"Because we're trying to understand our lives to their entirety, we must understand, not just what we want, but also what we'll need to achieve, or have, in order to get there. While it's true that I can help you to find the life that you were born to live, and love, I also need to teach you how to find the tools necessary and needed to reach out, and grab that life for yourselves. The first step of this, is to know the rules, on how "the feeling" of reaching our goals, actually works. This requires that we note the rules of logical qualifiers for being fulfilled, as well as the emotional requirements for feeling fulfilled, because sometimes, sometimes and strangely often, your mind can reach all of the logical requirements needed to be happy, and still not emotionally realize it. Hence, the problems we now have with things like ungratefulness, impatience, and obesity.
It would be no good to have us reach our heaven, here on earth, if we still had no clue where we were, or that we had already made it, right? No one wants to be sitting on a pile of gold, and not be able to realize it or appreciate it. So let's start by noting that WHOs are the foundations for "emotionally based" decision making, but Whats are used for the "logically based" decision making. This means that once you know the difference between WHOs and Whats, the next step is to study the unique subject about the different uses, for both our WHOs, and our Whats.
Because wants are based on feelings of desire, and needs are based on logically imagined futures, the special thing about needs, is that you can need a What, but you cannot need a WHO (because Whats are logic based, and WHOs are not), and because of the fact that WHOs are purely emotion based, you can only want, and desire such a valuable thing.
All of the goals that you'll be working towards will sound like Whats, but the truth is, that at it's core, what you're really looking for, is a self transformation, from one form of your existence, to the next. From a mediocre, or terrible you, and the life you have, to better ones. Though some may mistake it for trading one life for the next, that metaphor is not entirely accurate, for many reasons, some of which we'll be describing in this book.
Now, you may be thinking that "logic based decisions are the only good decisions", and that you don't need to focus on your WHO anymore because your emotions will only blind you in future, but in truth, all decisions that we make, have to use a little bit of both logic and emotion. Funny enough, a lot of people believe that we only make good choices based on sound, logical reasons, but the truth is that no choice is purely logical, because they're value based. Think of it this way, the most common form people describe to me as being “purely logical”, is to list off all the pros and cons of any given choice (ie. its consequences and its traits, and so on), and to then choose the one with the best balance between those pros, and cons. There’s at least one big problem with this. And it’s pretty simple. How do you know which of the consequences are pros, and which ones are cons? No matter what your logic is, the decision is made as a way to trade your current present, for a different future. Why would you trade your present for a future that is less valuable? If it isn't less valuable, how do you know?
Let’s say that one of these consequences for your choice, one of you futures, was a 100% chance of death. Well then, it depends on how you feel about death. If you feel a desire to keep living, chances are that you fear death, as your WHO aligns with life, and has a very unlikely chance of aligning with its opposite. In such, you’d turn down this choice almost immediately. What if you’re suicidal, or simply don’t care if you die? Well, if the other items on the list are good enough, you might choose to complete this choice, based simply out of pure numbness. Better yet, if the items on the list are so valuable, that you’d even risk trading your life to have them come to fruition, you may happily, though with reservations, commit to completing this choice too, while maybe even going down in history as another famous, great martyr. Sometimes, people will feel that death is acceptable, or even wanted. Even death, something as seemingly terrible as death itself, may actually be a pro, depending on how you feel.
Some of you may be saying “but what about our survival instinct?”. It doesn’t matter. Our survival instinct may exist, but its way of achieving things, like many other psychological capabilities, relies on other, outside, portions of the brain. Your survival instinct doesn’t work alone.
Basically, you may have a survival instinct, but that instinct often communicates its needs through sensations. It makes you experience something so you know how to act. It may make your stomach growl in hunger, or it may give you the butterflies. It may make you sweat. It may make you shiver, but in the end, it must give you a sensation. In the case of death, often this sensation, is fear. And fear, my friends, is an emotion.
All these other sensations are made to make you feel an emotion as well, such as a desire for food, a cold drink, or to want to curl up under a warm blanket. Almost all experiences lead to emotion, even experiencing certain thoughts. Hence why, imagining any future experiences, or remembering past ones, is not necessarily pure logic. Make no mistake, emotions play a vital role in many of our everyday lives and activities. The progress and potential made by emotions is high in value, and should be appreciated accordingly. This means that your WHOs should be appreciated too, because WHOs are the source of all emotion. Keep in mind that your priorities are a choice, and so this also means that in order to understand What it is that you need in life (What should be prioritized for you, to feel both fulfilled and happy in the long run), you will still need to know your own WHO. Whatever your emotional desires are, there will always be logical requirements that need to be met, in order to eventually have them."
