Wants: a small questionnaire
Our motivations across areas of our life work together to form an engine that drives us. These motivations create tangible wants that make us and drive us to action. These wants can be in the form of our aspirations, our fears, our goals etc. If motivation is the engine that makes us do things, then these are only few of our engine’s “parts”.
Using the right parts and servicing them regularly makes your engine go faster. On the other hand, if you have the wrong part already, like an incompatible spark plug (a misplaced want as you’ll see) and you’re trying to get it to work in hopes that the engine will work, you’ll end up ruining the engine.
This ruined engine is what we call burn out. Much easier to avoid than to fix.
Here are a few questions to check your own engine health:
What are the things I have to do?
What are the things I want?
What are the things I wanted?
What are the things I kind of want?
What are the things I think I should want?
What are the things I used to want but I can’t let go of (and hence still want)?
Here are some more questions to help you look at what to trim:
What are the things I don't want but find myself pursuing?
What are the things I have already decided are no longer important to me?
You will be surprised how many of your wants are mis-categorized. Chasing the things you are not sure of or because you think you should chase down slows down your engine. The more you are fueled by the things you truly want, the faster you can go.