Why You Feel Guilty For Wanting Things

Joe: 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.

Alexa: You were in the, I don't want money. I don't want money to rule my life, but behind all of that, there's a want.

Joe: There's nothing that you do that isn't based in a want.

Alexa: Wanting is aliveness.

Joe: Wanting is aliveness, right?

Alexa: How much would those people's lives change if they could just be inside their wanting?

Joe: Everything would change. To really be able to understand and feel and speak your wants cleanly can absolutely change lives.

Alexa: Hey, Joe.

Joe: Hey.

Alexa: I'm so excited you're willing to talk about this today, about wants.

Joe: Yeah.

Alexa: This is a topic that's just really up for me right now. I'm just really excited about it.

Joe: As am I. Yeah, I've been thinking a lot about it for the last couple weeks.

Alexa: Me too. I don't know what's making it be in the air or whatever it is, but I've been noticing across a bunch of my clients, it's just this huge unlock.

Joe: Yeah.

Alexa: For so much.

Joe: Yeah.

Alexa: So I really wanted to get this topic in front of people as soon as possible.

Joe: Yeah. It's a great topic. I think it like its capacity to change your life is tremendous. To really be able to understand and feel and speak your wants cleanly can absolutely change lives. It's changed mine, it's changed a lot of people's.

Alexa: Absolutely. Me too.

Joe: Yeah.

Alexa: Yeah. So I guess let's start with the problem.

Joe: Yeah.

Alexa: What is it that's making it hard for so many people to be with their wants and their wanting?

Joe: So I think the first thing is that people think about wants as objects, but the more key piece is that wanting, to feel wants is to feel. It's an emotion.

So I can have the experience of sadness and I can have the experience of wanting, and you can say you have wants, but what that means is that you are feeling wanting about a thing, right? You have a subject to your wanting. But 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 and they can't feel it, but they either can't notice that they're feeling it or they feel it with so much resistance, they feel like they're bad for having it, et cetera, et cetera.

And typically the reason that this was created was because in a person, it gets created in a person because their parents basically taught them, or their caregivers or teachers or whoever, taught them that their job was to satisfy the caregiver's wants rather than that the caregiver's job was to satisfy their wants.

And so that also perpetuates itself, meaning parents who are not good with owning their own wants often make the children satisfy their wants. When the cycle of the caregiver is taking care of the wants of the child, then everything seems to work out fine. But when it's the child's job to take care of the wants of the caregiver, then that's when everything gets all turned around and a lot of disturbance happens, psychologically, a lot of disturbance happens for those people. And there's studies around it that show that people who were raised with like healthy attachment instead of anxious attachment or avoidant attachment, are much better at claiming, owning, sharing their wants, have better relationships because of it even.

Alexa: Yeah.

Joe: Yeah.

Alexa: Of course.

Joe: Yeah.

Alexa: Yeah. Okay. So what are the kinds of things that happen when somebody is not good at owning their wants or being with their wants?

Joe: Yeah so typically what you'll see is, so 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. So there'll be a lot of taking responsibility for other people's happiness. You see this in bosses too where when a boss or a leader of a company feels like it's their job to take care of all the employees, you'll see the same thing happen where they'll be caretaking the employees, and so the employees start to resent them.

Whereas the structure of everybody taking care of the company is the one that actually makes for a successful company. And being a leader that is constantly trying to take care of all the employees without having the idea that the employees need to be taking care of the business, and that's the primary purpose that everybody is there for, will make for really bad companies, makes for really bad families, and makes everything go crazy.

One of the big things is codependence is created. Codependence means resentment is created. So there's a lot of codependent and resentment when people aren't being able to own their wants. That's like the biggest thing that happens when people don't own their wants. The other thing that happens when people don't own their wants is that they have a hard time getting the life that they want.

I want to be a billionaire. It's like this thing that you can do on the side of your mind, but you're not taking any actions around it because it's actually not okay to want it. If a person's 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. Whether that's the desire to win or the desire to be the best or the desire to be a billionaire, whatever that desire is, to be able to own that desire makes it much more possible for that thing to actually occur because there's no war in yourself with it.

If you have a war with your wanting, it really makes it harder to achieve the thing that you want. So that's another thing. The other thing that happens is that people ask for the wants. When they have the wants, they ask for the wants sideways. And so that creates a tremendous amount of disturbance in a relationship.

So instead of saying, oh 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 this really mean way because they were wanting it for the last two weeks, but they didn't get it. So then now they're asking for it in a mean way. Or when they just ask for their wants, they say it really meekly oh, I was wondering if you could, are you sure?

Or they ask for it way too strong. Like, why don't you ever gimme what I want? Why don't you take care of me? So that disturbs the communication between people and therefore the relationship starts to fall apart if people can't own what they want with one another.

Alexa: Yeah, absolutely.

Joe: Yeah.

So for instance, 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. This is what I want. They don't even have that conversation.

Alexa: Yeah.

Joe: So those are some, there's probably more, but those are the ones that come to mind right away.

Alexa: Right? Absolutely. Okay. So it can poison a business, it can poison a relationship and it can lead to a person not having the life that they want.

Joe: Right? Yeah. And a lot of codependence is like, the biggest thing is like people will start trying to make folks happy to get what they want instead of asking for what they want or going out and getting what they want.

Alexa: I would maybe add a variant of what you were pointing at,

Joe: Please.

Alexa: Something that happened, this might even be gendered a little bit, but I think more often it happens that women are socialized to take care of other people's needs first, or that's the most important thing. And then it often seems to me that there are women in this world who, although they're wildly successful people in a lot of ways, it just, there's something in them that they just can't be with the part of themselves that wants as though that's selfish or as though that's dangerous or just, and it's so super spicy there. Occasionally there's people that I'll try to point them to their wants and you can just watch them like,

Joe: Yeah.

Alexa: Oh no, don't make me go there. I'd rather be with my anger and my fear. Don't make me go to my wants.

Joe: Yeah, don't make me feel that. And I do think there is some gender aspect to it. Across cultures they've shown that women are generally more agreeable than men, but I think that there's also an assumption built into that. So being agreeable means that, hey I want to, I wanna find the common ground.

And that's something that women have a greater tendency to do than men on average, not individually, but on average. But I can make sure that you're doing okay and care for you and still own my wants. And so a lot of people somehow confuse the fact that, oh, if I own my wants, I'm not taking care of you.

And the reality is that if you own your wants, you're taking care of the person better. And the reason is I'm telling you how to succeed in our relationship.

Alexa: Yeah.

Joe: So if I express my wants to you, then you know if it's a match. If you want to join, if you want to give 'em to me, if you don't want to give 'em to me, you know how to win. You know how to make me happy. If I don't express those things to you, none of that is there, so you're really not taking care of me very well. And so somehow we get this conflation in our head that me making sure you're okay, which is a fine thing. We all care. We're natural. It's natural for us to care about each other. Not all of us, but almost all of us naturally care about one another. Part of caring is to tell somebody what you want.

Alexa: Absolutely. I love that.

Joe: Yeah.

Alexa: I love that definition. Yeah. So I guess we're getting into the next part, which is like, what is, like I have been seeing this absolute magic lately of just directing people to first be able to just be with their wanting.

Joe: Yeah.

Alexa: And then to own it.

Joe: Yeah.

Alexa: What is it that you see? What is, what makes this so amazing and how do you do it?

Joe: It's a, this is a tricky thing. It's the way I would say it is, I am responsible for who I am with my children and with my wife, but I'm not responsible for who they are. Right?

So I'm responsible for am I showing up loving? I'm responsible for, do I own my triggers? I'm responsible for if I apologize, if I've not been the person that I want to be, that's what I'm responsible for. But what I'm not responsible for is getting my wife in a good mood. I can't it's it's not within my realm of control.

And if I do it, then I'm deeply disempowering her. I'm saying, oh, you need help to be happy, so I am gonna help you. So it's like there's besides hubris in it, it's also just like deeply disempowering. And that's true for my children too, which is, my daughter is sad. My job is to be with her sadness. It is not to take responsibility for her sadness.

Alexa: Right?

Joe: So my responsibility is how I am, how I'm showing up. My responsibility is not making somebody else happy or taking responsibility for them.

Alexa: Yeah. And still, it strikes me that there's a really easy unlock here for a lot of situations in relationship where somebody says a want, you can really do a lot of work just by being like, I love that you want that? Even if it's I'm not gonna give that to you right now.

Joe: Yeah.

Alexa: But I honestly I love that you wanna go to the movies tonight? That does not work for my schedule.

Joe: Right.

Alexa: I love that you want that?

Joe: Yeah.

Alexa: I'm excited to hear that you want that.

Joe: Yeah.

Alexa: Yeah.

Joe: Absolutely. That's like even a step farther than is necessary. It's a step I like, it's it's a really great step, but just being okay without, oh, cool. You wanna go to the movies? That's awesome. Like fantastic instead of, well, I don't wanna go to the movies, but they want to. And if they don't, then they're gonna be resentful for me because I don't want to go to the movies. Okay. I'll go to the movies.

Alexa: Right.

Joe: Or, oh, they wanna go to the movies, but I can't. But I just can't because I got work to do and they want me to buy 'em a bigger house and I just can't go to the movies.

Alexa: Right.

Joe: Why?

Alexa: Or you always wanna go to the movies.

Joe: Movies. Exactly.

Alexa: Yeah.

Joe: All of that instead of oh, cool. I totally dig that you want to go to the movies.

Alexa: Yeah.

Joe: And the studies show that relationships are better when people can own their wants for this reason. And the thing that happens is usually the person who's upset at you owning your wants, saying oh, I want to go to the movie with you, but I can't today because X, Y, and Z. And they get like, how do you so self-entitled? You're selfish not going to the movies with me. If you are that kind of person, then that's a really great indicator that you are not good with your own wants. That you feel like you have to sacrifice for

Alexa: other people.

Joe: Other people.

Alexa: And so of course they should have to sacrifice for you.

Joe: For you. That's right. Wait, we have an agreement. We sacrifice for each other, right? Like you do shit you don't want to do to make me happy. I do shit that I don't wanna do to make you happy. Now you're not living up to the agreement. God dammit. That's really what that is about.

Alexa: Yeah. So there is this kind of loop that somebody could get stuck in there as they're moving towards being able to own their wants of just but I do wanna make my partner happy. So what would you say to somebody

Joe: You just can't make your partner happy? Okay. So if it was true, then think about the person who is the biggest doormat in a relationship, and then look at their partner and say, are they happy? And the answer is absolutely not.

Alexa: Yeah.

Joe: They're not happy. They're probably a curmudgeon. They're probably angry most of the time. Because they don't feel met. They don't feel like they've got someone they can trust. I can't trust you to even tell me what you want.

Alexa: Yeah.

Joe: And that's not to say that they won't get angry when that person starts standing up for themselves.

They will 'cause they're used to this pattern. And I think that's why people have a hard time owning their wants is because they're very scared and it's true, people will get angry at them for owning their wants for a while. That's gonna happen. And I think that's the thing that prevents people. I can't own the thing that I want because people will get upset at me or people will let me down.

Alexa: Yeah, I was gonna say, I wouldn't go so far as to assume that people are necessarily gonna get angry when you start owning your wants. In fact, I've really seen quite the opposite. I've got some clients who start owning their wants and their partners are thrilled. They get to see them for the first time.

Joe: I agree with you. I'm saying that a lot of people prevent themselves from saying their wants and their stories are people will let me down, people will get angry at me.

Alexa: Yeah.

Joe: Or I'm gonna look selfish.

Those seem to be the three stories that people tell themselves.

Alexa: Yeah.

Joe: For not owning their wants. Maybe also, I'm bad for having a want.

Alexa: Yeah.

Joe: Which is a version of, I'm selfish and those are the things that people tell themselves. And some people will think you're selfish and some people will get angry at you, but not the majority. And typically over time those people change their tune or they leave.

Alexa: Yeah. Something you almost hit on or maybe you did.

Joe: Yeah.

Alexa: Another thing that I think keeps people from really owning their wants is just, it's just really vulnerable. Maybe that speaks to the thing of I'll get disappointed, but it's also like I'll be seen.

Joe: Yeah. There's something there, and I know it feels that way, but I think it's the same way that like crying feels vulnerable or I know this is weird for other people to get, but but those who get angry know that there's like a vulnerability in anger. There's a vulnerability in allowing yourself to feel something that you don't normally let yourself feel. And then you have a whole set of stories, right? It was very vulnerable for me to express sadness in front of people because I had a story that I was gonna be made fun of because that's what happened. I was made fun of or abused 'cause that's what happened. I was abused when I cried only to find out what happens is people actually usually come and comfort me. But it felt vulnerable.

Alexa: Yeah.

Joe: And it I think similarly with wanting people feel very vulnerable because they feel like they are gonna get rejected.

It's oh, this is a very vulnerable thing. And the story is, if I share my want, then they'll know they, maybe they can take advantage and they'll definitely reject me. And what the truth of the matter is that you feel less rejected 'cause you're not rejecting yourself.

Alexa: Yeah.

Joe: Like by not sharing your want, you're rejecting yourself.

That's not okay. So you've already rejected, you've already suffered the rejection. So as long as the world doesn't reject you a hundred times out of a hundred, then you're gonna suffer less rejection. And the other thing is that the thing that you think makes it weak, meaning someone's gonna take that want and manipulate me, when you own your want, you're far less manipulatable.

The person who's manipulatable is the person who's I want to be rich, but I'm not allowing myself, so I'll go buy a lottery ticket. It's not the person who's just yeah, I clearly want to be rich, and yes, I understand a lottery ticket isn't gonna get me there. So usually it's the person who can own their want that's less manipulated than the person who can't own their want.

Alexa: Great. I love this. This starts to speak to something I was hoping to ask, which is like, what about people who don't wanna be with their wants because they're afraid that then they'll get into sort of the capitalist machine, or if you wanna say it another way, like wanting is the, like the origin of suffering that sort of way of approaching the world?

Joe: So let's do the capital machine first. You are in it. Like unless you have a good plan to change the capitalistic machine and then you know, it's always changing, but change it in a substantial way, then you're in it. Whether you're living in a cabin in the woods or not, you're like, you're in the machine on some level.

Alexa: You almost said something really beautiful that I would love to double click on, which is like, so let's take as an assumption, it is my assumption anyway, that your wants are driving everything that you do.

Joe: Correct.

Alexa: Regardless of whether you've owned them or not. But if you don't own them, then you are doing a bunch of things like sideways, as you said, this sort of control patterns and things like that. And that is something that systems can hook into. So if you're not admitting to yourself that you wanna be rich then you're more likely to do things that are less likely to get rich, but more likely to get people to help people extract money from you in your attempt?

Joe: Absolutely. I agree. And the interesting, like this particular, I have a story around this. So when I was younger, I was living, I was rejecting money. I thought it was bad. My dad wanted money. I felt rejected by my dad because of his pursuit of money. So I thought money was bad and I was living on very little money and I was very proud of that and I was rejecting the system.

And my friend said to me one day, came up to me and said, it's really expensive the way that you're poor. And I'm like, what? What are you talking about? And I saw that I wanted the freedom for money, but to have freedom for money, I had to work really hard. Like I had to change my own transmission out of the van.

Alexa: Yeah.

Joe: Somebody else didn't have to do it. I wanted to travel, so I had to work for 10 hours to find that, like one ticket to save me the $20 to get to the place to, there was just like all the things that I had to do to live off of whatever it was, 10,000, $12,000 a year and I realized oh, there's no more freedom here then if I buy into the system, what I thought was buying into the system.

And now that I'm on the other side of that and I'm like successful in the system, I no more agree with the system than I did back then, and I'm no more buying into it than I did back then. Like the whole thing was a construction of me not owning my wants.

Alexa: Yeah.

Joe: Which was really, I want my dad's love, which is what I wanted, had nothing to do with money.

And so all of that was just this weird constructed life built around, not fully owning my wants.

Alexa: Absolutely. And there's another really beautiful thing there that I would love to double click on, which is a lot of the time, the thing that people encounter is the kind of don't want, like you, you were in the I don't want money. I don't want money to rule my life, get that away from me in some way. But behind all of that,

Joe: right,

Alexa: there's a want.

Joe: Yeah. It's really good.

Alexa: Yeah.

Joe: Yeah, that's right. Don't wanting isn't a want. Like I don't want that as a way to not actually feel the feeling of wanting.

Alexa: Exactly.

Joe: And so that's a great practice generally is if you can write down like a list, here's all the things I know I don't want, then write down all the things that you do want and allow yourself to feel those.

Alexa: Yeah.

Joe: It's tremendously transformative. It's like playing to win rather than playing not to lose, and so much more success is driven in business or in art or in life by being able to live into the thing you want rather than to live to the thing that you don't want.

Alexa: Yes.

Joe: So much more powerful.

Alexa: Yes. Okay. So the other thing there was the people who think that desire is the root of suffering and so they just don't want to be with their wants.

Joe: Yeah. So I don't know if there's a mistranslation, so that's a very Buddhist thought typically, craving an aversion or the root of suffering. There's nothing that you do that isn't based in a want. I'm sitting here having a conversation with you, there's a want to do that. Even if I was doing it out of obligation, then there is a want for you not to abandon me, right? So whatever it is there, everything that we do is based on one.

And in fact, one of the ways that I learned that was that there's this form of directing actors. And if you tell an actor, apparently, if you say to an actor, do it happier or do it sadder, like never works. You never get the performance. But if you say to an actor, what you want in this scene is X, Y, and Z then the performance happens.

Alexa: Absolutely. Wanting is aliveness.

Joe: Wanting is aliveness. So there's I think a lot of confusion in this idea of craving an aversion as compared to wanting.

Alexa: Yeah.

Joe: So craving is an obsessive wanting, I would call it. 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'm going to be safe without it. I do not feel like I am going to be okay without it. That causes suffering.

Alexa: Yeah.

Joe: Wanting, totally natural and the interesting thing is that the more you own your want, the less the want hooks you.

Alexa: It feels like there's a somatics to this that really explains it. If you can be all the way in the want, the feeling of wanting, as you pointed out, is quite lovely.

Joe: Yes.

Alexa: It's when you can't be with or in that wanting, when you're right outside of it needing to solve it.

Joe: Yes.

Alexa: That's like the craving, like I have to solve the, I can't be with the wanting, so I have to make it go away by solving it. That is craving.

Joe: That's the craving. That's a beautiful description of it. That's right. The trying to make the wanting go away, either through aversion or through craving, is the thing that causes the suffering rather than oh, cool, there's wanting.

Alexa: Yeah.

Joe: What does that feel like? What is it to actually want, and like our mind plays a trick on us often 'cause it's I want that pair of shoes, or I want my dad's love, but it's not actually ever the thing that we most deeply want.

Alexa: Right?

Joe: And so there's, I think there's a poem. If your sons get hooked by desire, don't worry about it. They'll follow her home. And she has seven more beautiful sisters there. And basically what that describes is when we follow our desire to walk, as soon as we get there, there's the next desire that like pulls us on that evolutionary path. But when we get, oh, I need to have that thing and I don't want to feel that thing, but I need to have that thing, but I don't want to feel that thing and I'm going to solve my want, then there's a weird way in which we're not even trusting.

Alexa: Yeah.

Joe: That evolutionary pull, we're not trusting that, oh, that's the want, it's telling me to go in that direction. That's all that's necessary.

Alexa: Yeah. So I'm gonna say that back to you in different words and make sure that I've got it. It's almost if you identify with the want, okay, let's put it this way.

If I'm like, oh, I want to go out for some ice cream, I'm gonna take a walk down the street to the place that has ice cream, and then I get there and the ice cream place is closed. But that's okay because actually I had a great walk. Then that's great. But if I have somehow like clamped, clenched on to the want, and I get really disappointed if I've identified like with the want for the ice cream, then there's like suffering there.

Joe: Yeah, identified, I think is one way a good way to describe it. I think another way to describe it is if you think that want is gonna solve anything.

Alexa: Ah, yeah, that is good.

Joe: If you think, if you think getting that want is like any kind of like long-term solution set, you're screwed. So I recently did a video on a guy who was like this world champion golfer. And the world champion golfer was talking about how he likes winning. He wants to win. He goes, the problem with winning is it feels good for about two minutes and then it's gone.

Alexa: Right?

Joe: And when he kept on saying though, he didn't say that this was the key to his success, he kept on saying,

I just love practicing. And that's what makes him successful is that he loves the doing of the thing, not the getting the reward.

Alexa: Right.

Joe: And what I notice is that is what drives success across the board is like 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. And so same thing with art. If you love art for the sake of art, great. And I see so many people, they love art. They love doing art, and then they have the opportunity to make money on art and their love for the art goes completely away. Because they're going for that end state.

Alexa: Yeah.

Joe: So if you think that it's gonna create any kind of happiness in your system, then you're in craving.

Alexa: Yep.

Joe: Or any kind of happiness that lasts more than two minutes,

Alexa: Yeah. It's like you climbed outside of the wanting itself.

Joe: Exactly. Yeah. That's right.

Alexa: Yeah, to bring it back, if I love wanting ice cream because it takes me out on these walks because it does these things in my life, then great. If I need to have ice cream?

Joe: Right? Yeah.

Alexa: Then it's a problem.

Joe: And that's the other thing is like wanting anything is actually quite enjoyable.

Alexa: Yeah.

Joe: 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 just gonna stop.

Alexa: No,

Joe: I'm just stop. Exactly. I'm gonna strip away all the wanting of sex, but you can still have it.

Alexa: No, that's terrible.

Joe: That's terrible.

Alexa: That's awful.

Joe: Exactly. That's life. If you like you don't get to want, you're pulling a lot of the joy out of life and so it's interesting. It's so on one level what they're saying is very true. I just think there's some level of mistranslation, which is craving an aversion is a root of a lot of suffering.

Alexa: Yes.

Joe: The other way to say that, as you're saying it is like identification with something that isn't your truth is the root of a lot of suffering. Another way to say it is being outside of your wants, trying to solve them creates a lot of suffering. All of those are other ways to say it. But to live in your wants, to feel your wants, that gives life, that gives zest to life.

Alexa: There is, by the way, a nuance that I've heard about that translation, which is just the difference between desire is the root of suffering and the self-authorship of desire, or the authorship of desire is the root of suffering, which I really appreciate.

Joe: I have an idea of what that would mean. What it means is that when you think your strategy of what you want is the suffering, not the wanting itself.

Alexa: Oh, I like that. That's not even how I took it. I took it to mean like the idea that my desires, my wants are mine. I created them and they're my responsibility.

Joe: Uhhuh. When you identify with your wants, then that's the root of suffering. Yeah. Basically, any way in which you are taking the wanting and the getting what you want personally.

Alexa: Yeah.

Joe: And the thing about that is that creates suffering, whether you get it or not.

Alexa: Absolutely.

Joe: That's the thing that I think people don't get is like the idea is craving a billion dollars in getting it is almost as painful as, or as painful as craving a billion dollars and not getting it.

Alexa: Absolutely. Because if you think that it was gonna solve the problem.

Joe: Right.

Alexa: It's not going to.

Joe: And that's what you get to see in my world all the time, how many people who have had every level of success that anybody on this planet thinks that they want and they're miserable. It is just it's infinite. Read People magazine and you'll see it, oh look, that guy's worth a hundred million dollars and famous and has a beautiful wife and just imploded. Right. It happens all the time.

Alexa: So since we're talking about wants, what do you think, how much would those people's lives change if they could just be inside their wanting?

Joe: Oh, Everything would change. The people who have been famous and happy for over two or three decades, they're pretty, like, when I see their interviews, they seem pretty clear on their wants as compared to the people who haven't, who like implode. There's a great way to look at I'm not allowed to want this thing, but I want it, but I'm not allowed to want it, but I want it.

There's a lot of war that comes with that and that seems to lead to implosion. And I think, I know, I see that in business all the time. 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 or their want wasn't like cleanly stated, and then it, like it all implodes on them.

I don't know how many times I can count a dozen situations where somebody I know is worth over a hundred million dollars and, went down to $5 million out of just mistakes that they were way too smart to have made just because they've had an internal war with that level of success. And you see it all the time. That's why it happens so much in lottery winners. It's something, I don't know exactly the thing, but it's 90, a hundred percent of lottery winners of over a hundred million dollars are bankrupt inside of two or three years or something.

Alexa: I have also heard something like that.

Joe: Crazy like that. Yeah, it's because they were at war with having that billion dollars or a hundred million dollars or whatever it was that like the war was in them, so of course it went away, and that I think is just, and that doesn't just equate to money, that equates to relationships.

Alexa: Yeah.

Joe: I can't tell you how many people I know who have blown up a what would be a great relationship because they don't feel like they deserve the love because they can't actually own the want. And that, I think that's the thing is when you own your want, you have to own the fact that it's okay for you to have it.

Alexa: Oh yeah.

Joe: 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.

Alexa: Absolutely. Or they're just so identified with chasing it.

Joe: Yes. Correct.

Alexa: That the identity shift would be so big.

Joe: Yeah, exactly.

Alexa: Yeah.

Joe: Exactly. And we shape our world around our identity.

Alexa: Yeah.

Joe: Far more than the world shapes us and our identity. Once you get to a certain age, like our mental sta, our world is a reflection of our mental state far more than the other way around.

Even though we'd like to feel like that's not true, we'd like to feel like those people over there, they're making my world horrible. If it weren't for the Republican slash democrat slash dictatorship, then everything would be. But on some level, when you get past a certain age, like we are constructing our own reality with our perception of who we are.

Alexa: Definitely. And you're pointing at something else about owning wants that I think is incredible is that it can really just drop away that kind of like victim story or bully story. Whatever it is that's been shaping the way that you interface with the world.

Joe: It changes your identity. Like the wants are the evolutionary path. Evolution means that your identity changes, right? As we evolve, we identify less and less with the personal, more and more with the universal. As we evolve, our identity has to shift. We don't feel like we're the same person at 50 as we do when we're 20. And so if there's any reason to feel like it's vulnerable to be in your wants, it's because you will be destroyed or evolve.

You can call whatever you want to call it, but it's the same thing. Who you are won't be there. Destroyed, evolved, and something new will be there.

Alexa: Heck yeah. Okay, great. So if somebody is listening to this and they realize they're in a war with desire.

Joe: Yeah.

Alexa: Do you have any tips for them?

Joe: Yeah. The things that we said at the beginning, those steps are really important and the most important of all of them is to feel, wanting to allow yourself to have the physical, emotional experience of wanting.

Alexa: Yeah.

Joe: To just sit in that, to bathe in that, to savor that feeling and do it without, don't even have a subject at first. Just feel what it is to want. And that is the most important of all the steps. And then of course, the other steps are to start taking apart all the things that you think are wrong with wanting, which we did earlier in the episode. And then the next thing is to really be able to see what it's like to own your wants quickly and as much as possible, particularly when you're trying to take care of somebody, when you think you're responsible for somebody else.

Alexa: Heck yeah.

Joe: Yeah.

Alexa: I'm still so excited. This was a great conversation.

Joe: Thanks for asking to do this

Alexa: Yeah. I really wanted it.

Joe: I really wanted it too.

Alexa: All right. Thanks so much, Joe.

Joe: Awesome. Yeah, pleasure.

Alexa: See you later.

Brett: Thank you everybody for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend.

We'd love for you to subscribe to us. Rate us on your podcast app. Mun Yee Kelly, sitting next to me over here is our producer. This episode was edited by Future Voice Media.