Why you don’t know what you want [the REAL Reason]

The other day I was speaking to a man — I’ll call him Mark — who knew he needed to make some changes:

He felt trapped in a job that wasn’t fulfilling and had no opportunity for growth.

At nearly 50 years old he was carrying an extra 30lbs (which he admitted was from the mounting stress at work).

His extra weight was stealing his energy and preventing him from being active with his kids.

He was increasingly irritable and short-tempered with his wife which was driving a wedge between them and had them sleeping in separate beds.

I asked Mark, “If all those issues were completely resolved, what is it that you really want instead?”

After a long pause of silence, he said, “I don’t know”.

I continued to ask him questions from different angles yet his answer remained “I don’t really know what I want…I just know I don’t want to continue down this path”.

Can you relate?

If so, you’re not alone.

Many men think they don’t know what they want, or “what they want to be when they grow up”.

They usually explain it in one of three ways:

1. They have “never known” — just fell into their career and have stuck with it yet always questioned if there was something better
2. They’ve had a history of missteps, failures or setbacks which made them question what they should do instead
3. They don’t know what their passion is or what will fulfill them

But none of those are the real problem.

The uncomfortable truth: you don’t believe in yourself.

It may not be a sexy truth, but that’s the real problem.

After speaking with and coaching thousands of men, I see time and time again how this shows up:

• You get so busy following other people’s ideals or taking care of other people’s needs first, you haven’t built the muscle to stand up for what you want
• You have a habit of dismissing, downplaying or denying your dreams
• You over-analyze what you want so much that you suck the energy and enthusiam out of your dream and kill your motivation for action
• You bought into the story you tell yourself that you’re too old, it’ll be too hard, it’s too big of a mountain to climb…so you settle.

All of which erodes your self-belief and creates an illusion that you don’t know what you want.

Yet what if you were given a roadmap? A proven, structured method to clarifying what you want and had a process that put you into consistent, steady action.

That’s what we do every day with our clients: we help them create a roadmap to their success. We help them strip away the fears, the limiting beliefs, disempowering habits to get them clear on what they really want. And help them build their confidence to go after it.

If that’s what you want, you can have that, too.