People spend a lot of time talking about what they want.
It is an easy thing to talk about.
It is easy for other people to relate to.
It is also remarkably easy to excuse when you ultimately fail to achieve the thing you told everyone you wanted.
You wanted to build something, but work got busy.
You wanted to get healthy, but life was stressful.
You wanted to write, learn, leave, change, begin.
But something got in the way.
There is always an explanation available.
A much harder thing to confront is what you are unwilling to lose.
Because wanting something costs nothing.
Being unwilling to give something up does.
And this is where most desires reveal themselves.
You might want to build a business.
But what does that matter if you are unwilling to spend meaningful time on it?
You might want to be healthy.
But what does that matter if you are unwilling to give up the habits that make you unhealthy?
You might want to learn something new.
But what does that matter if you are unwilling to pick up the book?
This is why what people say they want is often not particularly interesting.
The more interesting question is what they are protecting.
What must remain untouched?
What comfort can never be disturbed?
What identity can never be threatened?
What pleasure can never be surrendered?
What opinion of yourself must remain intact?
Because somewhere inside those things you will usually find the reason your life continues to look the way it does.
People tend to chase new wants while doing everything they can to ignore the things that keep pulling them back into the same habits.
They add another goal.
Another plan.
Another promise.
Another version of the future.
But they rarely examine the machinery underneath it.
The things they keep choosing.
The things they keep avoiding.
The things they refuse to sacrifice.
And so nothing fundamental changes.
We are all subject to roughly the same physical limits.
There are only so many hours in a week.
Time spent on one thing cannot also be spent on another.
Reality imposes consequences whether you acknowledge them or not.
Time passes whether you spend it deliberately or waste it.
Reality does not care very much about your intentions.
It responds to what you do.
A statement about desire is therefore meaningless if it never appears in a person’s actions.
At some point, you have to consider the possibility that it simply is not true.
Perhaps you do not want to build the business as much as you want your evenings.
Perhaps you do not want to get healthy as much as you want the habits that keep you unhealthy.
Perhaps you do not want to leave your job as much as you want the certainty it provides.
Perhaps you do not want to write as much as you want to imagine yourself as someone who could write.
This sounds harsh only because people have learned to treat their stated intentions as more truthful than their behaviour.
They believe there is some hidden version of themselves that deserves to be judged separately from the life they actually live.
The disciplined version.
The courageous version.
The focused version.
The person they would become if circumstances were different.
And so they walk around with the strange belief that they are somehow better than their actions.
That their actions are accidents.
That circumstances forced their hand.
That the procrastination was unusual.
That the drinking was because of the week they had.
That the compromise was temporary.
That the better version of them will show up next time.
But next time comes.
And the same person arrives.
This is how people spend years trapped inside the same loops.
They dream about the things they say they want while repeatedly performing actions they themselves describe as mistakes.
Then they explain those actions through circumstance.
And because the circumstance changes slightly each time, the explanation feels new.
But the pattern is not new.
And that makes it worth examining.
The specific circumstances are often almost irrelevant.
The question is why, under different circumstances, you keep making the same choice.
Why do you keep protecting the same comfort?
Why do you keep avoiding the same discomfort?
Why does the same habit keep winning?
Why does the same fear keep making the decision?
There is something there.
Something you want.
Something you fear losing.
Something your current way of living gives you that the future you claim to desire does not.
And until you see it, you will continue trying to solve the wrong problem.
You will try harder.
Create better routines.
Set clearer goals.
But the part of you producing the behaviour remains untouched.
Your behaviour is the sum of everything you want, fear, protect and avoid.
Including the things you would rather not admit.
Your life is not merely the product of your highest aspirations.
It is the product of your competing desires.
And the desire that wins is the one you act on.
Not the one you talk about.
Not the one you write in a notebook.
Not the one that sounds impressive when someone asks where you see yourself in five years.
The one you act on.
Your patterns do not lie.
This does not mean every action reveals some grand truth about you.
People make mistakes.
But repeated behaviour deserves more respect than repeated intention.
If you have been saying you want the same thing for three years while repeatedly choosing against it, perhaps the interesting question is no longer how badly you want it.
Perhaps the interesting question is what keeps defeating it.
What are you getting from remaining where you are?
What are you unwilling to risk?
What are you unwilling to lose?
These questions are less pleasant than asking what you want.
But they are considerably more useful.
Because your imagined future can tell you almost anything.
Your actions tell you exactly what you prioritize now.
And if you keep ignoring that, the cycle will never end.
I work privately with a small number of individuals who are serious about change.
Read more here
Sincerely,
Milo Morrison