I was taught that I shouldn’t want things.
But as humans, we seem to always want more. We reach one goal, we get a few moments of satisfaction, and we almost immediate start thinking, “What else?”
Culturally, we are told that wanting more is bad.
That wanting more is greedy and selfish.
That wanting more is wrong when others are suffering.
That wanting more is somehow taking from those who have less.
That at some point, once we have “enough,” we will stop wanting.
I have never found any of these things to be true.
Wanting More Is Your Very Nature
How often in your career or your life have you ACTUALLY been content. For more than a few moments, anyway?
It has been a rarity for me. Every time I thought I was getting close, like I thought I had a goal that would finally be enough, it was both elusive and illusory.
Why couldn’t I ever be content? I already have so much more than so many. Why is it that I have to be so selfish and greedy?
But what if selfish and greedy is the lie? What if your own innate desire and capacity to create is the truth?
What if, instead of fighting it, we accepted it as part of the design, as part of what makes humans special in the first place?
I have found at least three benefits to always wanting more.
Wanting More Leads to Creating More
The more I want, the more I create. I am here to serve and in that service I create and create that others can create more as well.
What game is it that I would like to play? What game is it that you would like to play? What would be fun to create just to have the experience of creating it?
Now multiply that out over your lifetime and the lifetimes of all that you touch. What is created simply from that desire to create?
Yes, there are those who create mostly for themselves. Who create mostly from the fear that they are not enough.
But those who see that their very capacity to create makes them virtually unlimited see that the illusion of not-enoughness is created, too.
We are always creating—that is the essence of being a human. Embracing that, in my experience, does not lead to contentment, but to even more creation and capacity to create.
Wanting More Leads To Being More
Whenever you create something new, there is some part of you that must be created as new in the process of that creation.
In other words, when we create, we create ourselves as well.
In one of my early roles at my consulting firm, I had to give talks to fifty or more people at a time. I had to answer questions about technical developments in the space that I was working in (employee benefits and tax law).
I was terrified of public speaking. At first. But I learned to enjoy it, to create a version of myself that loved speaking. Now I love speaking to audiences of any size. The energy that I once interpreted as stage fright is now the excitement of getting to play a big game.
I am guessing the game that you play today is very different than the game you played ten or twenty or thirty years ago.
Because you have created a new you, just as you have created other things in the world.
Wanting More Leads To Giving More
My favorite part of wanting more is how it enables me to give more. My coach told me that he has noticed that as he gives in the world, he is given more back. And that the cycle repeats—giving enables more giving.
He has created the capacity in others to give billions of dollars to meaningful causes. Dollars that would not have been created without his work.
All of that started with his desire, and the desire of the people he works with.
Wanting was the key to all of it.
Wanting Is Your Roadmap
We are trained from a very young age not to trust what we want. To think that it is selfish or greedy or that we will hurt people in the process of going after it.
It is true there are people who are willing to hurt others to get what they want.
But what I have found is that, in most cases, going after what you want actually results in you GIVING rather than taking.
If you charge for a product or service, you have to create more value through that product or service than you charge for it.
If you run a company at some point you hire people. You create jobs, you create certainty and happiness for tens or even thousands of people.
Even as you spend the money you are making, you are giving that money to others for the value they are creating for you. Wanting more leads to being more and giving more, almost every time.
TRUST what you want. Do everything you can to go after it. Be fearless. I have never seen someone truly want something that they did not have everything they needed to create. You CAN do it. The only question is whether you WILL.
The discomfort you feel, that sense of “Can I really do this?” is a sign that you are exactly where you need to be.
The universe is offering. Will you accept the challenge?
Wanting To Go Deeper?
Does this sense of honoring what you want resonate? More and more founders like you are coming out of the spiritual closet and seeing their work, and what they want to create, as a vital personal journey to both abundance and meaning.
This is what I write about. For founders, for original thinkers, no matter where they are in their transformation.
The world needs YOU, in all your brilliance and imperfection.
If you are a founder wanting to scale and sell your company, there are three shifts in identity that can help you do so with twice the impact and half the stress. Take a look at this video.
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