Creating Space to Know What You Want In Life and Align How You Live

At an individual level, I think one of the hardest, yet most important, things a person can do is get an honest sense of what they actually want out of life. Not what their family or their partner wants. or what their profession, social circle, culture, algorithm, or some broader definition of success says they should want.

What do you actually want?

I’ve written several variations of these themes over the years. In Can’t Pour From an Empty Cup, I explored self-love, self-worth, and the need to take care of yourself well enough to fully show up for others. In You Time, I wrote about deliberately carving out space for yourself. In How Do You Define Success?, I drilled more into defining success for yourself instead of allowing the world to define it for you. Close Your Eyes and See What You Believe explored envisioning the life you actually want and taking ownership of building it. In Nice v. Kind, I explored how knowing and loving yourself enough to act from your values, rather than chasing approval, is fundamental to becoming more authentically who you are. And Unplugged Bliss went deeper into what I learned by separating myself from social media and the constant consumption of other people’s lives. I don’t want to completely revisit all of those ideas here again, but they all tie into helping know oneself.

What I’ve come to understand is that the real value of all these concepts is what becomes available when the noise disappears: the opportunity to hear yourself clearly enough to understand what you actually want, then determine whether the life you’re living reflects it. No friend, mate, system, strategy, guide, coaching, therapy, book, blog, podcast, substack or whatever else can fully answer those questions for you, only you can.

The world is always vying for your attention

One truth I’ve landed on is that understanding yourself requires regular periods where everybody and everything else loses access to you. It doesn’t need to be extreme or extensive, but I do believe it is necessary. However, this is very challenging and increasingly difficult because the world is extremely loud. Everything is bidding for our attention at every waking moment: personal commitments, parental & family obligations, professional responsibilities, text messages, media and beyond. Even perfectly healthy relationships and responsibilities require pieces of our attention throughout the day. Then compound that reality with the fact that most of us carry the internet around in our hands all day and it’s obvious why this ability to access our true self may seem impossible at times.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with most of these things. The problem is that there is often never really any space between them. From the moment you wake up until the moment you fall asleep, it is entirely possible to remain absorbed in something external. So if something is always coming in, when exactly do you get to hear what’s coming from within?

Clarity requires separation

I’ve become keenly aware over the last fifteen to twenty years that I genuinely like being alone (and yes I’m getting old). Alone time gives me significant energy and real joy. Ah yes, a classic introvert narrative and trope. But I think it’s more nuanced and deeper than a simple introvert-or-extrovert box. I believe you need recurring space where the external inputs get quiet enough for you to assess the internal ones. The specific routines can change with the constant shifts and seasons of life. The activities themselves aren’t really the point, they’re tactics and tools. The real focus is creating the space. For me, I want access to my own mind before anybody else gets it.

Over time, these periods have given me opportunities to examine what I actually like, dislike, value, want, fear, avoid, expect of myself, and the personality traits that shape how I move through the world. Some of what I’ve found I’m quite proud of. Other parts aren’t as particularly flattering.

I’ve learned I’m ridiculously stubborn. I can have aspirations that probably look delusional to other people. I’m extremely dedicated to doing what I want, and I can become extremely bullish when something gets in the way (get on board or get run over). Those same characteristics that propel individual pursuits can absolutely become hindrances in important relationships if they’re not calibrated properly, something my wife and I continuously balance.

The other side of that same coin: I’m extremely hard on myself. Better than I used to be, and still learning to give myself more grace, but it’s worth mentioning because there isn’t much another person I care about or respect can say about me that I haven’t already said, or bludgeoned myself with, five to ten times worse.

And if I don’t know, care about, or respect the person offering some narrative about who I am, I simply don’t entertain it. If it isn’t consistent with the honest truth of who I know and believe myself to be, it’s irrelevant to me. In the words of Gordon Ramsay: they can piss off.

Plenty of people aren’t wired this way, and that’s fine. These personal examples aren’t meant to suggest I have it all figured out. They’re meant to spotlight what I do think is universal underneath all of this: you have to strip away enough of the world’s noise to get an honest read on yourself, then embrace what you find and do the work. Clarity is the first step, but the point isn’t to endlessly discover yourself. Eventually, you have to execute.

Who You Are vs. How You Live

Once you start doing that work, and spend enough time examining yourself, something uncomfortable often starts happening. There’s frequently a gap, sometimes a substantial one, between who you think you are and who you say you want to become, versus what you’re actually doing every day. Most of us carry some version of that gap. For large stretches of my teens and 20s, I felt like I was living double, triple, even quadruple lives at times. Not in any nefarious ways, just trying to be everything for everybody while aligning my identity with who I was told I was, what I did professionally, where I’m from, and so on.

We’re all continuously changing. Environments, and circumstances change. Priorities and responsibilities shift and increase. Relationships evolve along with perspectives as we collect new data throughout life. And all of this is OK. We should always be evolving which also means we should continually give ourselves the space to audit and reassess who we are, what we want, and how we’re actually living especially during these shifts. The ironic catch is that once we do the work, we can no longer pretend not to see the behaviors working against it. Wanting something shows up in conversation. Expecting it of yourself shows up in behavior. And your behavior is what ultimately defines who you actually are.

You don’t get what you want in life. You get who you are.

The Tradeoffs

This then bridges into another idea that has become increasingly evident to me. One of the easiest ways to lose what you want most is to continually trade it for what you want right now. Usually these aren’t dramatic decisions, they’re tiny trades that compound. Ten more minutes scrolling, one more episode, an extra slice, another unnecessary purchase, another obligation you didn’t really want to accept, saying yes because being liked right now feels better than protecting the boundary you’ll need tomorrow, or continuing to chase a version of success you’ve never actually stopped to question. None of these things every now and then, or independently, destroy anything but that’s why they’re dangerous. They feel insignificant in isolation, but repeated over time they detract from the bigger pictures we’ve created the space to identify in the first place.

So the question isn’t simply, what do I want? It’s moreso: does the way I spend my time, attention, and energy actually support what I say I want? Sometimes the answer is no. And once you know that, you actually have to do something about it. Yikes! That’s the hard part. We actually have to hold ourselves accountable and change.

Growth by Subtraction

And this change often comes in the form of growth. However, growth is constantly framed as addition: learn more, do more, build more, earn more, train more, connect more, acquire more etc. But a substantial part of my growth has actually come from subtraction. Less noise, less comparison, less consumption, less attention devoted to shit that doesn’t matter, less attachment to identities I’ve already outgrown, and less dependence on everybody understanding or approving of the choices I’m making (especially this one).

To be able at any moment, to sacrifice what you are, for what you will become! – Eric Thomas

Not your authentic self or foundational values, but old routines, habits, assumptions, identities, coping mechanisms, definitions of success, and versions of yourself that may have worked perfectly fine in an earlier season but are incompatible with where you’re trying to go. When you know yourself well enough, you can distinguish what’s foundational from what’s simply familiar. You can’t know what needs to go until you’ve created enough space to honestly assess what’s there. After years of thinking about all of this in pieces, I’ve started viewing the process more systematically.

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The Alignment System

1. Create Space

Separate yourself from the noise long enough to hear yourself. This is where the practices I’ve written about for years and practice daily come in: meditation, movement, screenless AM starts, solitude, social media reduction/elimination, walking, writing, reading, whatever creates enough separation for your own thoughts to surface. Your version doesn’t need to look anything like mine. The requirement isn’t a particular routine, it’s uncontested attention.

A few minutes a day to start; doesn’t need to be overcomplicated it. Create separation before expecting clarity.

2. Observe

Once the noise decreases, don’t immediately try to solve everything, just observe and pay attention. What keeps surfacing? What gives you energy and what consistently drains it? What are you repeatedly thinking about or avoiding? What bothers you more than it probably should? What are you doing mainly because you believe you’re supposed to? What would you still care about if nobody knew you were doing it? We can what if all day. You get the point.

Clarity rarely arrives as some massive revelation, it trickles in and accumulates. Eventually, certain things become difficult to ignore.

3. Define

Observation becomes useful when you start putting language around what you’re seeing. What do I actually want and what matters most to me? What does success mean to me right now? What kind of partner, parent, friend, professional, or person am I trying to be vs. what am I no longer interested in? What are my non-negotiables? What am I willing to sacrifice, and what am I not willing to sacrifice?

This isn’t about creating some rigid master plan for the next forty years, answers should change as you do. The point is having an answer in the first place, because if you don’t consciously define what matters, the world is more than happy to define it for you.

4. Compare

Then comes the really uncomfortable parts. Look at what you say matters, then look at what you actually do: your calendar, spending, attention, routines, relationships, habits, boundaries, and behavior. Where are they aligned, and where aren’t they? This is where self-awareness stops being purely reflective and starts demanding something from you. If I say my health matters but consistently treat it as optional, there’s a gap. If I say my family matters most but continually give them the leftovers of my attention, there’s a gap. If I say I value autonomy but construct a lifestyle that requires me to maximize income indefinitely, there’s a gap. If I say I don’t care what people think but continually make decisions to preserve their approval, there’s a gap.

These self audits are not meant for judgment, just information (data collection). But this is also where once you can see and evaluate your comparisons, you own what happens next.

5. Adjust

Finally this is where knowing yourself actually changes something. Sometimes the answer is addition: build a habit, learn something, start the project, have the conversation, create the routine. Just as often, the answer can be subtraction: say no, stop doing something, reduce access, leave, spend less, consume less, protect the boundary, change the expectation, retire an identity that no longer fits.

Sometimes the adjustment is simply accepting that what you thought you wanted isn’t actually what you want anymore. The system isn’t designed to produce one permanent answer. It’s designed to keep your behavior connected to the person you’re continually becoming.

The Alignment Check

If I strip everything down, I think there are five questions worth returning to consistently:

1. What do I actually want? Not what sounds impressive, what somebody else wants for me, or what I think I’m supposed to want.
2. What am I consistently giving my time, attention, and energy to? Behavior tends to reveal priorities more honestly than words do. Where attention goes, energy flows.
3. Where are things misaligned? The audit and where the real work starts.
4. Am I acting from my values, or from a desire to be liked, accepted, comfortable, validated, or distracted? Nice versus kind. Alignment versus approval. What I want most versus what feels good right now.
5. What needs to be protected, changed, reduced, or removed? Not every problem requires adding another habit. Sometimes the answer is subtraction.

The End Goal: Intentional Living

The longer I’ve done this work personally, the clearer this distinction has become. The objective isn’t purely creating space or gaining self awareness. It is more-so, developing enough self-knowledge, self-respect, and clarity that when life inevitably gets noisy, you still know who you are, what matters, and where you’re trying to go.

That doesn’t mean life suddenly becomes clean or perfectly aligned. Relationships still require calibration and compromise. Kids certainly don’t give a shit about your perfectly designed system. Jobs have expectations and requirements. Unexpected things happen. Life happens.

And knowing yourself also doesn’t mean rigidly doing whatever you want at the expense of everybody else, that’s pure selfishness. There’s a reason the old saying goes, if you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together. The company you keep, the relationships you invest in, and the team you build around you are integral to your overall satisfaction with life too. More on the company you keep another time.

The point is, knowing yourself well enough to make tradeoffs deliberately, while still showing up well for the people and arenas that matter because you’ve actually taken the time to identify who and what those are, and invested in taking care of yourself well enough to show up for them.

When taking care of yourself takes care of more than just yourself.

Legacy reflections stemmed from the need to create more space for myself. Years later, I understand the larger purpose of that space much more clearly. Stepping back to know yourself isn’t a retreat from life. It’s one of the principle systems that make intentionally living life possible.

– Keith