I’ve been thinking a lot lately about life, my goals, dreams and what it is I truly want for myself. It made me realize that all of us should take a step back sometimes and ask ourselves what we truly want. Not only that but, what are we willing to do to get there?

We all have fleeting dreams and grand visions of the things we feel will make us happy. Some visions are so intricate while others are just tiny bits and pieces of what we believe it will take to bring us ultimate happiness.

I think we often toggle between our present and future selves as to how we behave and what we want. Our present mind can power over what our future mind may truly want. In order to ensure we are acting upon not just what will bring us happiness in the moment, but also happiness as a whole in life, it’s important to ask ourselves questions.

I had to ask myself recently…

What do I want for my life?

What is it that I need to be happy?

Am living that life now or is this something I’m putting off until the future?

What next level or goals am I setting and are they in line with how I’m living, behaving and/or the actions I’m taking right now in this present moment?

It has been a humbling experience and thought process to say the least. My eyes are opening and I have been learning more and more about myself, my limits, my comfort zones, pushing through obstacles and overall bringing my present into alignment with how envision my future unfolding.

I think often times we wander around throughout life, taking it day by day, feeling stuck and living life without actually quantifying how we want to feel. Instead we are sometimes driven by reactive feelings instead of deciding how we want to feel and living based around those desired feelings.

If we don’t take time out to understand what is driving us, what we need and want to be happy and then make a plan to live accordingly, we just end up going through the motions. We end up letting our reactive emotions and present ideas of fulfillment dictate our lives because we don’t take the time to truly give definition to what it is we are seeking.

We expect others to know what we want, when we don’t even know. We allow the cyclicality of life to be thrown on autopilot and we move into a monotonous form of life. But if we would just take a pause every now and again to understand that which we are pursuing and give life to the dreams inside us, we would find that our happiness is much more easily found and attainable.

When we know what we want, what we’re working towards, how we want to feel and what we need to be happy, we give ourselves a much more probable chance of obtaining it all.

A lot of people I talk to feel stuck in life. This simple exercise of defining what happiness is for you and how it looks is something that can free us all from the chains that keep us feeling stuck. Give some thought to these types of honest, uncovering questions and see what comes up for you.