I’ve just had 2 major life changes happen in a matter of weeks (and I’m embarking on a third) and both are the result of me finally determining (and then saying) what I want in my life.  I finally said what I want to get what I want, and it all happened very quickly. Magic begins to happen when we get really clear on our desires for our life and how we want to live.

Both of these are great things that needed to happen in my life but it took me a little bit to get there.

“It feels good when I say what I want.” I said this to myself after having a conversation with my boss. It came up again later after a conversation with my now ex-boyfriend. I had been in a role I wasn’t happy in at work and a relationship where neither of us had been happy for quite some time and it was time for me to make some changes.

I spent a long time coming to terms with this but when I finally told my boss & my ex what I wanted,  it felt really good to say it! I had actually told two people how I really felt and it started this process of me leaving a relationship, leaving a job of 3 1/2 years and moving to Nashville, TN for a new job and a new life. It’s been an amazing ride these past few months and I wanted to share with you my process of how I did it.

How to Say What You Want To Get What You Want

Decide what you want

It seems so simple but it’s so easy to miss when we are caught up in a mediocre way of living. If you don’t make an effort to spend time thinking about (and actually determining) what you want, you are never going to get what you want. It’s really that simple. Deciding what you want isn’t hard to do. Generally it’s the opposite of what you don’t want that’s in your life today.

Deciding what you want isn’t about settling for what you think you can have with what’s available to you today, it’s about getting your ass in gear and going after what you really want. Claiming it, what ever ‘it’ is for you. It’s about listening to that voice you always hear in the back of your head that thrills and excites you & finally saying YES to it. Not just yes, but HELL YES!

One thing deciding what you want definitely is not about is just being “fine”.  Fine is settling, it’s living small and fine sucks. The word fine should make you shudder and want to run for the hills because “fine” is not a way to live. Mel Robbins has an amazing Ted Talks segment on this, How to Stop Screwing Yourself Over. I highly recommend you watch it before you read any further in this article (it’s about 20 minutes and worth every second).

Has it occurred to you that you could ask for more? Not just more than you now have, but more than you’re asking for? The Universe. – From Love Your Life in 30 Days by Mike Dooley

You can do this in all areas of your life, here are some ideas to get you started:

• Finances
• Career
• Side-gig (if you have one, if you don’t read how to start a side-gig for more info)
• Health
• Relationships
• Personal Growth
• Community

When I was trying to decide what I wanted to do about my day job, I made a list of the things I did want in my career. Some things that kept coming up were:

• I want to live an unhurried life
• I want to utilize my skills as a Business Analyst
• I want to be able to thoroughly do my job & not be pulled in 100 different directions each day

I wrote this list out daily. What is it that I want to do in my position? Who do I want to be in this role? What do I want to have in my role?

I did the same thing about my relationship. I wrote down the type of person I wanted to be with. What I demanded from the next relationship and how I wanted to feel. I didn’t write what I thought I could have, I wrote what I wanted.

• Write it out every day – Everyday I would think about what I wanted in my career  & my relationship. I wrote down all the things that would come up for me that day. If something had occurred the previous day that I didn’t want, I wrote the opposite down which was what I did  want.
• Visualize it – Never discount the power of your mind and your thoughts. Spending as little as 5 to 10 minutes a few times a day visualizing what you want helps set things in motion. It gets your mind to open up to the possibilities and gets you used to the idea that you actually can have what you want!
• Be consistent – I was consistent with this and I made it a priority. As I went about my day, I would think about the list. I want x,y,z an I would focus on that throughout the day.
• Know you are worthy – I also worked through “I am worthy” statements which consisted of writing out that I was worthy of all the things I wanted.

Make The Decision to Go After It

Once you have decided what you want, it’s time to make some decisions based on how your life is today. Chances are probably good that what you decided you want, isn’t in your life today. In order to get that, your going to have to make some decisions to go after what you want so you can have what you want!

The cause of a lot of our pain and suffering is because most of us just refuse to make a decision about what we want. We spend a lot of time & wasted energy somewhere in the middle. In a place of “maybe” limbo. Hoping that something or someone changes things for us and we won’t have to make a decision.

I know this place of “maybe” from experience and I know why you want to stay there. Because it’s comfortable. If you stay here you won’t have to worry about failure, putting yourself out there or actually becoming successful.

But guess what? Living in “maybe” land without making a decision keeps you small. It fizzles out your voice & it keeps you from being heard. After awhile this starts to get uncomfortable but you may not know why. You’ll get restless and you’ll spend most of your days being unsatisfied even though you can’t really tell why your unsatisfied. On the surface, everything seems “fine”. But don’t you know just living a life where everything is “fine” is exactly what the problem is here?

You’re not satisfied because you haven’t made a decision. And because you haven’t made a decision, you are doing things that are not in alignment with your calling & your souls purpose on this earth. Not making a decision keeps you from becoming the person you were meant to be. It holds you back & it’s not fun. I know this from experience.

So make the decision! Make any decision today that you’ve been putting off. Make it, trust your gut and don’t look back. Eventually everything changes anyway,  but we waste so much time accepting what we don’t want instead of making the decision to go after what we do want.

Then start to tell others about it. This may mean you have to leave a job, a relationship, & friendships behind as you move along your path. Give yourself permission to be ok with this. I promise you, it will be.

Take Action & Results Will Happen Fast

This is probably the most important step. After you decide what you want, you actually have to do something about it. Theories and dreams are nice, but they won’t get you to where you want to go. You have to take action.

Don’t be afraid of this step and don’t put it off until the end of the time out of fear. You don’t have to make major life changes like I did all at once (although if you hold off making any changes that is likely what will happen. Everything will come up at once). It’s ok to start slow and make a few changes at a time.

How fast you move through this process is up to you. But after you decide what you want, you are going to have to put it in motion by having conversations to change your situation.

After I made my decision for how I wanted my life to look and focused on what I did want (instead of what I didn’t want), it didn’t take long for things to shift. It took around 30 days for me to incorporate the following changes:

• I had the conversation with my boss about finally leaving the account I was on
• I negotiated a leave of absence of 30 days from my employer
• My boyfriend and I both decided we weren’t happy and split up

In a matter of 30 days I had negotiated leaving my job, a leave of absence and splitting up with my boyfriend of nearly 3 years because I had decided what I wanted. Where I was currently wasn’t working for me and I had to get to a different place.  And yes, as you can imagine, making those major life changes sucked at first, even though they were what I wanted.

They sucked because of the contrast I had to experience in order to get what I want. What is contrast? I think you’ll recognize it, so let’s discuss that next.

Let your dreams outgrow the shoes of your expectations. - Ryunosuke SatoroClick To Tweet

Then Comes the Contrast (Which is a Good Thing!)

When we actually make the decision of what we want in life & take action, we often forget what comes next. It’s the necessary next step that has to happen that gets us where we want to go. I call it contrast but it can also be known as change, since that’s what is going to happen when you make a decision. To me this feels like a tornado came in and blew everything I know apart and will set me back down in some new place with a totally different perspective. It brings chaos and craziness as our world is turned upside down while we let go of what we don’t want so that what we do want can come in.

And this is a good thing.

This is exactly what I experienced and it made me want to turn back to what was comfortable (for the sake of my own happiness) because when the contrast comes in it causes changes and those changes can be scary. The contrast brought a lot of tears and self-imposed (& unnecessary) suffering, guilt and fear about what I was going though. What had I just done? My life was just “fine” and now it’s not so fine! How could this be happening after all I’d worked towards!

I even had an insane amount of guilt over my boss and HR representative helping me to take the leave of absence! All this “stuff” came up for me that I wasn’t prepared for. I actually had guilt because I didn’t feel like I deserved someone helping me. It may sound crazy but I bet you can see this somewhere in your life too, where you’ve felt guilt over receiving help from someone when you were struggling. I know that goes back to improving how I treat myself so I can stop fighting the person I look at in the mirror every day.

But in fact, this is exactly what needed to happen. We forget that we  have to leave the comfort of what we know, leave the co-workers who have become our friends or put the status of “single” back on to get out of what we don’t want and into what we do want.

None of this is wrong or bad. It can feel like it at the time & make us question our decision. Thoughts come up like: maybe it wasn’t so bad, or I should have just put up for it a little longer and maybe things would have changed or worse feeling like we don’t deserve to move on to something better.

But as I said before,  that was exactly what the problem was. I was “fine”. I was in the “middle” & not making a decision, in the place of just existing instead of living the life I was meant to. This is not where I wanted to live and this is why I made the decision to change.

The contrast that comes up is normal & an important step that will lead you to what you want. Contrast doesn’t make your situation wrong or you less deserving. If you are experiencing it now, don’t turn back to what is comfortable and what you were settling for. Keep moving forward and going after what you want. Know that contrast is good (even though it doesn’t feel like it at the time) because it’s getting you to where you want to go. After all, (as cliche as it sounds) to get what you want, you have to go where you’ve never been!

When the Dust Settles & You Get What You Want

Once you get over the shock of actually starting the process to get what you want, your going to notice some changes in yourself. You will start to feel better about your life. You will be happier. You will feel lighter & free. People will notice. It will feel good. Here are some things I noticed about myself:

• I let the guilt and anger go (finally!).
• I was no longer carrying the weight of the world on my shoulders, I was lighter and free.
• There had been an energy block before that wasn’t there anymore. All this negative energy that had been around me was now gone.
• I felt genuine relief, it took the pressure off of me.
• For so long I had felt like I was fitting a square peg in a round hole, no more of that in my life felt good!

It can feel scary because you may not have an entire plan of how things are going to work or what’s going to happen next. Please hear me when I say this, you are not meant to! You do not (and often should not) have such rigid plans about what is going to happen next. Yes, you need a general direction and some ideas of what action you are going to take next, but you do not need a 100 point plan of next steps to implement these changes in your life.

By being open to what comes next, following your heart and what feels right for you, I genuinely believe that is all you need to get started. I know this because this is exaçtly what I’ve done for myself and I’m doing just fine right now. You can do it too, you deserve it and you are worthy of it!

Say What You Want to Get What You Want

Part of this process is still unfolding & I’ll share with you in another post how the new job and move to Nashville happened (it’s a long and remarkable story). But please know this, you can apply this process in all areas of your life to start living the life you were meant to live. I encourage you to take some time to think about that and see where it takes you. I have a feeling you won’t be disappointed!