Trust Your Desires Are Guiding You

You know the feeling. The fear that grips you when making a big decision. How do you know the best path forward? Many of us are waiting for a sign, an answer, a stronger feeling, or more comfort around making a leap and a decision. If that’s so, oftentimes we are waiting a long time to feel one hundred percent comfortable in making the investment in ourselves, whatever it may be. 

What gives you that push to follow your dreams and pursue your desires? This blog will encourage you to trust yourself, feel the fear and do it anyway, trust your instincts and your gut, and go for your desires. Learn to trust your desires are guiding you by getting clarity on what they are, believing your desires are good, doing what is right for you, and finally, removing fear from the equation.

Get Clarity On Your Desires

This may sound too easy, but one way to get clarity on what you want to do is by flipping a coin. It’s not actually about the coin though, is it? It’s about that moment before the coin lands. That’s the moment the clarity comes on exactly what you want or don’t want. Once you see that coin land, how do you feel about that answer? That is your decision. It’s the feeling. It’s the desire that you have, not the actual outcome that’s being made or provided for you.

Do What You Know To Be Right For You

There is a question I like to ask in these situations: if you really don’t know what to do, what would you do if you did know? Just sit with that and the answer will probably arise. Either choice is good so this helps to cut through all the talk and clutter in your head, and it gets you to that gut feeling in your soul that is quietly waiting for the chance to be invited into the conversation. Because truly, deep down, it already knows the answer. 

Sarah Blakely, the founder of Spanx and an amazing businesswoman, says one thing she asks herself related to her career is if no one was telling her how to do this, how would she do it? She has all the meetings and all the calls and all the advisors and then goes into her office to sit and ask herself that question. 

I absolutely love this because in starting a business there is temptation to follow a certain strategy or a certain path. While you can have teachers who are beneficial and you can save yourself tons of time by having a coach or a mentor, if it feels right for you, there’s also something to be said for doing what you would do if no one was telling you. This is how to gain some creative inspiration and ideas. Something may come to you completely out of the blue that is completely right for you.

Remove Fear From the Equation

One other question to ask yourself that I’ve found helpful is, if you weren’t afraid, what would you do? When I moved to New York, things went wrong, one after the other, and I would lay awake at night wondering if I could do this. The question of, what would I do if I wasn’t afraid came to me and instantly I knew I would leave everything behind for the adventures awaiting me in this city because I was so excited to do this. It was the most hectic year of my life, but the most amazing too. And it all came down to what I would do if I wasn’t afraid. 

The same was true for leaving corporate America to start my business. It wasn’t that I was super brave and just naturally did it. I was TERRIFIED. But I kept coming back to if I wasn’t afraid of failing, what would I do? What do I not want to look back on wondering what could have been? 

Marie Forleo says the key to success is to start before you’re ready. Hugh Laurie says it’s a terrible thing in life to wait until you’re ready. I think we can all agree, no one is ever ready to do anything. There is only now. Generally speaking, now is as good a time as any. If you let time pass, you’ll never know what’s going to be the next hurdle for you. It’s a sneaky way of procrastinating due to fear. Look at what you are afraid of and ask if it is worth postponing your dream over. 

Maybe you’re scared of investing, but the truth is there’s a cost to not investing as well. There’s a cost to staying where you are. There’s a cost to not investing in the coach or the mentor, doing trial and error for a lot longer, and investing money in things that may or may not work. Try to remember it in terms of the opportunity cost. You might go out there and fail but trust your instincts. Your desires are not things to contend with, to rearrange, to argue with, to fight, to resist. Your desires are good. They’re the signposts guiding you on what is right for your life. When you get that feeling of something calling you and you don’t know why, even if it doesn’t make sense logically but it seems fun or right, then that is the right path. 

By getting clarity on what your desires are, believing they are good, doing what is right for you, and removing fear from the equation, you can trust to be led by your desires. Give yourself permission to trust your instincts, to take the leap before you feel ready, to trust that you will, can and absolutely always have figured it out, no matter what has happened and what will happen in the future. Get out there and go in the direction of your dreams, one choice at a time.

Did this resonate with you? Listen to the full episode on The Bright Life Podcast—Episode 046: You Can Trust Your Desires.