You wait for something to jump out at you. You wait for the sign, the clarity, the moment it all becomes obvious. And when it doesn't come, you default to "What's wrong with me?" instead of asking the deeper question - "Is this actually the life I want?" But the moment you hit pause and start to peel back the layers of what everyone else told you to want vs. what actually feels right for you, you start to notice the edges no longer seem to be drawn with a permanent marker. You realize it was really just chalk all along - and it can be blended and blurred and redrawn completely to fit who you actually are. I worked with a founder who came to me frustrated because she couldn't figure out what she wanted. She thought she knew - the business she was building, the revenue she was chasing, the relationship, the home, the life carefully arranged around all of it. It looked right on paper. It looked like the dream. But it felt off. It had felt off for a long time. Through our work together, she realized it that despite the question she came in with, it wasn't that she didn't know what she wanted. In fact, she knew exactly what she wanted. She just hadn't been allowing herself to see it - because she knew that seeing it clearly would mean having to face everything she'd been quietly ignoring. What she wanted was a pen in her hand and a notebook in front of her. Long walks in the forest. Long afternoons in the garden, her hands in the earth. She wanted fresh air and open space, not another morning grinding away at a business that no longer felt like hers, in a city that made her feel like she couldn't breathe. She didn't need more strategy. She needed permission to finally trust what she already knew. And here's what surprised her most: she didn't have to burn it all down. She didn't have to walk away from everything she'd built. She just had to get honest - really honest - about what was actually working and what she'd simply been tolerating. What lit her up and what was slowly draining her batteries. Once she could see that clearly, she knew exactly what to keep, what to release, and what to finally let herself admit she wanted. That's the work. Not finding what you want, but learning to stop talking yourself out of what you've always known. Most people are too afraid to look. They don't want the walls to crumble around them. But what they're missing is that the crumbling of all the walls is the exact moment they start to feel the freedom they've been craving for so long. Freedom to be who they really are. Freedom to choose the path and the work and the life that actually feels like home. If you give yourself the chance to peel back the layers of everything you thought you wanted, and truly face the deeper truth of what drives you - letting yourself take up space - you will find that your entire life begins to change shape with you. The people living their most aligned life aren't braver than you. They just stopped waiting for permission to want what they actually want. If you're reading this and something in here hit a nerve - you can feel the life you're living, you can feel the life you want, and you sense there's a gap between them - let's just talk. One conversation. I'll help you see exactly where you've been shrinking and what wanting more actually looks like for you. ​[Book Your Free 1:1 Call]​ I'm rooting for you, Amanda
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