You Don’t Have to Know What You Want Yet

Sometimes knowing what you don’t want anymore is enough to start.

I used to think clarity meant having the answer.

Know what you want. Make the plan. Set the goal. Go.

I still love a plan. Probably more than the average person.

But some of the biggest decisions of my life didn’t begin because I suddenly knew exactly what I wanted.

They began because I finally admitted what I didn’t want anymore.

I think there’s more wisdom in that than we give it credit for.

For years, I worked in defense manufacturing. It was a good career. I had opportunities. People invested in me. I traveled, earned degrees, learned how businesses worked, and grew into roles I never could have imagined when I started.

I’m grateful for that chapter.

And I could have stayed.

That matters when I tell this story because nothing terrible happened.

There wasn’t a villain. There wasn’t a dramatic moment when everything fell apart and forced me to leave.

I simply reached a point where I could appreciate what something had given me without believing I owed it the rest of my life.

That was a big shift.

I didn’t have some beautifully organized vision for what came next.

I knew I wanted work that felt more connected to people.

I wanted to use different parts of myself. I wanted to keep learning. I wanted my work and my life to feel more aligned with the person I was becoming.

And maybe most importantly, I knew I didn’t want to spend years wondering what might have happened if I had been willing to try something different.

Eventually, I sold my house, moved from Massachusetts to Colorado, and changed careers.

Written in one sentence, that sounds incredibly decisive.

Living it was much less tidy.

There were unknowns. There were practical decisions. There were moments when staying would have been easier.

I didn’t know exactly where the road was going.

I just knew enough about the road I didn’t want to stay on.

Sometimes that is all the clarity we get at first.

Sometimes the “no” comes before the “yes”

We ask ourselves enormous questions.

What do I want my life to look like?

Where do I want to be in five years?

What’s the dream?

What’s next?

They’re good questions.

They can also be almost impossible to answer when you’re in the middle of changing.

Sometimes I think we need a smaller question:

What don’t I want anymore?

Not because everything uncomfortable should be eliminated.

Not because the goal of life is to avoid difficulty.

Just because our resistance can sometimes tell us something worth examining.

Maybe you don’t want every week to feel like something you have to survive.

Maybe you don’t want to keep saying yes when you mean no.

Maybe you don’t want to measure your life primarily by how productive you were.

Maybe you don’t want relationships that feel like another obligation to maintain.

Maybe you don’t want to keep chasing a version of success you inherited from somebody else.

Maybe you simply don’t want to feel the way you’ve been feeling.

That doesn’t automatically tell you what to do.

But it gives you information.

And information gives you somewhere to begin.

I’ve learned this about relationships too

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve become much less interested in the appearance of connection.

I spent a lot of years online. In my twenties, I was a Beachbody coach, and part of that world involved reaching out, engaging, staying visible and building relationships online.

There were parts of that experience I genuinely enjoyed.

There were also parts that taught me what connection doesn’t feel like to me.

I don’t want relationships to feel transactional.

I don’t want to mistake a quick response for closeness.

I don’t want likes, comments or knowing someone’s latest news to convince me that we actually know each other.

I like the real-life stuff.

The text because somebody crossed your mind.

The card that shows up in the mail.

Actually putting dinner on the calendar instead of saying, we really should get together.

A little gift because you saw something and immediately thought of someone.

A conversation that goes past the update and gets to how someone is really doing.

I know relationships aren’t perfectly reciprocal all the time.

People have full lives. There are seasons when one person carries more than the other. I’ve certainly needed that grace myself.

But I’ve become clearer about the kind of connection I want to invest in.

Not more people.

More depth.

Sometimes knowing what you don’t want helps you protect what you value most.

Money can reveal the same thing

Money is another area where we tend to jump straight to the biggest possible questions.

How much is enough?

Am I saving enough?

When could I retire?

What should my future look like?

Those are important questions, but there’s another one I think is worth asking:

What don’t I want money to feel like anymore?

Maybe you don’t want to avoid looking at your accounts because it makes you anxious.

Maybe you don’t want every unexpected expense to feel like an emergency.

Maybe you don’t want to keep earning more without understanding where it’s going.

Maybe you don’t want your financial decisions to be driven entirely by fear.

Or maybe you’re doing well financially and simply want what you’ve built to feel more connected to the life you actually care about living.

That answer won’t give everyone the same next step.

It shouldn’t.

Money is personal.

But getting clearer about what you want money to do in your life can make the larger questions easier to think about.

For me, that’s the more interesting part anyway.

Money is useful.

But the life it supports is the point.

Hard and wrong are not the same thing

This is where I think the conversation needs some nuance.

I don’t believe every uncomfortable feeling means something needs to change.

Some of the things I value most have been hard.

Changing careers was hard.

Starting again professionally was hard.

Building something of my own is hard.

Studying for things that stretch me is hard.

Marriage takes effort.

Friendships take effort.

Taking care of yourself takes effort.

Having a conversation you would rather avoid takes effort.

Hard is not automatically a warning sign.

Sometimes hard means you’re growing.

Sometimes hard means something matters enough to work for.

So I’ve started asking a different question:

Is this difficulty taking me somewhere I still want to go?

That question has helped me separate discomfort from misalignment.

Because there are things I’m willing to struggle for.

And there are things I eventually realized I was struggling simply to maintain.

Those are not the same.

Pay attention to what keeps coming back

One bad Tuesday probably doesn’t mean you need to reinvent your life.

But the same thought every Tuesday for three years might deserve some attention.

A difficult conversation doesn’t automatically mean a relationship is wrong.

A stressful season doesn’t automatically mean you chose the wrong career.

An unexpected expense doesn’t mean you’re terrible with money.

Life comes with friction.

But patterns are worth noticing.

If you keep thinking:

I don’t want to feel this way anymore.

Instead of immediately judging yourself for it, get curious.

What exactly are you tired of?

What keeps feeling heavier than it should?

What are you still doing because you’ve always done it?

What are you afraid might happen if you chose differently?

And maybe the most useful question:

If I didn’t have to figure out the entire future today, what would I change next?

You don’t need a complete reinvention.

Sometimes you need one honest decision.

Maybe clarity is simpler than we make it

I used to think clarity meant seeing the whole road.

I don’t anymore.

Some of the best changes in my life started before I knew exactly where I was going. I just knew something didn’t fit anymore.

And I’ve learned that I don’t have to make the old thing bad to justify wanting something different.

I can be grateful for what a chapter gave me and still close it.

I can appreciate an old version of myself without needing to keep being her.

I can care about people and still change how I show up in relationships.

I can change my mind about what success looks like.

We’re allowed to outgrow things without resenting them.

So maybe the question isn’t What do I want to do with the rest of my life?

Maybe it’s simply:

What do I already know I don’t want anymore?

Start there.

You don’t need the whole road.

You just need enough clarity to take the next honest step.

The rest has a way of becoming clearer once you move.

With grace,

Vanessa