Beyond the Finish Line

Have you ever wanted something so badly that you’ve done everything you could to make it happen and then when you finally got that prize, it just didn’t feel like how you thought it would feel?

Most of us exist in a state of perpetual pursuit. We chase the toy, the title, the car, or the relationship, fueled by the conviction that attainment equals satisfaction. Maybe it was a toy you desperately wanted as a kid that, once you got it, you never picked up again. Or, you landed that dream job or got that dream car and it still felt…flat. It was a muted experience, a gray-scale version of the Technicolor dream we’d created.

I attended a meditation session last week at the Florida Center for Mindfulness and ended up getting lunch with some of the other practitioners, two of whom are licensed psychologists. Over lunch, we had a wonderful and engaging conversation and one of the topics that came up was the disconnect between liking and wanting.

So this week’s newsletter is exploring: What is the difference between liking and wanting something?

There is an internal wrestling match that happens inside you, probably more than you realize, that has to do with this very concept. Why do we spend so much time chasing that which does not bring joy, and why do we sometimes feel hollow when we cross the finish line? In our constant pursuit of happiness, much of our lack thereof is a result of a misalignment of liking versus wanting.

You’ve probably experienced this more than you care to admit or realize, this confusion between craving and consumption. You want something, so you go out and purchase the thing or quit your job or move across the country or move in with someone you just met only to find out that, even though you wanted it “really badly,” the experience itself fell short of the glorified rendition in your mind.

If you reflect on this, it feels especially strange because you know you wanted it, but in the end, you didn’t end up liking it.

This mix-up can get in the way of making decisions that align with our values and subsequently inhibit our satisfaction in life. There is even a word for wanting things that you don’t actually like: miswanting.

In order to navigate this, we have to take a look at the mechanics of the mind.

Wanting

Wanting and liking are not routed through the same pathways of the brain.

Wanting is actually based on the prediction of liking. In other words, “to want” something simply means that you think you will like it.

It is this promise of a future reward that drives your desire (your want). You believe that attainment of whatever it is you want will bring you something that you currently do not possess—some joy, happiness, fulfillment, gratification or other satisfaction.

Wanting is really about the pursuit more than the attainment; the hunt rather than the feast. It is driven by the dopamine pathways in the brain, which are responsible for all sorts of pleasure, motivation, and habit-forming systems. Tangentially, dopamine is the primary driver in a lot of your behaviors, including your cell phone use.

Wanting involves the thrill of antici…pation (Rocky Horror Picture Show reference); the excitement of having something new, shiny, and previously unknown.

It is precisely this anticipation that keeps us scrolling, searching, and striving.

While wanting can be an indicator for something you truly do desire, it is important to understand that this is not always the case. For example, you could want a cigarette even though the evidence is overwhelming that they are harmful to your health (and taste like crap). You may want to sit and scroll through Facebook late at night even though late night screen time leads to poorer sleep. Both of these can be present despite your simultaneous want to live a healthier life, like wanting a cookie when you’re on a diet.

Contrary to what you might want to think (a bit of irony there), wanting is largely a subconscious process. It happens underneath the surface, mostly out of our control, and is rooted in a slurry of biological triggers and our past experiences. More confusingly, we don’t always know why we want something.

Along those lines, when I was a young(er) tennis player, I was convinced that the newest, most advanced tennis racquet would make me play like the greats. It wasn’t until I’d purchased more racquets than I care to admit that I realized it is not the tool that makes the master.

Liking

Liking, conversely, is an evaluative experience. Unlike wanting, which relies primarily on prediction, liking (or not) is the actual feeling we get in response to a stimulus in real time.

This process is mediated in a part of the brain called the orbitofrontal cortex, located just above the eyes. The OFC is responsible for linking sensory information to emotions. Put simply, this small region of the brain takes sensory data (what you smell, taste, touch, see, and hear) and translates it into an emotional value.

It asks, “Are we enjoying this sensory input?” and “ Do we want this experience again?”

The implication here is that while wanting is a largely unconscious, predictive action (in terms of brain activity), liking is a conscious, evaluative experience.

Liking can also be a pleasant surprise when it runs counter to what you think you want. Have you ever tried a new food that you previously have sworn you didn’t like, only to find out that you actually did enjoy it? Sushi was this for me. My southern blood thought that I would never enjoy eating cold, raw fish but now it is one of my favorite treats.

Likes are rooted in a deeper place, closer to the soul. The deeper you listen to these, the closer you get to hearing your spirit, your intuition.

Mismatching Likes and Wants

Miswanting takes no prisoners, and confusing our likes and wants can have lifelong impacts on our overall satisfaction.

Addiction, for example, is when the want outlives the like. This is the root of the tech addiction that is rampantly ravaging our society. Our bodies want the instant dopamine hits, but the actual pleasure we experience, the like, has practically vanished. We get trapped in a loop where the dopamine circuit is firing on all cylinders, but the heart is empty. The same is true for an addiction to any substance, device, or relationship.

Yes, you can even have a mismatch of want to another person. How often have we seen in movies, television, or even your own life where you wanted someone so badly that as soon as you were together, those feelings vanished into thin air?

Wicked, Stephen Schwartz’s arguably overdone but still wonderful musical turned blockbuster hit, is full of little nuggets of cultural wisdom. At the opening of Act II, after the famous “Defying Gravity,” we meet Glinda who is engaged to be married to the male hero of the story, Fiyero. She got everything she wanted: the man, the job, the wand, the status and fame, and yet, it didn’t feel like she thought it would. One of my favorite lines from her song, “Thank Goodness” is,

“Happy is what happens when all your dreams come true.”

Glinda was feeling exactly what we’re discussing. Throughout the song, she is wrestling with the mismatch between having everything she ever wanted and the thrill is no longer there.

We believe with all our hearts that our dreams are what we really want. We paint rainbows around these visions and create grand narratives of what our life would be like if all our dreams came true and how, then, we will finally be "happy.”

This is not to suggest that your dreams always misguide you, and I thoroughly believe in the power of dreaming up the most unimaginable idea for what your life could become.

Our charge is not to simply accept dreams and wants at face value, but to listen and hear if it is a call from our spirit or a passing wave from the ego.

Reclaiming the “Like”

By now you’re probably thinking about some of the things you wanted in your life that maybe didn’t live up to the hype. Maybe you’re even looking around at your house, your job, or the life you’ve built and asking, “Is this what I wanted? And, do I even like what is around me?”

Going back to my same statement, our lives are the stories we tell ourselves. And sometimes, we tell ourselves that what we like and what we want are the same thing; we lie to ourselves in order to keep the plot moving.

I encourage you to ask yourself if you actually like different parts of your life. It doesn’t have to be grand or revolutionary, just requires some attention.

Ask yourself if you like the taste of the coffee you drink every morning. Or, are you just drinking it because you’ve told yourself you don’t care enough to like or not like it, you just want coffee?

Ask yourself if you like the clothes you wear. Or, are you wearing them because someone else told you it looks good, or it fits nicely, or “that color looks good on you”? Those can be helpful sure, but do you like wearing them?

You could even ask yourself if you like the friends you hang out with. Do you actually like their company, or do you keep spending time with them out of some feeling of obligation?

Sometimes we can be telling ourselves stories about things we feel like we should want and should like, but the truth is you deserve to like your life. More importantly, you are allowed to like your life.

I know that seems like a strange statement, but somehow I think many of us got in our heads this suffocating notion that life isn’t meant to be liked, it’s just meant to be lived.

I woke up when I realized I was allowed to experience joy in every part of my life. I’m allowed to feel joy when I wake up, or eat my eggs for breakfast, or when I go to the gym, or - here’s a big one - when I go to work.

And the better news is that you are allowed all of those, too.

It begins by giving yourself permission to explore and learn more about what you like. If you get caught trying to figure out what you want and like, here are a few ways you can answer that question.

1. Give it a trial run. A few years ago, I was visiting Grand Teton National Park on a road trip. Grand Teton is one of my favorites, and its beauty is truly unmatched. One afternoon, I remember thinking to myself, “You know, I could live out here. This is so beautiful. I love the mountains and I think I could be happy living here.” The very next morning I woke up in my cot, shivering because it was 30 degrees. I distinctly remember saying to myself, “Hey Coleman, you remember when you said you could live out here? It’s 30 degrees. In July. You can’t handle this what were you thinking?!” Sometimes, the only way to know is to give it a try with as low of stakes as possible and go from there.

2. Embrace what you really like. You may find that things you like run contrary to the way you’ve been raised or how you’ve lived your life so far. For example, you may find that you like eating healthy and going to the gym even though everyone in your house sits on the couch with potato chips and a Mountain Dew. Know that it is okay to like things that are different from your friends and family. And, conversely, it’s okay to not like things that they do. Your “likes” are your own.

3. Consult others who are doing the things you want to do. Go talk to the people that have or do the things you are seeking. Talk to the person who has a boat like the one you dream of and ask them their honest opinions. Talk to the person who quit their job to start a business and ask them if it was worth it to them. You can find out a lot by asking someone “What do you hate about X?” and listening for the reality.

The more I build and develop Arete, the more I am convinced of the transformational power of this app in exercising discernment. I know most of us don’t want to be so glued to our phones, and many of us are starting to realize that we don’t like it either. Arete is ultimately about changing the way we interact with our screens. I built it to be a tool that bypasses addictive feeds and mindless doomscrolling and leads you toward an intentional engine, one that empowers and emboldens you to live a life that is more fulfilling and, ultimately, more interesting. Arete helps you uncover and tease out these likes and wants so that you can set visions for your life in line with who you want to be.

This Wednesday, January 21, I am doing my first public presentation on Arete at 1 Million Cups (1MC) in Tampa! This is a significant step forward, and this presentation offers the first showcase of the app, some of its core features, and the vision for moving forward.

The presentation will be livestreamed on their Facebook page at 9:00AM EST.

I will give a 6-minute presentation followed by about 20 minutes of Q&A! I’d love to see you there.

You can tune in at https://www.facebook.com/1millioncupstampa/.

(If you are unable to watch live, I am recording the presentation and will send out the video whenever it is available!)

Arete was inspired by a vision for helping anyone live their uninterrupted life. We all want to live a good life. We all want to have the things in our imagination and we all want to find happiness, but the path getting there isn’t always clear and there are plenty of distracting and enticing detours that tempt us to stray.

Our minds are the greatest magicians, playing tricks on us that shape how we view the world. The greatest trick, though, is swapping places with the magician.

Until next time, live uninterrupted.

~Coleman