The Complete Guide to Getting What You Want by

Article

Key points:

• ID conflicting wants

• Quite often a reasonable, achievable, and worthwhile desire goes unpursued because we have a simultaneous desire to not pursue it. 

• When we say something is “impossible” or “too hard” or “not in the cards,” that’s a clue.

• Here’s a shortcut: the conflicting want is usually a desire to avoid discomfort, which is always a risk with new things. So check for that. I’m convinced that nothing buys us more in life than the willingness to explore discomfort.

• Start with the most direct, straightforward method. Make that your starting point.

• Before you start getting antsy about the hard parts, imagine how you’d go about your task if you had no fears and unlimited tolerance for discomfort. [Here’s a great Steve Pavlina article on doing exactly that.]

• Then notice how the escape-artist part of the mind jumps in, trying to modify this sensible, proven plan to make it 
  somehow easy or painless. This is the conflicting desire to avoid discomfort and uncertainty.
• If you catch yourself trying to plan your achievement in a way that completely avoids discomfort, then your real aspiration has won out, and you need to ask yourself whether you’re serious about your Himalayan trek or seven-figure business. 
• The farther your plan deviates from established “best practices” (i.e. how the people who actually achieve your goal tend to do it), the more likely it is that you don’t actually intend to do it.
• It’s possible (but unlikely) that the most straightforward plan isn’t appropriate for your particular situation, and needs modification. But be honest with yourself about whether that’s true, and expect to your mind to try to find a “free lunch” approach at least once during the planning process.

• Adjust course as needed (but only as needed)

• Am I following the plan?  
• — If not, follow the plan. (This is most likely the problem.)
• Everything is easier said than done of course, but that doesn’t mean getting what you want entails anything more complex than continually moving towards the wanted thing, the best you currently know how, adjusting course as needed.
• But it’s our conflicting desire for predictability and comfort that is the real invisible fence. Here’s the big secret of getting what you want, as it seems to me: All of us can do incredible things, but the more incredible the thing in question, the more we will simultaneously want to not do it, out of a craving for comfort and certainty.
• We’re fearful creatures after all, with an evolutionary impulse to cling to virtually any tolerable status quo, no matter how dull or crappy it is.
• But once we take that reality on board—that fear and uncertainty always come along for the ride in any worthwhile endeavor—it becomes simple. Not easy, but simple. You decide what you want and just do the next thing. And if you don’t know what the next thing is, the next thing is to figure out the next thing.

• The odd thing about risk is that we think it’s avoidable if we just stay with the familiar and comfortable. Opportunity costs aside, we’re still experiencing all sorts of unseen risks anyway. But we’re deeply conditioned to hesitate before the unknown.
• That’s the essence of buddhism right there — the middle way between all-out renunciation and all-out indulgence. That discernment takes awareness, because often we don’t even recognize the presence of wanting.
• highly recommend the book “Mindset” by Carol Dweck — she outlines the exact mechanism behind that particular mindset towards effort and reward, and gives you an alternative, wherein you recognize the reward (of personal growth) in the effort itself, regardless of extrinsic rewards or other people involved. 
• We can also be reasonably sure that avoiding hard choices and new experiences is probably going to create some of the worse outcomes.
• I would say that whenever we’re avoiding something it’s out of a sense of aversion or discomfort. In any case it does come down to a moment in which the sensible thing is in front of us, and there’s a choice to be made.