What you think you want is not what you truly want.

Socrates famously said, “The unexamined life is not worth living,” and I am finding this to be overwhelmingly true as of late. What do I actually want in life? What do I really want to achieve? What relationship do I truly want to be in? Most of us have answers to these questions, and we organise our lives around the pursuit of these goals, but are they actually what you want?

Here is something to ask yourself: “What would you like to achieve or do in life that would give you meaning and sustenance, even if no one could see or recognise that success? What would you still be doing even if no one knew it was you who was doing it?” This question immediately gets under one of the main drivers of human achievement and success: validation. The need to be seen, loved, and respected by others becomes the central driving force behind our pursuits, and many don’t see it. This urgent need to be popular and successful comes straight from a false sense of self that is constructed as a coping strategy against your own shame and inherent sense of unworthiness, unwantedness, or unlikability. This false constructed version of yourself reaches out into the world under the guise of what you truly want, but, as we see time and time again, chasing the carrot at the end of that stick is ultimately dissatisfying.

“What we call the personality is often a jumble of genuine traits and adopted coping styles that do not reflect our true self at all but the loss of it.” —Gabor Maté

The same is true for relationships. Do you actually love that person, authentically? Or do you project onto them parts of yourself you have abandoned and dismissed, and fall in love with that? Or do you see unhealthy, familiar patterns in that person you experienced as a child with your parents, and continuously seek the same toxic pattern over and over again? Do you actually want to be in a relationship for the sake of growth, commitment, and authentic love, or are you terrified of what it means to be single and alone?

The sad thing is, one can achieve everything this false sense of self wants them to achieve. You can have that career and have that relationship, but what happens time and time again is people end up getting it, and then get smacked with the crushing realisation that it’s ultimately unfulfilling to their core. Why? Because you never really wanted that career or that job, or that hobby, or that relationship—you only thought you did.

Imagine yourself doing something in life where validation, recognition, or being exalted by others simply didn’t exist. What would you choose to do then? What would you keep doing if you already felt completely whole—unbothered by aloneness, untouched by the fear of abandonment, and unafraid of deep love and commitment without feeling trapped? If all of that weight was lifted, what kind of relationship would you truly want? Who would that person be?

It can feel like a kind of death to let go of the things you never truly wanted. But when your desires rise from the core of your being—rather than from a wounded, distorted version of yourself—you step into a deeper, lasting satisfaction.

Many people won’t hear this message, and many more won’t like it, and that’s ok! But there will come a day when you will have achieved everything this constructed version of yourself wants to achieve, and it will, in the end, feel empty. But examining your life, finding out who you really are under all those layers of shame and avoidance and living according to whatever desire comes from that is truly a superpower.