Wanting to Want It

You know you should do it. It’s good for you. C’mon. It’s not even that hard. You’ve done it before. You’ll be glad you did. But…you just don’t really feel like it right now. You don’t want to.??

Exercise, getting enough sleep, eating better, reading that book on your nightstand instead of watching TV, picking up the phone to wish that friend happy birthday. There’s no shortage of choices that we know we should make. The single greatest barrier to change may well be the disconnect between what we want in the moment and what we want long term. If we want it, then making a plan and getting started can flow naturally. When we don’t want to change it’s basically a non-starter. So what do we do when we don’t want the things that are good for us?

A lot of people answer this question with a shrug and the Nike motto. We try to drill-sergeant ourselves: “You don’t want to? Since when does what you want matter, you maggot!” We tout willpower as a sort of mystical solution that you just develop by repeatedly doing what you don’t want to do. But where does that get us? Maybe to some temporary, guilt-driven, halfhearted attempts to change that feel like battling uphill against our desires. Whew. No wonder some 80% of new year’s resolutions don’t last longer than a month.

An alternative approach might look like this:

?1. ? ? Get real about where you’re at

Rose-colored glasses and groundless optimism don’t really get us anywhere. If you’ve never established the habit before and decide to flip everything around starting NOW, to hit-the-gym-hard-every-day and only-eat-salad-without-a-hint-of-dressing and start-all-your-goals-at-max-level-all-at-the-same-time, well, no wonder that it all falls down. We need a grounded, authentic inventory of where we’re at, an establishing of priorities, a narrowing of focus, a realistic approach of cumulative small steps and progression.

Acknowledging where we are currently at, even simply admitting, “I don’t really want to do this right now” is important because authenticity contributes to a real foundation. We can then ask “Do I WANT to want it? Maybe I don’t want to get a handle on my sleep schedule and have earlier mornings, but do I want to be the kind of person who wants to?” From there, we can consider our broader goals and motivations, like—is it actually important for me to go to the gym? Is it about being healthier or is it kind of a body-shame-induced sense of guilt? If it’s about health, are there other ways to exercise I enjoy more? Getting more clear about what you want in the moment, what you want long term, and why you want it lays the important groundwork for change, even before you want to do what is good for you.

2. ? ? Build Willingness

Once we’ve gained a clear-eyed understanding of where we truly are at and know that we at least want to want some sort of change, there are actually ways we can increase the willingness we feel to change, to build the want. The two main routes for increasing willingness are to experience affliction and to encounter beauty.

???????? Experiencing Affliction

When we live through or anticipate the unpleasant, negative, or undesirable, it can help build willingness because we want relief from suffering or to avoid the darn thing altogether! Think shock collars, the threat of getting fired or failing a class, or jail time… the real or imagined experience of affliction helps us desire change. Pain can manifest in sharp and sudden ways, but also can accumulate gradually. While there are times that we feel too tired to change, believing it will take too much energy or work, there are other times we want change because we get tired. Tired of the way things have been, of well-worn patterns that aren't working. Tired of feeling unhappy and dissatisfied. Tired of pain and fear. Affliction can prod us closer to change; without it, we sometimes linger in the comfort and familiarity of inertia.

Of course, we don’t tend to choose affliction. We get a diagnosis and suddenly eating well and exercising are no longer optional but essential. Or our addiction contributes to the loss of a job and poisons an important relationship. Stories about hitting rock bottom exemplify how painful consequences can act as wake-up calls and increase motivation. In that way, even negative events can have some redemptive value. Fortunately, affliction doesn’t have to be a fully realized, worst-case scenario to prompt change. We can be responsive to more minor cases- like noting the physical and mental discomfort after a Netflix binge and making a simple, immediate change to go on a walk. We can also let the fear of the worst help us change before it becomes reality. But there’s also another way to build willingness, one that motivates us a bit more pleasantly—beauty.

????????Encountering Beauty?

Beauty means far more than physical appearance; it is whatever you want to run towards. Health, connection, joy, fulfillment, peace, achievement. Beauty inspires us. We can find it in lots of ways—by observing people we admire and want to be like, by picturing the brightest future we could enjoy, by having an experience so wonderful you want to recapture or share it with others.

When we see beauty in something, we are naturally pulled to it. When we see beauty, we increase our willingness to change. And like the old “eye of the beholder” line suggests, beauty is not simply present or absent intrinsically. We play a role on whether or not we encounter beauty, starting with the deceptively obvious steps of wanting to see it and choosing to look for it.??

The power of beauty to draw us and the tendency of affliction to repel us can be leveraged in tandem to increase our willingness to change, even when we do not innately want something that is good for us.?

3. ? Know Thyself

In addition to starting from the place you’re really at and building willingness, another way to navigate a lack of desire is to build systems that account for our shortsighted and fleeting preferences. Behavioral Scientist Dr. Katherine Milkman is an expert in human change—her book is even titled, “How to Change.” She posits that a key to success is to come to terms with the fact that laziness, procrastination, impulsivity, and forgetfulness are chronic, recurring aspects of the human condition. Rather than na?vely thinking that we’re an exception or that we’ll have the willpower tomorrow, we should instead accept that these traits have a home in us and make plans to manage them.

One of Dr. Milkman’s suggestions is “temptation bundling,” where you link a reward to the activity you’re trying to make a habit of. For example, making your daily time watching baby animal videos only take place while you’re flossing your teeth, or saving your new audio book for when you’re washing the dishes, or even making a rule that for every 25 dollars you put into your retirement account, you get a scoop of ice-cream or small-but-pleasant treat. This technique relies on making the new behavior more appealing, which is one means of leveraging beauty for change.?

Dr. Milkman also recommends “upping the price of your vice,” which could look like painting a bitter-tasting solution on the ends of your nails to keep you from biting them, making a public commitment to the change so you are more accountable, or joining programs to quit smoking where you put money on the line that you will lose if you give up. These are all are ways to increase the affliction experienced if change is procrastinated. But the point here isn’t to punish yourself harshly after a mistake or slip up. Instead, this is about making the habit you want to break less convenient, to make it “cost more.” It’s about recruiting the things you don't want to happen so that they can help you.??

Both of these strategies, making the thing you want to adopt more desirable and making the thing you want to stop more costly, require self-awareness and honesty. You’re the only one who can know what actually would motivate you both in terms of what you want and what you dislike! As we adapt our strategies to our human tendencies and individual circumstances, we’re more likely to succeed because we’re not relying as heavily on wanting it in the moment.

The Foundation of Change

Fortunately for humanity, our ability to change is not tethered to our desires, which can sometimes feel as capricious as spring weather. Even though wanting to change can accelerate our growth and progression, it is not as important as our capacity to choose. If we don’t want to do something that we know we should do or would be good for us, we can still choose to evaluate where we are at and what we do want, we can influence our willingness by experiencing affliction and encountering beauty, and we can incorporate strategies that are adapted to our inclinations and do not depend on wanting or willpower alone.

This is good news! It doesn’t let us off the hook and it doesn’t mean we can completely avoid setbacks. But the times when we don’t want what we should want do not define us. We don’t have to get stuck there and we don't have to pretend we want it, or force ourselves to want it, or passively wait until we want it. We can want to want it, and that’s a good place to start.