How to Discover What You Really Want

I Could Do Anything If I Only Knew What It Was : How to Discover What You Really Want and How to Get It
by Barbara Sher

If you suspect there could be more to life than what you're getting...if you always knew you could do anything if you only knew what it was, this extraordinary book is about to prove you right!

A life without direction is a life without passion. The dynamic follow-up to the phenomenal best-seller Wishcraft, I Could Do Anything If I Only Knew What It Was guides you, not to another unsatisfying job, but to a richly rewarding career rooted in your heart's desire. And in a work of true emancipation, this life-changing sourcebook reveals how you can recapture "long lost" goals, overcome the blocks that inhibit your success, decide what you want to be, and live your dreams forever!

You will learn:

• What to do if you never chose to be what you are.
• How to get off the fast track - and on to the right track.
• First aid techniques for paralyzing chronic negativity.
• How to regroup when you've lost your big dream.
• To stop waiting for luck - and start creating it.

This book is designed to help you find the good life. By that, I don't mean swimming pools, mansions, and private jets — unless those are really your big passions. But if you picked up a book called I Could Do Anything If I Only Knew What It Was, you're probably looking for a lot more than a swimming pool.

You want a life you will love.

A friend's father got it right when he said "The good life is when you get up in the morning and can't wait to start all over again."

Is that you? Or does his idea of the good life sound like an unreachable paradise? If you aren't the kind of person who jumps out of bed every morning excited about the day ahead, I know you desperately long to find a goal that will make you feel like my friend's father. You crave work that will spark excitement and energy; you yearn to find the place where you can make your mark. Albert Schweitzer found his place, so did Golda Meir, and so did the kid next door who practiced guitar day and night. They knew how to live. They believed in what they were doing with all their hearts. They knew their work was important. When you get near people who are pursuing their heart's desire, you can see the intensity on their faces.

Life is just too short to live without that kind of focus.

In the early 1980s, two Harvard psychologists completed a study of people who called themselves happy. And what did happy people have in common? Money? Success? Health? Love?

None of these things.

They had only two things in common: They knew exactly what they wanted and they felt they were moving toward getting it.

That's what makes life feel good: when it has direction, when you are headed straight for what you love.

And I mean love.

I don't mean what you're skilled at. I don't really care what your skills are. When I was a single working mother with two babies, you know what my skills were? I could clean house like a demon; catch a moving bus with my arms full of laundry, groceries, and kids; and squeeze a dollar until the picture of George Washington screamed for mercy.

I do not want the career that uses those skills, thank you.

I don't believe you live the good life by doing what you can do; you live it by doing what you want to do. I don't even think your greatest talents necessarily show up in your skills. All of us are good at things we're not madly in love with. And all of us have talents we've never used.

Relying on your skills to guide you is simply unacceptable. That's why I don't intend to give you personality tests or skills assessments to find out what you should be doing.

I know what you should be doing.

You should be doing what you love.

What you love is what you are gifted at. Only love will give you the drive to stick to something until you develop your gift. That's the way really big things get accomplished in this world — by people no different than you and I who know what they want and put everything they've got behind it.

If you don't know what you want, you can't get out of the starting gate — and that's discouraging. But you're not alone. Recent figures show that as many as 98 percent of Americans are unhappy in their jobs. And it isn't only financial considerations that keep them where they are; they simply don't know what to do instead. What you may have thought was your private little nightmare turns out to be heartbreakingly common.

Well, I have a surprise for you.

You do know what you want.

Everybody does. That's why you feel so restless when you can't find the right track. You sense there's some particular work you are meant to be doing. And you're right. Einstein needed to formulate theories of physics, Harriet Tubman needed to guide people to freedom, and you need to follow your original vision. As Vartan Gregorian said, "The universe is not going to see someone like you again in the entire history of creation." Each of us is one of a kind. Every living person has a completely original way of looking at the world, and originality always needs to express itself.

But many of us get stopped. Every time we resolve to change our lives, every time we go to pick up the baton and get into the race, something happens. For some mysterious reason our determination melts. We look at the baton and think "This race isn't it." And we put down the baton, uneasy because time is slipping away, frightened that we'll never find "it."

There are two reasons for this.

One reason it's so hard to know what we want is that we have so many options. This wasn't always true. Our parents and their parents had fewer choices and clearer goals. It's a tribute to the success of our culture that so many of us have the freedom to search for our own life's work.

Freedom is glorious. But freedom also torments us because it requires us to create our own goals.

Did you know that fewer people get depressed during war than in peacetime? In a war, everything is important. Day to day, you know exactly what to do. Your life may be frightening, but the struggle to survive gives you direction and drive. You don't waste any time trying to figure out what you're worth or what you're supposed to do with your life. You just try to keep alive, save your home, help your neighbors. The reason we love to watch films about people whose lives are in danger is because every move is loaded with meaning.

When there's no emergency to rise to, we have to create goals that have meaning. You can create such goals if you know what your dream is — but this is a relatively new way of living. The old way to live was to let necessity create your goal; the new way is to use your dream to create your goal. We have had very little practice at this new way.

The second reason you don't know what you want is that something inside you is stopping you from knowing. Your dreams are obscured by some kind of internal conflict. It's not as easy as you might think to spot inner conflicts. Often they're disguised as self-reproach. "Maybe I have no talent," "Maybe I'm just lazy," "If I were smarter I'd have done more with my life."

If there's one thing I want you to get out of reading this book it's to know that not one of those statements is true.

The first goal of this book is to shine a spotlight on your particular inner conflict so you can see it clearly outlined. As soon as you see what's been in your way, you'll know exactly why you haven't created the life you wanted. You'll quit reproaching yourself. You'll understand that you've been unable to get moving for a reason.

Copyright © 1995 by Barbara Sher with Barbara Smith. Excerpted by permission of Dell, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

About the Author

Barbara Sher is a therapist and career counselor who conducts workshops all over the United States and throughout the world. She has been featured on Oprah, Donahue, and in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and USA Today, among many other places. Her bestsellers include Wishcraft, Teamworks!, I Could Do Anything if I Only Knew What It Was, and Live the Life You Love. Heard on the radio in cities all over America every day, Barbara Sher lives in New York City. She published her first book at age forty-four.