What Does Your Soul's Desire Look Like in 200 Years?

The Iroquois Nation had a governing principle that I have spent the second half of my life trying to practice: that every significant decision should be made with seven generations in mind. Not the next quarter. Not the next election cycle. Seven generations — roughly 200 years.

I call it 200-year thinking, and it changes everything about the question of what you truly want.

Here's why. When we ask ourselves "What do I want?" in the present tense, we almost always get a short-horizon answer. We want comfort, security, recognition, relief from whatever is currently causing us discomfort. These are legitimate wants. They are not, however, the deepest ones.

Shifting from Short-Term to Long-Term Desires

When we ask ourselves, "What do I want in a way that will still matter in 200 years?" — something shifts.

The petty wants fall away. The status-seeking wants fall away. The wants that were really just anxiety management fall away.

What remains is almost always about love, meaning, legacy, and the specific contribution that only you — with your particular history, gifts, and perspective — can make.

I know what I want my 200-year impact to be. I want the Four Dreams Movement to have planted something that outlasts me — a way of thinking about the second half of life that helps people stop chasing someone else's definition of success and start living their own authentic, meaning-full story. I want my grandchildren's grandchildren to be the kind of people who ask the deep questions, who practice 200-year thinking themselves, who know that wealth is a means and meaning is the end.

That is a 200-year want. It gives me direction every single day.

The 200-Year Test: A Practice for Authentic Living

Here is the practice I suggest: Take the thing you think you want. Whatever it is — the retirement plan, the business idea, the relationship you're building, the legacy you're considering. Now ask: Will this matter in 200 years? Not in the sense of being famous , but in the sense of having been genuinely, beautifully worth doing?

If the answer is yes, that is important information. Your soul's authentic desire almost always passes the 200-year test, because authentic desires are almost always oriented toward love, contribution, and meaning, which are the only things that actually propagate across centuries.

The wants that fail the 200-year test — the status-seeking, the approval-chasing, the image-tending — are not signs of a bad person. They are human. But they will not give your life its deepest satisfaction.

What would your 200-year self want you to choose today? What would be worth doing even if no one alive now will remember it?

That is the soul's question. And when you answer it honestly, you discover that you already knew what you wanted. You just needed the longer view to trust it.

I'd love to hear your thoughts. Contact me here.