As you have probably found out the hard way, you cannot take people where they do not want to go. So, what happens when a client or friend says, “I don’t know what I want”?

People who have created companies worth millions tell me that. Or people who have been on a spiritual path for decades. Yet here they are at the first session of a transformational intensive. Two coaches, one participant, two days.

They must want something.

“I don’t know what I want” is a cover up. Sometimes, the true desire is covered beneath statements of apparent altruism, as in “I want to make this or that difference in the world.” Where you can tell it is still just a concept. Usually, when you poke around a bit, you find what is really being said is: “I dare not ask for what really matters most to me.”

The person does know what they want but they believe it cannot happen. They don’t think they deserve it. If they open to happiness, or new levels of success, pain will surely follow.

In all of us there is something for which we dare not ask.

When people are moving through crucial transitions, the key is a change in what they are going for in life. A deeper admission of what they really want. Typically, a person has spent most of their life going after a certain type of success; maybe developing an organization, money, being liked, even a spiritual concept. Then suddenly what seemed so important all these years starts to lose its luster.

As people graduate from their previously limited ideals of success, we can help by inquiring deeper and deeper with them into what they really want. We make it safe for them to speak what up till now they dared not ask. Recent examples of what people have dared to ask include: pure happiness, peace, freedom and truth. Not as concepts but as intense personal desire deeply, and often painfully felt. There is a quality of innocence they long to share with those close to them, ultimately with everyone and with the universe itself.

There comes a time for each of us when we are willing to go for what, up till now, we had dared not ask. What is that for you?