Why is “What do you want?” so hard to answer?

My birthday is tomorrow. I’ll be 56 and I’m pretty excited about it. But birthdays come with a question that was SO much easier to answer when I was a kid: “What do you want?”

Ask a child what they want for their birthday and you may get an immediate, highly specific answer. Maybe several. Possibly with hyperlinks.

Ask an adult?

“Oh! I don't really need anything.”

“Don't worry about me.”

“I don't know.”

“Whatever you want.”

Somewhere between childhood and adulthood, wanting got complicated.

Part of that is practical. As adults, we're not just thinking about what we want. We're thinking about the other person's intentions, budget, capacity and expectations.

What can they afford? Is this too much to ask? What if they can't do it? What if they misunderstand? What if I tell them exactly what I want and then don't get it?

That's a lot of thinking for one birthday question.

But there's something else happening, too.

Our brains really like the status quo. Familiar is predictable, and predictable requires less work from us. Change introduces uncertainty.

And a want is, by definition, a desire for something to be different than it is right now.

I want a different job. I want a relationship. I want more help. I want to feel differently in my body. I want my family to treat me differently. I want to accomplish something I haven't accomplished yet.

Even saying it means acknowledging the distance between where I am and where I want to be.

And that can hurt.

Unless you've had the remarkable experience of every want you've ever expressed being perfectly understood and fulfilled, your brain has some evidence that wanting can lead to disappointment.

You can ask and hear no. You can try and fail. You can tell someone what would make you happy and discover they can't, or won't, give it to you. You can want two things that can't coexist and have to make a tradeoff.

So sometimes it's safer to say: “Oh, you don’t need to get me anything.”

This month, I want to talk about another side of resilience.

We spend a lot of time talking about the resilience we need when life gives us something we didn't want.

What about the resilience we need to go after something we DO want?

Before we talk about pursuing it, planning for it, risking rejection or figuring out whether it's worth the tradeoffs, I want to start somewhere much simpler.

Name it.

So, for my birthday, I'm asking you for something.

Reply to this email with one thing you want.

I won't tell anyone. Just practice being brave enough, and resilient enough, to say: I want ________.

There is value in naming it, even before you know what you're going to do about it.

All my best,

Dr. G