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"The number one reason most people don’t get what they want is that they don’t know what they want."  (A quote from T. Harv Eker of Peak Potentials Training.) 

However, knowing what you want is not always so simple.  Even when we think we know what we want, we often have other conflicting and unconscious wants that keep us stuck. There are some ways to begin tackling the very huge issue of knowing what you want (if you really want to :-).

Pay attention to your language.  It contains clues about what you really want and expect.  

Watch for desires stated negatively, such as  " I don't want..."  When you hear that, you have bumped into an illusory desire.  It's not what you really want but what you want to avoid.  It is also a red flag for a lot of unconscious desires that are silently at work making your life, as it already is, happen for you.  

They show up as more desires to avoid every experience that could result in the one you wish to avoid.  Not only are they usually in conflict with what you really want, but every time you desire to avoid something, you actually diffuse your creative attention from what you really would have desired and perhaps thought you desired.  

Huge amounts of our continually active mind power and energy are devoted to fulfilling our avoidance desires (Ultimately impossible).  All that just creates Mind and life clutter.

Avoidance desires eventually become positive desires that don't fulfill as we intended them to.  For example:  "I want to be in business for myself...(so I can avoid corporate culture, bad bosses, office politics...)".  That desire is doomed to fail in its intended purpose of creating avoidance.  

In fact that business is probably doomed to failure unless the entrepreneur manages to re-focus his avoidance desire into a concrete desire for a successful business outcome of some sort. 

If you want to expose some of the conflicting hidden desires, complete the following statement:  

I don't want... because it will...  
(Think of as many answers as you can.)  

Each of the avoidance desires that you discover is diminishing your capacity to fulfill what you really want or what you think you want.  This process can be very enlightening at several levels.

Get into the habit of catching yourself saying or thinking what you don't want.  (I strongly urge you to engage family or friends to help with this.)  When you catch yourself, immediately think about what you actually DO want (no negatives).  

This is a very useful skill if you are communicating to children or employees, where their task is to follow your instructions or perform a function for you.  Every statement of what you don't want diffuses the instruction unless it is immediately associated with a clear statement of what you do want.  

Even then, you will notice that often the listener attends to the avoidance statement more than the positive statement (just like you unconsciously tend to do when listening to yourself).

Wishing you clarity in knowing what you want.