You know what everyone else needs.
What do you want?
You spend your days providing, fixing, and showing up for everyone else. When it comes to what you want from your own life, where do you start? This book helps you put your answer on paper, look at all six rooms of your life, and choose one step you can take this week.
A CHECK-IN
This Book Is For You If...
This Book Is Not For You If...
- You have it all figured out.
- You want the how before the why.
- You’re hoping someone will tell you what to want.
- You want another book to read and nothing to change.
- You want more, and you’d rather not ask what it’s for.
THE QUESTION
When did someone last ask you what you want?
The assignment sounds simple: one question, forty-five minutes, and a blank page. What do you want? You might expect to be done in ten. Try answering without listing what everyone else needs from you.
You may know what your company needs. What your kids need. What your wife needs from you. But take those responsibilities off the page for a moment. What do you want your life to look like?
You don't need a polished answer to start. You need room to ask the question honestly.
“You are writing your eulogy right now. You're still holding the pen.”
AN EXAMPLE, NOT A TEMPLATE
Your answer can fit in five sentences.
What I want is to walk with God on Tuesdays, not just Sundays.
I want to be my wife's best friend and the first call my kids make.
I want to work with people I enjoy and make complicated things simple.
I want to be a pipe, not a bucket, with what I've been given.
And I want to laugh often, walk my own trail, chase grandkids, and keep five friends who answer at 2 a.m.
Your answer doesn't have to sound like this. These are my five sentences, not instructions for your life. Use them to see what's possible, then write something that sounds like you.
A WAY TO BUILD
A house, not a wish list.
Most plans start with the goal. Twenty pounds. Fifty thousand dollars. That skips the question underneath: what would that make possible, and why does it matter to you?
You'll work through it in order. Why, then want, then goal: what your life is for, what you want in it, what you'll do about it. A wish list takes anything you write on it. A house makes you say what a room is for before you furnish it.
A life isn't a peak you bag. It's a place you keep.
A HOUSE YOU CAN DRAW ON A NAPKIN
Your life has six rooms.
Which one needs your attention?
Download The Blueprint
Leave your email to get the free Blueprint and start putting your answer on paper.
You don’t have to fix everything at once. Start with one room and one step you can take this week.
The Foundation
Your why. One sentence about what your life is for. Not a goal or another obligation. Something you can come back to when a hard season makes your choices less clear.
The Six Rooms
Faith, Family, Fitness, Fuel, Finances, Fun. Six F's you can remember when life gets loud. Every room gets the same four questions: why it matters, what you want here, who you're becoming, who it's for.
The Roof
Your code: three to five principles that help you decide what to say yes to. You'll name what comes first when two good things compete for your time.
The Six Rooms
Click any room to focus on its guiding diagnostic question
WHEN YOU FINISH
What you'll walk away with.
One page, in your handwriting, that runs your next year.
My Blueprint
Fill it in from the work you’ve already done. In pencil, because you’ll rewrite it.
What's inside.
Sixteen short chapters in four parts, plus the Teach Kit. You'll finish each chapter with one thing to do that week.
The front porch
The question, the funeral, and the house you can draw on a napkin.
The foundation
Whose voices you've been living by, what you're rushing through, your why, and what your calendar and bank statement actually say.
The rooms
Faith, Family, Fitness, Fuel, Finances, Fun. Four questions in each, and one action.
The build
Your answer in five sentences, a plan for one room, and how to keep the house standing.
Pay it forward
The Teach Kit: a napkin sketch, a fifteen-minute script, and three questions to walk another man through it.
This book is about what you want. For the how, it points you to the best books on each room.
THE STORY BEHIND THE BOOK
The Story Behind What Do You Want?
Alan Briggs (left), the man who asked the question that started this whole thing. And, this is us at the retreat.
If this question stays with you after you close the page, you don't have to figure it out alone. That's why this book exists. At a leadership retreat, Alan Briggs gave us forty-five minutes to answer it. I expected to be done in ten. I left with a page of crossed-out words.
It took me three years to answer it. Books, movies, studies on meaning and regret, conversations with my wife and coaches, and a hospice certification helped me understand what mattered. That page in my Moleskine became twelve pages I still revisit every year.
You don't need to repeat those three years of searching. The book puts the steps in order so you can do the work in your own life: write your answer, choose a room, and give your first step a place on the calendar.
I'M MIKE RUMAN
About me
You don't need to have your life figured out to begin. I'm a dad of four, and I wrote this while working through the question myself, not after finding a perfect answer.
I earned my accounting degree from Michigan State and started at a CPA firm in Toledo. MMA led me to build a media company. Today I own two marketing companies in Colorado, and I had my first sanctioned fight at thirty-nine. I wrote The Five Doors and The Healthy Dad's Playbook, and founded Healthy Dads.
TAKE THE PENCIL BACK
Make room for your answer.
One question. Six rooms. A plan you can start this week.
Know when the book launches.
Leave your email to be notified when What Do You Want? is available.
Nonfiction, life design. Faith-forward.
About 20,000 words. Two sittings. Sixteen chapters.
Paperback and ebook, coming soon.
QUESTIONS