This is the fifth guest post by Jean S., who is sharing her experience of participating the 6-week What Do You Want? course. She previously wrote about week 1, week 2, week 3, and week 4.

Now that we have gone through the entire four-week list of “What I really want is…” entries, sorting all the answers into as many categories as we seem to have, we are learning what kinds of things Big-Picture Wants are. Some things seem so important that they must be BPW’s, but upon reflection we find we can unpack them further—by asking again: why? Most of what we do gets us something, hopefully something positive, but is what we think we get out of it the real reason we find it worthwhile to do ?

Big-Picture Wants are the “ends,” the motivators of all our consciously determined behavior. They are not the automatic urges of System 1, the unconscious.

Probing reflection is a tool we use a lot here. Writing to answer the question why? sometimes leads to unexpected results. For instance, here is one of mine: To the question, “What is one thing you really want?” I answered: To have enough income so we don’t have to worry about money.

• Why? To be able to discharge our responsibilities to our children.
• Why? It is the right thing to do. My husband and I took on the assignment of helping these boys grow and learn and launch onto the seas of life.
• Why? The job of parents is to “show them the ropes” of life–even in the world of nature.
• Why? We want them to find that which makes them sing in their hearts, to be good, decent human beings, able and willing to help others and contribute to the world while supporting themselves.

This is a somewhat simplistic and incomplete exploration. I stopped there, yet can see it could have gone farther. The surprise for me is to see that while the One Thing I was probing was the desire to have more money, much of what I explain in the exploration of it either has nothing to do with money or has been accomplished without our having much money, anyway. Funny how I mislead myself without knowing I have done that.

Your Big-Picture Wants, by the way, are not some list Joycelyn or someone else came up with. They are YOURS. Once we will have identified at least most of our Big-Picture Wants, then we can use goals, habits, and intentions as the means to getting our Big Picture Wants.

For sure I can see that more money is not a Big-Picture Want. What we may want the money for, though, can point us to some Big-Picture Wants. The goal of “enough money not to have to worry about money” is a means to the ends, perhaps, of Love, Joy, Contribution, Purpose, and several others I can think of.