2021-03-23 Managing Your Desires Will Make You Happier

When you want something, you can choose to work on one of two objectives:

1. Getting the thing.
2. No longer wanting it.

Many of the outcomes we initially think we want end up being attached to actions we, in hindsight, don’t want to have taken. They’re desires risen from our ego, with no clear reasoning of why it matters we attain them, and so, often, it doesn’t.

Here are 3 ideas on how you can work on wanting something less.

Desire Stacking

If you get your desires in the right order, you’ll often realize a more important one supersedes your fleeting want of the day. You can use big, life-defining desires to squash smaller, irrelevant ones.

Let’s call this desire stacking. If a current, short-term desire is just a distraction on your way to a bigger one, you stack the bigger one on top of it and thus make it disappear. Poof! Gone.

Use your true desires — the ones that’ll define how you’ll have lived your life — to clear out all the little ego-boost milestones that, in the grand scheme of things, don’t matter.

Delay Until Expiry

Sometimes, I delay opening a carton of milk because I know, over the next few days, I won’t use it all. Unfortunately, I occasionally do that until the whole carton expires.

When you do the same with your lesser desires, that’s not wasteful, it’s smart. Delay cashing in your chips a little longer, and with each passing day, you’ll show yourself that, actually, you’re doing just fine without a new handbag.

Every now and then, however, you’ll find the desire just expires. You no longer want the reward because the person who set out to chase it is a different person from who you are today. That is true growth.

The Unfreedom of Desire

Finally, and this may be the best way to want less, you can remind yourself of the freedom you currently have without your desired object or milestone — and how much more freedom you’ll have if you don’t start worrying about it in the first place.

Right now, I may not have a Ferrari, but I also don’t have to pay its expensive insurance. I don’t have to buy gas, stress about parking spots, and I’m never anxious about damaging something I don’t own.

I promise to be unhappy until I get a Ferrari. I promise to be unhappy until I have a partner. I promise to be unhappy until I make $10,000/month. These sound ridiculous, don’t they?

You’re already free to be happy! Make use of that freedom. No one forces you to sign such contracts. Desire is all in your head. Don’t put yourself in shackles.