Dear Roman, I learned how to want things and my new geography exercise

A friend was teaching me how to get anything I wanted. It is only two steps. 1) Figure out how to get what you want. 2) Ruthlessly pursue it. I told him fantastic. I am eager to get started. But how do you know what you want? He was shocked and attributed it to a difference in our personalities. He is a hammer and I am a cloud. But there is something more to this, isn’t there?

Everybody wants things. The question is how explicit it is, and if you know what it is.

It is important to want stuff. I have seen major problems when people do not want anything. I think you noticed this too—they start doing strange things. Going backward, going in circles, plateauing. In the worst cases, causing needless destruction. Or, alternatively, they start to want things they should not want—they start wanting to help a person, to change a person, or to make somebody else happy. Their focus stops being on themselves and starts being on literally anything else. They start to want love or belonging, not for the feeling of joy it brings them, but to feel belonging or love, in any capacity, from anywhere. They become detached from their values and eventually from their own bodies. 

I was like this for a long time.

I did not know how to want anything. I was not lazy. Far from it. I worked as hard as anybody. I got just as tired. Same dark circles. But I wasn’t steering it in any proper direction. It is not that I was trying not to want something. I was not pursuing a stoic or ascetic path. I did not throw away my belongings and decide that I no longer need anything. The psychology was not deep. I just did not want anything. It was really that simple. And so my motivation system ended up becoming completely messed up. I had to act towards something, but I did not know for what or why.

I found a trick. It is a simple trick that let me take control of my motivation system again. It let me orient myself again.

Here is the trick. It is one question.

The question is: Where do you want to go in the world?

You may have a list in your head. Rio, Orlando, Baku, Bali. Some of these words meant more to you than others. You may have words that pop up in your head without you even thinking about it. Dubai. Bombay. Why are these words in your head?

Stay with me here. Even if you think you do not want anything, you still have this list of places. What three places in the world do you want to go? Now go down the list. Why are those the place? Now name three random places. Why not those places? Why the first three and not the second three? What is the difference?

The exercise is simple, but you can keep playing with it and go quite deep. It reveals your value structure—both long-term and short-term. Perhaps you wish to go to Bali because you fantasize about seeing your lover there. Perhaps you want to go to Spain because that is where your family is from and you care about learning the reality of your roots. Perhaps you want to go to Patagonia because you want to go to the edge of the earth. Go deep enough and it becomes existential: What can you live without seeing, and what would you be very sad to miss before you die? 

Here is another exercise: Remember a time you were crazy. What were you doing then when you were crazy? What did you want then with such a passionate, uncontrolled fervor that your mind flew out and assaulted the air? 

Here is a third: What kinds of people do you not often talk to? Is it musicians? Is it engineers? Artists? Politicians? What happens if you talk to them? What kind of boredom would there be? What kind of excitement would there be? 

These questions help orient your values with the values of others in society. They can help you notice differences between people, and thus see yourself more clearly. If you go take someone and sit them down, and ask them what do you want? Some will have an answer but many will not know. They will not know what they want, let alone why they want it. They will not know why they do the things they do. But you can look at how they made their decisions. Why did they want to go to Rio, not Rome? Why did they choose to wear what they wore? What were they optimizing for?

Do not just assume that everything is an accident. Be closer to Sherlock Holmes than a universalist nihilist. If you see things that are different, how did they get that way?

This is not a prescriptive course of study, but it was helpful for me. This is also a different meaning of want and desire than the vernacular Buddhist conception. This is not about desire or attachment. It is rather seeing your internal motivation operating system—everybody has one, even the Buddhists. With the geography exercise alone—I can no longer be in denial that I want things—and am closer to getting them. I am curious if you find promise in these methods, or think of extensions.