There’s a moment that shows up in coaching all the time. A client sits down, you ask what they want to work on, and they hesitate, not because nothing matters, but because too much matters. They may say, “I don’t know what I want,” or they’ll name something that sounds sensible but strangely lifeless. A promotion. A new relationship. More money. A bigger house. A “fresh start.” And hovering behind it is the question they may not know how to ask yet: Is this what I want… or is this what I’m supposed to want?

That tension is the heart of self-knowledge. Because desire isn’t simple. It isn’t always rational. It isn’t always chosen. And it isn’t always even yours in the way you think it is.

In our CLCI Live discussion, Lisa Finck (MCC), Anthony Lopez (MCPC), and Jen Long (PCC) explore a problem that feels philosophical but shows up in very practical ways: how do you tell the difference between an authentic desire and a borrowed one? Is it important to know the difference? And does knowing what we want actually matter, especially when life is unpredictable, hard, or full of obligations?

For life coaches, this topic matters on both sides of the coaching relationship. Clients often arrive stuck because they’re trying to pursue a goal that doesn’t fit them, or they’re pursuing something that does fit them but they feel guilty admitting it. Coaches, too, are not immune to “borrowed wants”, especially in a profession where it’s easy to compare business models, marketing styles, income claims, and credentials. The result is often the same: motion without meaning, effort without satisfaction, and a quiet feeling of, “Why doesn’t this feel like I thought it would?”

Wants, Needs, and the Problem of “I Should Want This”

One of the clarifying threads in the conversation was the difference between wants and needs. A simple way to frame it is this: a need is a desire that becomes non-negotiable. You can ignore it for a while, but eventually it demands attention. A want is a desire you can delay, negotiate with, or even walk away from.

The complication is that humans don’t behave like tidy diagrams. People sometimes chase wants at the expense of needs. You can see this in addiction, in burnout, and in relationships where someone keeps sacrificing sleep, health, peace, or safety for a craving, a pattern, or an approval they can’t stop reaching for. That’s why “just figure out what you want” can be misleading advice, because sometimes, what a person wants in the moment is not what supports their well-being in the long run.

And yet wants aren’t automatically frivolous. Wanting love, belonging, purpose, meaning, freedom, stability, creativity, these can be the most profound and sustaining desires of a client, often sitting at the intersection of survival and identity. A person can be struggling financially and still want dignity. A person can be overwhelmed and still want connection. A person can be stable and still feel empty.

So the coaching question becomes less “Are wants good or bad?” and more: What is this want doing for you? What is it protecting? What is it promising?

The “Why” Behind the Want: What You Really Want When You Want That

A lot of surface wants are proxies. People say they want money, but what they’re reaching for might be safety, freedom, status, control, relief, or the ability to stop feeling behind. People say they want a relationship, but what they may truly want is steadiness, being chosen, being seen, or finally having proof that they are lovable. People say they want to quit their job, but what they may truly want is breathing room, autonomy, or the ability to stop betraying themselves every morning.

This is why one of the most powerful tools a coach has is the simplest one: gentle, repeated curiosity. Questions like these may help you get to the core desires of a client who feels lost and needs direction:

• Why do you want that?

• What would that give you?

• What problem would that solve?

• What would change in how you feel day to day?

• If you got it, what would become possible?

• If you never got it, what are you afraid that would mean about you?

  
  

When done well, these questions don’t interrogate the client. They give the client permission to descend into the deeper layers of their own motivation. Most people don’t know what they want because they’ve never had a safe environment to think out loud long enough to find out.

Values and Desires: Which Comes First?

Our conversation also wrestled with something clients often sense but don’t articulate: values and desires don’t always line up neatly, and it’s not always obvious which one leads.

Sometimes a person says their values guide their wants: “I value health, so I want to eat better.” Sometimes it’s the other direction: someone wants something first, then builds a values-story around it: “I want this lifestyle, so I’m going to call it ‘freedom’ or ‘self-care’ or ‘alignment.’” And sometimes the truth is messier: thoughts, feelings, desires, values, habits, hormones, and social influence all bump into each other in different orders depending on the day.

From an ICF coaching perspective, the point isn’t to win a debate about chicken-and-egg. The point is to help the client identify what is actually operating in their system. What do they repeatedly choose? What do they repeatedly avoid? What do they feel proud of? What do they defend? What do they justify? These are clues—often more honest than someone’s first “value statement.”

A practical distinction that helps in coaching is to treat values as the “conceptual spheres” someone organizes life around, e.g. family, achievement, growth, faith, security, community, creativity, integrity, nature, autonomy; while on the other hand, desires as the specific pulls and behaviors that show up inside those spheres. A client might say they value family, but the desire underneath may be approval, peacekeeping, belonging, or the fear of being cast out.

Does Knowing What We Want Even Matter?

It matters, but not because it guarantees happiness. Knowing what you want doesn’t mean life becomes easy. It means your effort stops scattering.

When clients don’t know what they want, they tend to default to what’s rewarded: what gets praise, what avoids conflict, what looks impressive, what seems “normal.” They may stay busy for years without feeling fulfilled. Then, when they finally slow down, they feel a kind of quiet grief, not always for what they lost, but for what they never chose.

Knowing what you want matters because it increases agency. It helps clients make trade-offs consciously instead of resentfully. It also helps them endure hardship with more resilience. When someone has a purpose or value that transcends immediate comfort such as care for family, service, contribution, integrity, creative expression, spiritual meaning, the grind becomes more endurable because it belongs to a bigger story.

This isn’t limited to “people who have everything together.” If anything, purpose and values can be most important when life is hard, because they give suffering a context that isn’t just “endure this for nothing.”

How Coaches Help Clients Find What They Want

In ICF coaching, the work is not to tell clients what they should want. It’s to help them hear themselves.

That often means slowing down the urge to “solve” and instead creating enough safety for honesty. Clients may not name what they want because they feel embarrassed, selfish, unrealistic, or afraid of judgment. Or they may have so many wants that they can’t prioritize. Or they may have learned that wanting leads to disappointment, so they’ve trained themselves not to want at all.

Coaching helps clients move from vague to specific. From “I want to be better” to “What does better look like in behavior?” From “I want success” to “What kind of success, in what area, at what cost?” From “I don’t know what I want” to “What do you wish were different, by even 5%?”

Sometimes the most useful entry point is not the shiny goal, but the friction: what they keep complaining about, what keeps repeating, what they keep tolerating, what they keep postponing. Those patterns usually contain a desire, either for change, or for protection, or for belonging, or for peace.

Thank you,

Jen Long (PCC), Anthony Lopez (MCPC), and Lisa Finck (MCC)

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