Still, that year I decided to not attend INSEAD. But the next year I enrolled and ended up completing the coursework at the end of 2006. During that time I had many meaningful conversations with Manfred and other great minds. And the more I thought about it, the clearer it became that I did not want – and did not need – a PhD.
We often do not know what we want. We often do not understand the need behind the want. And we are often too busy to think about the subject altogether. Let me say also that I do hope you are able to discover what you truly want and need for a lot less than the cost of trip to France, not to mention the cost of a PhD.
But what if I still don’t know?
So what happens if “What do you really want?” remains unanswered?
Then you are more vulnerable to the influence of others and you allow them to passively or directly make your choices for you and also control your time. This can mean that you live a life that doesn’t really satisfy you and that you do things you’d really prefer not to do. You are then a prisoner of other people’s influence.
You become even more the prisoner of your past. I am mostly talking about the poor choices you have made in the past that have brought you to where you are now. If you don’t ask yourself time and again what you really want, then you will deprive yourself of an opportunity to reevaluate some past choices. And you stay prisoner to “past programming” that neither serves nor satisfies you.
And you will make more and more choices for the wrong reasons. You end up getting what you thought you wanted, but you feel empty. You could quietly ask yourself: “Is this thing really it? Is this what I really wanted?” Chasing the approval of others (which we thought we wanted), we miss out on love (which we really wanted). Chasing status may not give you the inner satisfaction that you really want.
And then really strange things start to happen. You start to feel that more and more the things you do are in the “have to” category. You feel like you are falling into a trap that you yourself have somehow set up. Your choices narrow. You start to feel that control is slipping away. You quietly start to accept that some of your past dreams will never come true. To really paint the whole thing in dark colors, you even feel that future has nothing good in store for you. And you give up and “start waiting for death to relieve you,” while still being a good person and doing all the mundane things other good people expect from a good person like you. These are the things that, when all put together, many people call life.
I very much hope that these dark scenarios are not familiar to you. But if they are, then don’t take it badly. Welcome to the club. Noticing the problem and acknowledging its existence is already half the solution.
Sooner or later it happens to all of us when life, without asking our permission, not so gently forces us to make a fast decision or even makes one for us. Like when you get fired. Or when you finally pass a threshold of being sick and tired of something and take a radical step, like abruptly ending a relationship. And even though you know that every bad thing ultimately turns into something good, it is still a poor consolation. There is a better way that takes less time, less trial and error and involves less pain.
That’s what this book is about. This book is about how to best understand what it is you really want. And how to get what you really want. And how to honestly enjoy it.
This book essentially asks you how your life would be if everything was just like you wanted. This book also asks what you can do today or tomorrow to work toward this change, and how to feel good about the things that are already good.
When you know what you want, then you are able to make better choices. You can more easily figure out what is most important for you and what is not. Then you can go about your everyday work and activities with confidence (and a lesser feeling of “have to”). Then you can compare your own progress with your plan and feel good that things are moving in the right direction at a good enough pace. And even when progress is poor, you can change something to get yourself back on track. Only when you have a target and when you keep your eyes open will you have a real shot at hitting the target.
Getting what you want
If you are able to decide what you want and devote your energy to it, you are very likely going to get it. Of course, it’s critical that the object of your desire is something you truly want. As priests are fond of saying, “Be careful what you pray for, you just might get it.” I suggest that you take some time on a regular basis to think about it. I’m not suggesting you sit down every morning and meditate over the question, What do I want? What do I want? What do I want? For me, the time when I think about these issues is when I jog. Some like to meditate, some like to walk by the sea, some like to drive, I like to jog. Whatever works for you is fine, though sitting in a room with the TV playing and your children climbing all over you is not an environment conducive to productive thinking. So get out. Be alone. Then ask yourself these three questions to analyze and get an inner sense about a possible want:
1 Why do I want this?
2 Do I believe it’s possible for me to pull it off?
3 What is the “price” of what I want, and am I willing to “pay” that price?
Let me give you an example of a question – a want – I struggled with a few years back. It was an invitation to participate in a TV show. Just like in many other countries, we have a BBC-licensed TV show in Estonia called Dancing With The Stars. Famous people are paired with professional dancers and then they compete every Sunday night in a live dance contest until there are only two couples in the show and one finally wins. The program runs for most of the fall season.
It should be noted that in my country fame is a bit of a strange animal. Estonia is such a small country (just over a million people) that it often seems we’re all famous. It sometimes seems like Andy Warhol’s fifteen minutes of fame got turned into fifteen hundred minutes here. In a country of a million people, a lot of people are famous (or infamous) for something. And so we tend to respect the privacy of famous people a little more. You walk into any restaurant in town, and it’s not impossible that you’ll find the president having a cup of coffee there. Or your favorite film actor. Or a former jewelry thief. Or the white collar criminal who is visiting from his new life in Africa. People almost never go up and bother famous people in Estonia, because then nothing would ever get done. We’re all just living in one big neighborhood. So famous Estonians don’t really have the same paparazzi problems that Brad and Angelina have, if they’re even still together.
But while autograph seekers don’t hassle our movie stars, Estonians do like to stare. We’re a nation of starers. It could be our Soviet past, but I don’t know. We don’t always express our feelings in overt ways, but if someone disapproves of you he will rarely hide it. He may not say anything to you, but he will not mask his true feelings with a smile if you happen to meet his glance in the supermarket. A famous person can be shopping in the dairy section and people will just turn and look at her like a monkey in a zoo. At least for a while, until common decency gets the best of them (it usually does), and then they go back to selecting their milk and peering over the cream to sneak another glance.
While I was out jogging, I began to mull over the questions in my mind. If I do want to be on the show, then what is my real motivation? Why do I really want to go on the air weekly and dance in front of friends, clients, and colleagues? They already know I am not a good dancer. Do I need television footage to prove it?
There were a lot of possible motivations. One is, of course my, ego. Perhaps I simply want to be more famous. It’s true that I’m well known inside business circles, but my name is not a household name. Nobody is going to put me on a box of cereal, not that I would want to be there. Kids aren’t