Handling "false" desires.

Identifying false desires and letting them go.

Have you ever noticed that sometimes a conversation or a few conversations with friends, family or colleagues influence our desires or influence what we want or what we don’t want?

• A few colleagues are pursuing an online course in Data Science and suddenly you also feel a need to do so.

• A few friends went to Europe for a vacation and now you also want to go there.

• A close friend bought a Tesla and you find yourself researching it, even though you absolutely don’t have a need for a new car.

• A colleague or a friend changed their job, and suddenly you find a million reasons why your current job is not good.

This might be true for you or might not be true for you, but I’m sure you know at least one person who is like that. We all are wired differently and get influenced by others and by our social conditioning to different degrees. While this is true for me, my husband is exactly the opposite. It is very difficult to influence him! (All marketers hate customers like him!!!)

There is definitely a science behind it and which probably is the foundation of all advertising and marketing. We can explore the reasons why this happens but I like to focus on the question, “what can we do about it?”.

Do we need to do anything about it?

I think yes.

Because many times, such constant chatter and such an influence is not only not needed but creates a lot of disturbance and uneasiness within. If you’ve ever lost sleep after a conversation where you learned about some activity in your friend’s life, you know exactly what I’m talking about. This inner turbulence often leads to regret, guilt, jealousy, envy or anger.

So we definitely need to do something about it.

But what?

Let’s park this aside and I have a few questions for you first.

1. What is your one long-term biggest desire or goal in life? Please pause reading and contemplate on each of the questions for a few moments.

2. What are your top 3 short-term desires or goals in life? Personal or professional.

3. What are the top 3 accomplishments or acts that you are particularly proud of yourself?

4. What are you most grateful for?

I really hope you took some time to answer these questions.

The answers to these questions are the most important stuff in your life and they show you what you value the most.

Now let’s go back to the influence we discussed earlier and the false desires that often come up. Ask yourself now, do those thoughts, desires and feelings that come up under the influence of our social circles match with the answers you gave for the 4 questions? Are they in alignment with what you truly value in life?

If the answer is yes, then please go ahead and engage with those desires in a positive way. There are many different ways to explore what those desires in such a social context are trying to inform you about and how to engage with this information.

But in case the answer is no, I hope you gain the clarity on what you need to do.

Simply smile at yourself and focus your mind to plan out what to do to achieve the goals and desires you mentioned in Q1 and Q2.

The false desire

Everyday, we are bombarded with information and content from multiple and diverse sources, which result in the emergence of a variety of thoughts. I specifically talked about a conversation in this article, but many times we don’t even need a conversation. A picture on Facebook or a post on social media is enough to sometimes add a new “false desire”.

I define a “false desire” as a desire or goal, which is not in alignment with our true values. In my experience, such false desires are often associated with emotions or feelings that create a disturbance within.

The invitation

I invite you to spend some time thinking about the questions I discussed above. Now notice if you have any desires, which can be categorized as “false desires”? What’s your course of action for those?

Or if there are some goals which came into existence as a result of social influence and you do want to act on those, how can you pursue them in a positive manner without creating any disturbance within?

Feel free to reach out if you would like to discuss this in detail! I’m always happy to engage in such insightful conversations :)

Here’s to a miraculous day!

In gratitude,

Namrita