Summary
Joe explores the critical importance of owning your wants. Most people are at war with their desires—they want things but don’t feel they’re allowed to have them. This internal war creates codependence, resentment, self-sabotage, and prevents people from achieving what they want.
The key insight is that wanting itself is not the problem. “Wanting is aliveness.” The problem arises when we can’t be with the feeling of wanting—when we either suppress it or become attached to solving it. Craving (needing to make the wanting go away) causes suffering, not wanting itself.
When people who got what they wanted still implode, it’s usually because they were at war with having it. Lottery winners go bankrupt not from bad luck, but from an internal war with that level of success.
Key Concepts
- Wanting is aliveness
- Being at war with your wants creates self-sabotage
- Owning your wants means being okay with having them
- The difference between craving and wanting
- Codependence comes from not owning your wants
Key Quotes
“Wanting is aliveness.”
“There’s nothing that you do that isn’t based in a want.”
“If you have a war with your wanting, it really makes it harder to achieve the thing that you want.”
“When you own your want, you have to own the fact that it’s okay for you to have it. And most people, a lot of what they want, they’re actually not okay to have.”
“Craving a billion dollars and getting it is almost as painful as craving a billion dollars and not getting it.”
“The wanting itself is quite enjoyable. Could you imagine if I was to say to you, okay, for the rest of your life, you can have sex, but you’re not allowed to want it?”
“I’m not allowed to want this thing, but I want it. There’s a lot of war that comes with that.”
“The most important thing is to feel wanting. To allow yourself to have the physical emotional experience of wanting. To just sit in that, to bathe in that, to savor that feeling.”
Transcript
I’m not allowed to want this thing, but I want it. There’s a lot of war that comes with that. When you own your want, you have to own the fact that it’s okay for you to have it. And most people, a lot of what they want, they’re actually not okay to have.
There’s nothing that you do that isn’t based in a want. Wanting is aliveness. How much would those people’s lives change if they could just be inside their wanting? Everything would change. To really be able to understand and feel and speak your wants cleanly can absolutely change lives.
So what is it that’s making it hard for so many people to be with their wants and their wanting? The first thing is that people think about wants as objects but the more key piece is that wanting—wanting to feel wants—is to feel. It’s an emotion. And so I can have the experience of sadness and I can have the experience of wanting.
Usually what I notice is that people either have access to the feeling of wanting—they can feel it without resistance—or they don’t have access to the feeling of wanting. They either can’t notice that they’re feeling it or they feel with so much resistance they feel like they’re bad for having it.
Typically the reason was that their parents or caregivers taught them that their job was to satisfy the caregiver’s wants rather than the caregiver’s job was to satisfy their wants. When the cycle of the caregiver taking care of the wants of the child happens, then everything seems to work out fine. But when it’s the child’s job to take care of the wants of the caregiver, that’s when everything gets all turned around and a lot of disturbance happens psychologically.
So what happens when somebody is not good at owning their wants? If I was told as a child that my job was to take care of my parents, then I’m not good at feeling my wants, but I also think that the road to happiness is taking care of others. So there’s usually a tremendous amount of codependence going on. There’ll be a lot of taking responsibility for other people’s happiness.
Codependence means resentment is created. That’s the biggest thing that happens when people don’t own their wants.
The other thing that happens is they have a hard time getting the life that they want. If a person’s like, “Actually, it’s perfectly great for me to want to be a billionaire. I have no problem, no shame, no embarrassment. I just think it’s fantastic that I want to be a billionaire.” I would put my money on that person becoming a billionaire much quicker than somebody who can’t own that desire.
If you have a war with your wanting, it really makes it harder to achieve the thing that you want.
The other thing is that people ask for their wants sideways. Instead of saying, “Hey, I would really like this,” they’ll try to please you to get it or they’ll assume that you know it or they’ll ask for it in a really mean way because they were wanting it for the last two weeks but they didn’t get it. It disturbs the communication between people and therefore the relationship starts to fall apart if people can’t own what they want with one another.
If I see a marriage that’s falling apart, one of the things I guarantee is that nobody has set forth recently what they want in the marriage.
People who think that desire is the root of suffering—I think there’s some mistranslation. Craving and aversion are the root of suffering. But wanting is aliveness.
Craving is an obsessive wanting. It’s like I want something and I don’t feel like I’m going to be complete without it. I do not feel like I am going to be safe without it. That causes suffering. But wanting? Totally natural.
The more you own your want, the less the want hooks you. If you can be all the way in the want, the feeling of wanting is quite lovely. It’s when you can’t be with or in that wanting, when you’re right outside of it needing to solve it—that’s craving. Trying to make the wanting go away either through aversion or through craving is the thing that causes the suffering.
If you love running a company, you’ll be successful. If you are running a company to get rich, you may or may not be successful. You definitely won’t be as successful. Same thing with art. If you love art for the sake of art, great. If you think that getting what you want is going to create any kind of happiness in your system that lasts more than like 2 minutes, then you’re in craving.
Wanting anything is actually quite enjoyable. Could you imagine if I was to say to you, okay, for the rest of your life, you can have sex, but you’re not allowed to want it? That’s terrible. That’s life. If you don’t get to want, you’re pulling a lot of the joy out of life.
How much would those people’s lives change if they could just be inside their wanting? Everything would change. The people who have been famous and happy for over two or three decades—they seem pretty clear on their wants. The people who implode? There’s a great way to look at it: “I’m not allowed to want this thing, but I want it.” There’s a lot of war that comes with that.
I see people who got what they wanted, but they felt like they didn’t deserve it or they felt like they were wrong for wanting it. Then it all implodes on them. I can count a dozen situations where somebody I know is worth over 100 million dollars and went down to 5 million out of just mistakes that they were way too smart to have made—just because they had an internal war with that level of success.
That’s why it happens so much in lottery winners. Like 90% of lottery winners of over 100 million are bankrupt inside of two or three years. It’s because they were at war with having that money. So of course it went away.
That equates to relationships too. I can’t tell you how many people I know who have blown up what would be a great relationship because they don’t feel like they deserve the love, because they can’t actually own the want.
When you own your want, you have to own the fact that it’s okay for you to have it. And most people, a lot of what they want, they’re actually not okay to have. They can’t live in the world of having it. Or they’re just so identified with chasing it that the identity shift would be too big.
If somebody is listening to this and they realize they’re in a war with desire, the most important thing is to feel wanting. To allow yourself to have the physical emotional experience of wanting. To just sit in that, to bathe in that, to savor that feeling. Do it without even having a subject at first. Just feel what it is to want.