Every Thursday I meet with a group of four high school juniors to help them with their personal statements for college. One of the scholars was a closed book and it took some coaxing and prying to get her to open up. I asked her, “What do you like to do? What do you enjoy? What are you proud of?” Her answer to every one of these questions was, “I don’t know. I never thought about it.” Sometimes, we are taught to care for others at the expense of caring for ourselves. We don’t carve out space to ponder, “What do I want?” In other cases, we are told our opinions and ideas don’t matter.

I can relate to this. I was never encouraged to think about myself, my ideas, or to advocate for myself. I had to be considerate, think of others, do what was best for the group, and do as I was told (the expectation was to obey my elders and people in authority, never question or challenge).

Now as I try to grow my business, my biggest hurdle is not knowing what I want. Knowing what I want would provide clarity. I know I want to make an impact, do important work. But what does that look like? Other people in my group have financial goals (e.g. I want to earn $3M in three years), or authority goals (e.g. I want to be known as the pricing expert), etc. I don’t know what I want. It’s SO frustrating.