What's worth wanting?

On copied desires, taste, and how to know what’s truly yours

Sorry for posting nothing recently, I took my last post too far!… I’m back with something…

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We feel happy when we get what we want, or when we want what we have.

Wanting what we have is all about enjoying this vs. chasing that. And that’s obviously important, because if you aren’t grateful for what you already have, what makes you think you would be happy with more?

But even if we do appreciate everything we have right now, all of us still have ambitions and wants for our life—things we’re still in the process of architecting and working towards. A place, feeling, and ideal situation to reach.

So, I want to talk about getting what we want. But first, do you actually want the things you think you want? The relatively easier part is making a plan to get it, the harder part is figuring out if it’s worth getting in the first place.

Because by default, we’re bad at knowing what we want.

So much so, there’s actually a psychological term for it: Mimetic Desire. And the theory goes that because we're bad at figuring out what we want on our own, we look to others’ to model our desires off—to tell us what’s worth wanting. We're copycats…wanting what we see other people wanting.

Except, we don’t realize we’re doing it.

How many people do you hear telling you what you should care about. How to live. How to build a good career. What to buy. When to have kids. How to invest. Who to follow. How to build your personal brand. What your morning routine should look like.

Models that influence us are everywhere. Our friends. Families. Neighbors. People we follow. Many of us are at the alter of the algorithm, having our desires influenced everyday.

When I was on Instagram, I routinely felt inadequate because I wasn’t running a drop shopping business or day trading in my spare time or building a vending machine empire.

I didn’t actually want any of those things, yet I went and watched videos and made plans to figure out how to do them because I felt I wasn’t “doing enough” if I slept on these “opportunities”.

Silly me being sucked into the media’s mimetic washing machine—rinsing me of my originality, soul, and energy.

That’s why we often end up chasing similar things—the things we think we should want but don’t feel truly satisfied getting. The default path is just this imitation game where we gradually converge around the same abstract desires—the same dog and pony show.

But as Kurt Vonnegut once wrote, “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”

And it’s easy to fall into The Pretend Trap with the constant noise—pushing us to play the global game of comparison and reaching the next big milestone…the game that keeps us all sprinting on the same hedonic treadmill for the “ just one more” that never ends.

It’s just too easy to lose control of our life or business because we’re trying to make it something that other’s will be impressed by. In retrospect, how and why I ran my first startup was very much about how I wanted to be seen—deeply influenced by all the founder models I looked to, how I wanted the people I knew to think of me, and to make my entrepreneurial dad proud. There was a lot of pretend going on.

But our life shouldn’t be theater for other people. The applause always fades. In reality, nobody actually cares what you do or get. The novelty of every milestone wears off. The only thing that matters is doing what you actually want, because—if you care about what others think—that’s what defines who you are and that’s the only thing people remember.

And what’s worth wanting starts by defining what a wonderful life means for you, because we’re just not here long enough to play the wrong game and get a prize we never actually cared to win.

Here’s what I now want…

I want to work 3 hours per day on my own little business, help hundreds of people, have time to master my hobbies, spend time outdoors, exercise and play Padel, spend quality time everyday with my wife and favorite people, travel whenever we want and scuba dive around world, avoid pointless meetings, and say no to anything I don’t want to do.

That’s it.
That’s the dream.

That’s my idea of the good life, which I genuinely believe has very few essential components that are universal happiness pillars for humans:

• Do good work. Work that challenges me, is interesting, and gives me flexibility to do other things. But mostly, work I can take pride in doing. If you’re doing work that lacks “purpose”, focus on finding meaning in the quality of your outputs, no matter how big or small they are.

• Make some money. Not crazy amounts like I used to want that would require sacrificing my life and obsessing over, but enough to have options and do the things I want. To have stability, comfort, and fun and provide for my family without worry.

• Enjoy hobbies. Having something I love doing that I can keep getting better at over time for no reason other than enjoyment. Building skills for fun that aren’t to get you paid is an awesome thing. Not all of your time needs to be monetized—it’s taken me a long time to realize that and not feel guilt.

• Stay healthy. Nothing else really matters if my body and mind are falling apart. The quality of your life depends on sleeping well, moving your body, eating real food, and protecting your mental space.

• Help people. Arnold Schwarzenegger said the key to life and feeling fulfilled is being useful. I agree, and the scale is irrelevant.

• Love your family. Spend quality time with my wife, friends, and family. Make time for the people you love, and who love you, the most. Don’t estrange people because they believe different things to you—there’s only regret there.

• Travel the world. Try new things. See other ways of life. Learn different customs. It makes you more creative, empathetic, and aware of what actually matters. I always feel inspired after a trip to change or try something.

I used to care a lot more about thin desires—things that are shallower, reactive, and often tied to appearances. I feel I’m getting closer to basing more of what I want on thick desires—the things that are true to me.

A thin desire was wanting to go viral and have a big social presence. Now—besides writing here—I want to leave social media and enjoy the luxury of peace, quiet, and privacy.

A thin desire was wanting to get promoted, have a better title, and get to the top— to be a VP. Now, I want a job that gives me the flexibility, stability, and balance to enjoy my hobbies everyday—happy to be called whatever they want to call me.

A thin desire was wanting to be a founder, raise lots of money and hit a nice valuation and make tons of money in stock if I exited. Now, I want to start a small business selling something fun and meaningful online that requires no staff, has good margins, and is low stress without caring about scale. No meetings.

Now, maybe after reading my wants, you feel this talks to what you want.

And that’s the thing about Mimetic Desire. It’s sneaky; guising itself in recognition and resonance. But often we’re just recognizing the appeal of someone else’s articulation, and we fold that into the idea of what we want.

So, just be curious. Question the things that you want that are the basis for whatever plan you’re working on. You should be asking: “Is this mine? Do I actually want this?” “What would I do differently if I listened to my true desires?”

Not because you’re living the wrong life, or out of existential dread. But out of respect. For your time. Your energy. For your pursuit of wisdom and self discovery. And for your one shot at this.

Living a good life doesn’t require originality—copy and steal desires that resonate with you, and who cares if you chase some thin desires in there too; I do and I am—but it does require ownership.

To leave you with something somewhat tactical here, from my experience, the answer won’t come from thinking harder.

It come from noticing better.

And that comes from developing the taste for what you actually want. Look at all your inputs. What are you consuming? What’s occupying your mental space?

Taste is about curating what you let in…everything you watch and listen to and read and follow. And most of the time, taste is subtractive. It’s not about being a contrarian, but listening to what feels true and right and discarding the rest.

It’s the filtering system for your attention. A way of protecting your bandwidth and sharpening your sense of what resonates with you; what things you keep coming back to; what things you do that need no approval or recognition; what you do when nobody is watching. And just as importantly, tasting shit on your tongue… the stuff that drains you; triggers anxiety or inadequacy; the things you do out of obligation, performance, or inertia.

That’s how you notice your way to what’s worth wanting, because nothing else really is.

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If you enjoyed reading this letter, the best compliment I could receive would be your help increasing its visibility by hitting like, or if you shared it with one person or restacked it.

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More good times :)

Are you doing enough nothing?

The good old days (are now)

When belief is a bitch