The courage to tap into your true desires

So what is it that you truly want? Do you actually know?

Most people know how to want “stuff” like a better job or a different house. It’s more difficult to tap into your truest desires, the things that are beyond the external stuff. It’s vulnerable. The courage to tap into your true desires can be a struggle because of this vulnerability. It’s a risk to want something, to truly and fully desire something.

To allow themselves the vulnerability of wanting their true desires feels like too big a risk, so most people hunt in search of lesser substitutes.

To stand fully in one’s power as deserving of one’s true desires feels so core-shaking terrifying, that we’ll come up with all manner of efforts to sabotage getting what we most desire.

Four Horseman of Substitute Desires

There are four big ways that we subvert our true desires, and instead put time and energy into substitute desires—the stuff that might look good on paper but not feel good to live, the stuff that might bring us a temporary thrill but no lasting fulfillment.

• You get the next best thing, instead of the thing that you really wanted. You tell yourself to be realistic, and you dumb down your vision for something more manageable, instead of the thing you really, truly wanted.

• You go after what you want, but stop short of getting to the finish line. You either quit before you can arrive at a state of completion, or you sabotage yourself from making it to the finish line through either perfectionism or phoning it in and not really working towards the true desire that you want. This then forces you to stay in that place of settling for the substitute desire.

• You work hard to achieve something, actually achieve it, and then you can’t enjoy it. We make the pursuit of something the work, instead of really letting ourselves be in the satisfaction of receiving the benefits of our hard work. This is a recipe for burnout.

• You feel only a fleeting flash of good before you are utterly bored by the desire. A huge sign that you haven’t hit on your true desire is that there’s no sense of lasting fulfillment. You initially feel fulfilled, then it quickly fades. There’s no sense of a foundation underneath you that will last. Yes, in time and as you evolve, your true desires will morph into something else. I’m not saying that your true desires will never change—I’m saying that an at-home box dye job should not be lasting longer than the feel-goods that you get from something you’ve worked for.

There are people who acquire things, putting endless amounts of time into the purchasing decision and fantasizing about how it’s going to affirm their life in some way. Tom Shadyac, movie director and creator of the documentary I AM, talks about working to afford a multi-million dollar mansion, and how he closed the door on the first day after the movers were gone and looked around his big house, suddenly confronted with a sense of deep emptiness.

These are all examples of someone putting a lot of energy into false substitutes, instead of going straight for the risk and the joy of True Desires.

The Courage to Tap into Your True Desires

I have some good news if you recognize yourself in any of what’s above: recognizing that you’re accepting hollow substitutes is honestly one of the hardest parts of the courage to tap into your true desires. It’s all the time wasted on those substitute desires that takes the most energy.

Once you realize that you’re putting time into the desires that aren’t your true desires, you get freed up to get honest:

What is it that I really, truly want?

If I could have it any way I want it, how would I want it?

If I had total control of my time and unlimited resources, how would I structure my days?

Assuming that I would want to work for the fun of it and not for the money, what would I want to do?

These are questions that you’ll want to put in a journal and then revisit over, and over, and over again. The same answers will tend to keep popping up, over and over and over again over the years. That points you in the direction of knowing what it is that you’re actually trying to craft, in this life.

Do Not Apologize for True Desire

One last thing: you have GOT to stop apologizing for what you want. You have GOT to stop talking yourself out of what you want, for fear that it’s too privileged, or too selfish, or too superficial, or whatever.

You are one human, one pinprick point among a constellation of humans. We are not all supposed to want the same things. We are not always supposed to want super deep and meaningful things. We are not all supposed to like the things that other people like or give those things/experiences the same value.

So you want to quit everything and be an intern in a fashion house because you’re obsessed with the art and theatre of it, even though you also know that fashion can contribute to landfill waste and that external appearances aren’t everything? Well, stop apologizing for that.

Someone else in the world desperately wants to be a doctor and falls asleep thinking about the different phases of cell replication.

We cannot know where our paths will end or what we will revolutionize along the way—but guaranteed, if you do not live a life of your own making, you will be miserable. The courage to go after your true desires means not just knowing what they are, but not apologizing for what they are.