Understanding Why Desire Doesn't Get Us What We Want

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We all understand desire as a motivator, but did you know that we can also be motivated out of fulfillment? Which one of these is our prime motivator makes an enormous impact on our lives.

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Video Transcription

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or striving for things arises out of one of two places a sense of desire or a sense of fulfillment here is why choosing a sense of fulfillment in cultivating a sense of fulfillment makes all the difference greetings friend we've heard from a few people that they have had some trouble finding access to nature and although it's a you know a different subject and we've we've shared ideas about how to find some places to hike and practice your bushcraft skills and such the this brings up something deeper right right and so as we've talked about this it's led to kind of a universal concern which is with fulfillment there's all these things that we want in life and right from the beginning I think it'd be nice to distinguish between happiness being a transient temporary state that goes up and then we go down into unhappiness when things aren't going right and fulfilment fulfillment is an underlayment a foundation that other emotions happiness sadness can ride on top of but through all those emotions we have this deeper sense of meaning and connection sticks are yummy fulfilling we're not just talking happiness here so I want to bring up something that I've noticed in our talks that in our culture it seems as though we go about trying to get that happiness and fulfillment and crime both of them by arranging our externals okay if I just if I get a really good job and then I can earn earn lots and I can get the house that I want probably I'll get the wife or husband that I want and I could get this this in this and we try to arrange everything around us so that we can have the happiness from those things arranged externals yeah and a lot of our time and energy is geared towards accomplishing those things getting those things making sure that we have the externals arranged the right way there does seem to me to be another side at least one that we've experienced which is you choose the fulfilment first and weirdly your externals begin to arrange themselves to allow that fulfillment to happen you've probably heard this before two ways of going about it

arrange your externals you will achieve fulfillment or arrange your fulfillment you'll achieve your externals I don't like now this comes out of some new-age circles sometimes and so it can be a little woowoo ish but there's actually some hard and fast reasoning behind this that makes it true now I just want to point out we're not saying that there isn't wound s going on there could be wool in this could be but there's actually something to this as well that some of us who want solid facts and the the reasoning here is that when I am acting out of desire I really look out I want this thing this person whatever then I think it's gonna make me happy what we can fail to see is that the driving force here is is not really the reaching for that goal but is the actual desire itself this this underlying motivator that we could call design absolutely

so that desire is what creates within us the belief that if we arrange the externals we will get our happiness but we're saying desires never filled up that's the key to desire once you get to that place then you're gonna find that desires still operating in you and you'll achieve happiness perhaps right you've got to your goal I'm happy yeah but very quickly a desire it's a fleeting happiness because our desire can never be truly satiated and so we can we've even met people students among them who have had things quote set up perfectly and yet they still are coming to the school saying I am missing something i I do not feel fulfilled by all of this we experience it in our own lives absolutely trying to go from one thing to another that we think will bring us that sense of fulfillment sometimes we achieve something it's great we have happiness and then desire comes right back in that is the nature of desire it is never fulfilled we like to believe that won't happen with me if I just get X Y or Z then everything's gonna be great but as long as we're operating out of that desire guaranteed it will never be satiated we'll spend our whole life running after that next thing ok so um what do we do so build the fulfillment first alright that sounds good in some ways but kind of scary and others and my one part of my brain is going how's that gonna work

how are the bills gonna get paid how am I gonna make it to my meeting on time and should I not improve my life should I not want things alright you can take in the wrong way this whole idea can seem like okay here's your scraps and you should just be happy with those scraps and never reach for anything else and essentially just be satisfied with being downtrodden this is not what we're talking about we're talking about when I get those scraps to feel gratitude for those there is something I have to feel gratitude for the things that we have through a gratitude practice you're just constantly being aware of the good things that are in our lives even if that's just that I can take this breath there's some people that can't do that so we develop gratitude for the things we have we really immerse ourselves into that gratitude practice that starts to create a sense of fulfillment as we become fulfilled with the things that are here then we can reach out for our new goals but we're doing it in a very different way we're doing it with a sense of fulfillment already so that we're open to a fork in the road or the path becoming something completely different because we don't have to have this set goal that we're striving for like the carrot on the stick in front of us we can be open-ended our sense of fulfillment does not rest upon achieving that goal

so like you said it opens up roadways different paths we can become creative if we don't get that thing it's not a problem we can go after something else so that I think is the beauty of fulfillment as our underlayment instead of desire I have a question which is how do I choose that fulfillment it's a restructuring I'm looking at a basic motivation and again we achieve it through gratitude so recognizing and I feel like we had to just learn this by doing it over and over and over reach for that thing that's gonna make us just oh so happy and fulfilled their happiness sometimes is there but often not even we kind of get that thing and we're ready to move on to the next sometimes we just have to learn it like you and I over and over and over but if we can say hey I have actually tried this a few times I recognize what they're talking about then we can start right now immersing ourselves in gratitude building that sense of fulfillment fulfillment is directly created through gratitude the big trick here is that moving out of desire you're never gonna get what you want

we'll never get what we want we go we achieve and we find we're just wanting more so it's kind of just it's senseless to do so when we act from a sense of desire we only probably find fleeting happiness when we act from a sense of fulfillment we find deeper satisfaction and open doors yeah have you experienced the difference between happiness and fulfillment have you experienced what happens when you are striving for things out of desire and when you strive for things out of a sense of fulfillment what's the difference there that you've experienced yeah

share with us I love hearing these these answers from you all right love to you all

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