Who do you want to be?

One of my favorite radio programs is NPR’s Hidden Brain.It’s a rare kind of show that invites you inward, back to the quiet spaces where real understanding lives.

In a recent episode, they explored something that feels so simple, yet so elusive: How do we figure out what we truly want to do with our lives? We are all born into a world already humming with expectations. Where to live, how to earn a living—these choices are rarely made in isolation. Parents, teachers, friends, society itself—they all nudge us, sometimes lovingly, sometimes unknowingly, onto paths that may not be our own.

Psychologist Ken Sheldon, who studies the science of authentic living, said something that stayed with me: "There are things we can do to make sure our choices align with our deepest values."

Some thoughts that stirred something in me during the podcast:

• So often, we choose the wrong goals for ourselves—not out of failure, but out of conditioning.

• We follow the loud voices of culture telling us what we should want, without stopping to ask what we want.

• We are immersed in a materialistic culture so deeply that it feels like the air we breathe.

• By the time we reach our twenties, the indoctrination is nearly complete.
  

And yet—there is another way.

The path of the artist offers a beautiful metaphor for self-discovery. Artists do not force answers into being. They listen. They wait. They trust.

Their creative process unfolds in four stages:

1. They ask a question.

2. They allow for an incubation period, letting the question settle deep inside.

3. Their non-conscious mind, that quiet underground river, works on the problem unseen.

4. And then—one day, the spark. The illumination. The Ah-ha! moment.

Discovering who you are is not a task to check off a list. It is an act of creation, a living conversation between your conscious questions and your soul’s whispered answers.

So I have begun to ask myself: "What do I really want?"

Not the surface answers. Not the ones handed to me by the world. But the ones that rise from the deep well within me, uncoaxed, like wildflowers breaking through stone.

The answer, they say, lies not in striving—but in listening. Ask your heart. Then trust it enough to be still. The real answers come softly, carried by the winds of your own becoming.

Link to podcast: https://hiddenbrain.org/podcast/what-do-you-want-to-be

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Source: NPR, Who Do You Want to Be? #SylvieAbate