I'm not telling anyone "Do what you want!" per se, and many people don't have a clear picture of what they want (of course most people just want simple things:

I'm not telling anyone "Do what you want!" per se, and many people don't have a clear picture of what they want (of course most people just want simple things: they want to be loved most of all, to feel good about themselves, to feel safe, and to be free of stress and anxiety). Instead I'm saying that even if you are, like me, a person who could write down exactly what you want, from the scale of your lifetime down to how you would like to spend each morning and evening, that clarity doesn't actually enable you to do any of those things. I would love to wake up each morning and exercise for 20 minutes, cook a healthy breakfast with a small pot of tea, read the New York Times, and then watch the sun rise. But I cannot do it. Not because it's hard, or because of its existential absurdity, or because it would require something that I don't have. I can't do it because my subconscious has other motives, like the motive to stay in bed until the anxiety of scheduled events compel me to leave it. Psychology, in my opinion, does not seem designed for contemporary life, which makes many people's lives much more difficult than they need to be.