When we want more of something in our lives, sometimes the simplest way is all we need to get going?

If I want to restart this blog I’ll need lots of time. I’ll also need to update my website; it is so out of date. I also need to know how to properly use semicolons before I can confidently include them. 

Plus, when I used to blog I would give myself lots of time so I didn’t feel rushed and I could enjoy the process, then time to step away and to review it. But I have a call in less than an hour, so I can’t start it now, that wont be joyful. But then this afternoon do I really have that time to give? 

These were some of the thoughts I had on the cusp of writing this, my resuming blog post. The truth is often what we think we need to do something we want is in fact something we just think we need rather than what we actually need. Often what we want and how to do that is much simpler and can start with a much smaller step to the larger things we want. 

For example, I want to read more. With that aspiration my mind instantly jumps to the conclusion that I need to find at least an hour a day to read enough to make a difference. And so I begin trying to contort my time to enforce this hour of daily reading, most likely at the expense, or at least the diminishment, of something else I want and need to make reading happen. 

What are the other implicit expectations of this want to read? 

That reading must be books and my success will be in books read, which in turn fuels the assumption that I need significant time, every day, to fulfil this want.

The simpler reality is that I want to read more things, things that I am curious about or that interest me. Those things could be books, they could also be articles or blog posts or newsletters or reviews or recipes or blurbs.

In this simpler reality, the thing that will therefore make the biggest difference to my want to read more is simply to read. To commit in a moment, or to a time (no length specified) to just read for as long as I can. And in this case ‘can’ could be anything: attention span, time, the length of the article, until I am interrupted or caught.And so back to the want to write blogs. 

What do I want? 

I want to regularly write and share blogs, because I enjoy it and it is important for me to share my work because I care about the difference what I do aims to make.

What do I expect or assume I want and/or need to do this?

I need to write a weekly blog post that is interesting and inspiring for other people, and to do this I need interesting, intelligent and inspiring ideas and time to make them interesting, intelligent, inspiring and insightful. I most likely need quite a lot of words and to review it several times. 

What do I most simply want? 

To share me and what I do through writing about what interests and inspires me.

Given what I most simply want, what do I need? 

To write (at least once a week) about something that interests me, to review it and to share it. 

So in its simplest form:

What is it we really need to most simply do the thing we want in some way?

It isn’t to say that by simply doing the thing in some way we will get the joy of doing it in the way we most want but we will generate some momentum that moves us closer to what we want in the way we most want it than if we do absolutely nothing. Plus, we can celebrate the simple fact we did something we wanted in some way.

Conclusions (because I want to share ideas interesting to me and don’t need to wondrously weave them into un-signposted prose gracefully flowing with insight)

Bringing what we want into our lives, like big change, can start small and simple. 

In seeking the simplest form of what we want, we find what is at the heart of it and release ourselves from what we think is the only, and almost always not the simplest, way of doing what we want.

Sometimes contrary to what our initial thoughts on the thing we want may assume, the easiest way to create a change can be the smallest and simplest version of the thing. 

In its simplest and smallest form doing what we want becomes unconstrained by the constraints of practicalities.

I want to exercise more.

Move in some way, do 10 of something today and then tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.

I want to connect with people more.

Then simply talk to people you see, send someone you know a message, send someone different you know a message every day. 

With that in mind, what is the simplest version of what we want and what would doing that look like? 

If we simplify doing the things we want so we have more of them in our lives, what else can simplicity bring us?  

What world would we create if we all simply did just a little bit more of what we really want?