Yes, I want that vs. No, I don’t want that – both make a choice, both are expressions of inner thought. Ponder it for a moment… How does it feel when you say to yourself, “Yes. I want that. That is what I want.” And then try on for size the feel of saying to yourself, “No. I do not want that.”

Vanilla or chocolate? Do you tend to point at the chocolate and say, “Chocolate’s for me!” Or do you tend to point at vanilla and say, “Nope, don’t like vanilla.” Or…perhaps your thoughts and voice go along the lines of, “Oohh, chocolate, I want that! I don’t like vanilla.”

We make choices every day, voicing and experiencing our preferences. The ability to choose is one of our most precious gifts. And one of our greatest experiences of that gift is our freedom to choose how we focus in on those preferences.

Our natural, life force tendency is to align with that which we want. Life is an inclusionary energy. It wants to know and experience the next great thing we desire. To focus on what we don’t want, on what we want to exclude, is to clench down on that life force. We actually end up spending some time experiencing that which we don’t want by choosing to think about how icky it would be! It may only be in our minds, but it is still an experience that effects our bodies and our moods.

Our mind’s tendency is to pattern match in order to insure safety. The mind suspends inclusion until it can confirm safety – and it pulls from all kinds of things to do so. What happened last time you chose X. What are your parent’s and other’s opinions about X, and about Y? And maybe even Z! Maybe none of them is right to want! Your mind tries to zero in on the perfect match that includes your desire, plus what you Should do according to (insert parents, peers, religion, society, anything you feel is important enough to consider while making this particular choice, here).

“I will not include that, I will not receive that, until I know it is safe/good/right,” says the mind. “What you actually want is only part of the equation. I’m here to keep you/me safe despite all those things you want and probably shouldn’t want, and if you know what’s good for you (oh irony) you’ll let me do my job and analyze all of the possibilities first.”

We are not, however, at the whim of our minds. Our mind is a tool, one for us to use to create new and interesting experiences for ourselves. The mind’s pattern matching process is based on fear of the unknown. Its intention is to analyze all that has gone before, so that it can accurately predict what will happen if a particular choice is made. In other words, it loves to spend time in Ugh-ville, because its current programming runs on the idea that it’s doing a good job keeping you safe by doing so. It must save you from yourself, and it gets so tired doing so!

Our minds have become so busy with pattern matching that we more often than not don’t use them for what they were really made for in this day and age – creating the life of our dreams via inclusionary choosing in our day to day thought-chatter. Instead we tend to run ourselves ragged (literally), making sure we don’t accidentally want what we shouldn’t want.

We’ve come to a point in our evolution that we can begin to trust our desires. Little by little, by focusing on what we want, we will learn to trust our natural inclusionary tendencies. The mind will be there to make sure we don’t walk in front of a bus on our way to our desire – it won’t go away while we’re not looking.

It will take time to build a new habit. To free ourselves to want, free from the exclusionary ‘but what if?’ experiences of the fear-based mind. The mind will slowly be re-programmed to function in an inclusionary fashion, shifting the fear based ‘but what if?’ experience into a passion building inclusion based ‘but what if?!’

We can do it. We are doing it! It feels good to do it. Just think…”What if!?”

What do you want? A good hint, believe it or not, is what thrills yet scares you.