Summary

The article suggests that managing one's desires by prioritizing them, delaying gratification, and recognizing the freedom in not having them can lead to greater happiness and personal growth.

Abstract

The article "Managing Your Desires Will Make You Happier" outlines three strategies for desire management to enhance happiness. Firstly, "desire stacking" involves prioritizing long-term, significant desires over short-term, trivial ones, effectively eliminating the latter. Secondly, "delay until expiry" recommends postponing the fulfillment of desires, which often leads to the realization that they are no longer important. Lastly, recognizing the "unfreedom of desire" means understanding that desires can bind one to unhappiness until fulfilled, and that true freedom lies in the ability to be happy without them. The author illustrates these points with personal anecdotes, such as choosing financial freedom over the impulsive purchase of a Ferrari during the crypto boom.

Opinions

The author posits that many desires, especially those stemming from ego, are not aligned with what truly matters in life and can lead to regretful actions.
"Desire stacking" is presented as a method to align one's actions with their true life goals, dismissing less significant desires.
Postponing the fulfillment of desires can lead to self-growth and the natural dissipation of those desires.
The author emphasizes that desires can create a form of mental bondage, where one's happiness is contingent upon fulfilling those desires.
The article suggests that recognizing and appreciating the freedom from desire can lead to a more content and happy life.
The author quotes Seneca, reinforcing the idea that not wanting something can be as fulfilling as possessing it.

Managing Your Desires Will Make You Happier

Here are three ways to do it

When you want something, you can choose to work on one of two objectives:

Getting the thing.
No longer wanting it.

Most of the time, goal number two is not just much easier to achieve, it is also the right thing to do.

Many of the outcomes we initially think we want end up being attached to actions we, in hindsight, don’t want to have taken. They’re desires risen from our ego, with no clear reasoning of why it matters we attain them, and so, often, it doesn’t.

I have wanted a Ferrari since I was five. If I close my eyes, I can see the posters in my childhood bedroom right now. It’s one of my oldest desires and, therefore, a strong one. I still don’t have a good reason. It’s just a cool car. It’ll make for a good example.

Here are 3 ideas on how you can work on wanting something less.

1. Desire Stacking

If you get your desires in the right order, you’ll often realize a more important one supersedes your fleeting want of the day. You can use big, life-defining desires to squash smaller, irrelevant ones.

Let’s call this desire stacking. If a current, short-term desire is just a distraction on your way to a bigger one, you stack the bigger one on top of it and thus make it disappear. Poof! Gone.

For example, during the 2017 crypto craze, my portfolio briefly hit a high where, had I cashed out everything then and there, I actually could have bought a Ferrari. Of course, that seemed like a gloriously stupid thing to do. I want financial freedom much more so than a Ferrari. Case closed.

Use your true desires — the ones that’ll define how you’ll have lived your life — to clear out all the little ego-boost milestones that, in the grand scheme of things, don’t matter.

2. Delay Until Expiry

Sometimes, I delay opening a carton of milk because I know, over the next few days, I won’t use it all. Unfortunately, I occasionally do that until the whole carton expires.

When you do the same with your lesser desires, that’s not wasteful, it’s smart. Delay cashing in your chips a little longer, and with each passing day, you’ll show yourself that, actually, you’re doing just fine without a new handbag.

If you do end up rewarding yourself after a few delays, that’s fine. After all, the reward was part of the plan.

Every now and then, however, you’ll find the desire just expires. You no longer want the reward because the person who set out to chase it is a different person from who you are today. That is true growth.

I still want my Ferrari, but I’m much less in a rush to get it than I was when I started. Funny how that works.

3. The Unfreedom of Desire

Finally, and this may be the best way to want less, you can remind yourself of the freedom you currently have without your desired object or milestone — and how much more freedom you’ll have if you don’t start worrying about it in the first place.

Right now, I may not have a Ferrari, but I also don’t have to pay its expensive insurance. I don’t have to buy gas, stress about parking spots, and I’m never anxious about damaging something I don’t own.

There is unfreedom in desire. Thirst binds us to our goals. Often, not in a good way. Naval says desire is “a contract you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want.”

Imagine every time you formed a new want, you had to draw up a real contract. A long piece of writing, describing in excruciating detail the conditions to which you’ll agree in exchange for your desired prize. Each contract ends with the same line: “I, [YOUR NAME], hereby promise to be unhappy until I get [GOAL].”

I promise to be unhappy until I get a Ferrari. I promise to be unhappy until I have a partner. I promise to be unhappy until I make $10,000/month. These sound ridiculous, don’t they?

You’re already free to be happy! Make use of that freedom. No one forces you to sign such contracts. Desire is all in your head. Don’t put yourself in shackles.

Desire is as old as mankind itself. What separates humans from other animals is that we can recognize our wants. We can choose them, change them, and direct them towards various ends.

The struggle to turn our lust into passion for the greater good is one many people have faced before us. Some of them walked the streets of Rome 2,000 years ago, and at least one of them pondered the nature of desire itself, for he wrote in a letter to a friend:

“Not wanting is as good as having.” — Seneca