Saying Goodbye to My Inner Spice Girl

You’ve heard the song…

I’ll tell you want I want, what I really, really want!

I wanna,

I wanna,

I wanna,

I wanna,

I wanna, really really really wanna eat a whole pie…

In other words, I always want the things I definitely don’t need!

There’s no shame in wanting things, but I’m embracing a new mindset about the things that I want, and I owe it all to my 2-year-old.

For a few weeks, my daughter’s been in an “I want” stage. I didn’t even notice it until one of our close friends pointed it out.

“That’s new, isn’t it?” He asked while we were over for dinner. At the time, our newborn was less than 4 weeks old, I was barely sleeping, and we had just resumed our toddler’s normal routine after spending Thanksgiving with the grandparents. When he pointed it out, I looked at my toddler and really listened to what she was saying. Sure enough, he was right.

Every single sentence out of her mouth started with those 2 words. I want. I want fruit snacks. I want milk. I want to watch TV. I want to go outside. I want, I want, I want…

As a parent, my job is to train my children, so my immediate response when Bri says “I want” is to remind her that we ask for things nicely. So, I have to remind her basically every time she speaks. That’s parenting, I guess.

While this developmental stage can be trying, it did reveal something to me. I realized that I frequently act like my 2-year-old, but I don’t have a parent guiding me away from poor choices.

I know what I need, but there are days when it’s hard to remember because I’m busy chasing around a toddler who desperately needs to learn how to use the potty… And it’s those days where I give in to the things that I want. When I’m exhausted because my newborn didn’t sleep the night before, I want to plop down on the couch and scroll on my phone all day when I know I need to exercise. When I’ve had a long week, Sunday rolls around and I want to catch up on all my TV shows when I should be meal prepping for the week to come. I need to prioritize my marriage. I need to be a more present parent for my kids.

To some extent, we all know what we need to do, but very few of us are willing to do it. Why?

Because it requires sacrifice. We’d have to sacrifice our impulsive wants for our needs. And that’s so hard to do because there’s no immediate consequence for doing what you want. It’s easy to do what you want. It makes you feel happy, albeit for a short time. But the consequences always come, just later.

They come in your 50’s when you get diagnosed with a preventable disease. They come when your kids graduate and move out, and you look at your spouse and see a stranger. When you show up to work one day and realize you wasted most of your time doing something you’re not passionate about. Or when you wake up one day and realize your entire life has come and gone and you have nothing to show for it.

All because you never did what you NEEDED. You never prioritized your future because it meant sacrificing your comfort in the present.

I don’t want to settle for comfortable if it robs me of my future. Living with a mentality that’s always focused on the future is hard, but there are a few practical steps we can take to make sure we do the things we need, not just the things we want.

Step 1 – Assess Your Self-Control

When you boil it all down, the “I want” stage is so common amongst toddlers because they lack a key skill: impulse control. So, the first thing we need to do is assess how well we, as adults, control our impulses. Ask yourself some questions:

• How frequently do you do things that you DON’T WANT to do?

• What kinds of things are you doing every day that you DON’T WANT to do?

• How frequently do you do things that you know you SHOULDN’T do, but you do them anyways because you WANT to?

If you had little to say on the first 2 questions, but could think of loads of situations that fit into Question #3 (like eating a whole pie, for example), I’m right there with you. Maybe you were never taught true impulse control when you were younger. Maybe, like me, you were scared into submission as a child and adulthood functioned like an opportunity to do all the things you were never allowed to do.

I know I NEED to focus on my health and wellbeing. But I WANT to follow my daily food cravings and sit on the couch if I don’t feel like working out.

I know I NEED to spend time reading the Bible and getting closer to God. But sometimes I WANT to scroll on my phone instead.

I know I NEED to strengthen my marriage and spend more quality time with my husband. But sometimes all I WANT after a long day is to binge a TV show and pass out in bed.

Clearly I have very little self-control.

But I would bet that most of you reading this are in the same boat.

The sad thing is that these wants aren’t inherently bad, but they lead to bad outcomes. When I do what I want RIGHT NOW, I’m not doing it because I want to get sick and die, or fall away from God, or grow apart from my spouse, but ultimately that’s what could happen LATER. That’s the catch.

Every time you choose instant gratification, you gamble with delayed consequences.

Every action we take now dictates our life in the future, whether we are aware of those actions or not.

Carl Jung said:

 "Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

You are choosing the fate of your future every single day, you just might not realize it. When I had this epiphany, I wanted to scream. I’ve already wasted so much time doing things that derail or distract from the life I actually want for myself. If I really want to live that life, I have to be willing to make sacrifices today.

Step 2 – Assess Your Identity

It sucks because I’ve had the epiphany, but that doesn’t lead to immediate and lasting behavior change. Luckily, that’s not the immediate point. Once again, I’m brought back to the wisdom found in Atomic Habits, written by James Clear:

“Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. No single instance will transform your beliefs, but as the votes build up, so does the evidence of your new identity. This is one reason why meaningful change does not require radical change. Small habits can make a meaningful difference by providing evidence of a new identity. And if a change is meaningful, it is actually big. That’s the paradox of making small improvements.”

If you haven’t already, check out my previous posts about identity.

What you NEED to do is directly tied to who you NEED to be. Your identity. This is great news, because it means that you don’t have to fix every aspect of your life all at once to start seeing real change. You make small decisions every day (emphasis on EVERY DAY) that will help you start to believe in your new identity. Those decisions will lead to other small changes, and eventually every vote for your new identity will compound into exactly who you want to be.

The easiest way to start doing this? Begin measuring every single action you take against the ruler of your identity. Everything from when and how you get out of bed to what you do in your free time. Ask yourself:

Does this bring me closer to my identity, or pull me farther away?

You’ll start seeing all the places in your life that need realignment. And I’ve been there, it can be overwhelming. But don’t freak out! And don’t try to do everything at once.

Step 3 – Assess Your Consistency

The absolute, without a shadow of a doubt, most important thing to consider when you are building a lifestyle that prioritizes your future over your present is CONSISTENCY. Whatever you choose to do, whatever tasks you’re completing or steps you’re taking need to be done on a consistent basis. DAILY, if possible.

START SMALL. As small as waking up 5 minutes earlier. As small as journaling 1 sentence every day. We start small because if you can’t do the things consistently, you better prepare to end up right back where you started.

And if that happens, keep your head up and try again. Because it’s worth it.

Your dreams are worth it.

Your future is worth it.

I’ve come right back to the starting line many, many times. But I’ve discovered that it really doesn’t matter how many mistakes you make in life or how many times it knocks you on your ass. All that matters is that you’re willing to keep going. Eventually, you build resilience, you progress, and those big mistakes become minor setbacks, the falls become stumbles.

Just keep going.