Mood or Desire?
This week I’ve been thinking a lot about the difference between letting my moods decide what I do (or eat) next or reminding myself of my true desire. Here’s an extract from the book that explains more…
If I Only Did What I Wanted, My Life Would Fall Apart
A question I often get at this point goes something like this:
If I did what I wanted all the time I’d never work or get anything done or achieve anything that needed some effort. And what about all those boring but necessary things that I don’t really want to do but have to do like emptying the washing machine or doing my budget report, which I hate. If I carried on just doing what I wanted, I’m worried that I’d stay in bed all day.
It’s a good question, one that comes up a lot, and it brings us to the difference between navigating by mood or navigating by desire.
Your Moods And Your Desires
When we navigate by our moods we are primarily concerned with how we feel so we ask internal questions like What do I feel like doing? or when faced with a choice Which one feels right? or when facing some regular chore we might avoid it if we do not feel like doing it. Can you see a problem with this approach?
I don’t know about you but my moods change so much, even what I’ve just eaten changes how I feel. That makes me a bit wary of using them as a guide and that’s why you might be worried about how your life could possibly work if you just did what you felt like all the time.
It could be said that the opposite to mood is desire. Desire is about things that you want rather than things you feel like doing. A lot of the time your mood and your desire are aligned. You feel like a coffee and you want a coffee so you act to get one. With experiences like this it’s easy to confuse mood and desire. But what if there is a real difference? You feel like a coffee but you want a good night’s sleep. Now you have a clear choice – follow your moods and risk losing sleep, or choose what you really desire instead. Here’s a more personal example:
Choosing Desire On A Cold, Wet Morning
Imagine for a moment. It’s Saturday morning. 6am. Cold, dark, wet outside and my alarm rings. I surface with a groan in my warm, snuggly bed and realise that, yet again, it’s time to get up for my daughter’s 6.30am swimming practice. I really do not feel like getting up, I feel like staying in bed. My mood says don’t do it, it’s not right for you, it doesn’t feel right.
So I’m lying there and I ask myself What do you want?’and I know that even though I do not feel like it, I really do want to get up. In fact I like the quiet time while she is swimming – it’s like a little oasis in my week and I’ve enjoyed it before and I picture myself enjoying it again. I also want to get up because she loves swimming and I want to support her. I still don’t feel like it, although, as I begin to think about what I want, my mood is actually changing, coming round to supporting my desire. Eventually I get up.
Learn To Follow Your True Desire
If you can identify your true desire, your mood will fall into line behind it or in plain English: if there is something you don’t feel like doing then maybe you’re asking the wrong question.
Our feelings change so much, affected by the weather, what we eat, the amount of sleep we’ve had, what we read or watch, the fun or argument we are having. All these affect our mood from moment to moment. This makes your feelings an unreliable guide to what to do next. Your desires, on the other hand, tend to be deeper and less susceptible to moment by moment changes.
Any time you find yourself in conflict about a simple choice – perhaps you think you should be doing something but don’t feel up to it then have a think about what questions you are asking yourself.
If you are navigating primarily by mood you’ll be asking What do I feel like doing?
If you are navigating by desire you’ll be asking What do I really want?
Anxiety is a sign that you are not focusing on what you want.
As you choose to follow your desires rather than your moods, a couple of things will happen…
Your desires and what you want will become much clearer to you.
Your moods will fall into line behind your desires so that your feelings quickly come to support what you want. And when you feel like doing what you want, it becomes much much easier to start getting what you want.
This Week, Choose Desire
Before you read on, put this book down and take the next week or so to practice navigating by desire. The question is not What do I feel like but what do I want? Focus on that regardless of whether you feel like doing it or not and notice what happens to your mood. You should find that your feelings eventually start supporting your desires. And remember to keep it small for now so you give those decision making muscles a good workout.
And this brings us right back to the question we started with If I only did what I wanted, nothing in my life would get done.
That’s not true though is it? Even if you don’t feel like emptying the washing machine, you do want to wear clean clothes. Although you hate doing budget reports you do want to show how well your team has done. In fact, once you stop focusing on how horrible it feels and start thinking about what you desire, you often find that other ideas spring to mind about how to get it done.
If you shift your focus away from how you feel towards what you want, it allows you to be more creative. You can worry less about applying this approach to bigger things because even if you don’t feel like doing them in the moment, if they are real desires of yours, you can still go with them.
While at first these two ways of making decisions seem similar, they take people in two completely different directions. Since our moods are often tied up in old habits and patterns of thinking, following them tends to just create more of the ‘same old, same old’ in our lives. Somehow, we just don’t get around to making those changes we know we’d love to make, and things that seem like they’ll take too much effort are put off until the last minute or don’t get done at all.
Your wanting, however, is a living, breathing, fluid process. Each time you do what you want (or don’t do what you don’t want to do), your actions seem effortless and inspired ideas become almost commonplace. Over time, it becomes easier and easier to read and follow your inner compass. Life gets a lot simpler, and the pursuit of success becomes a lot more fun.
Michael Neill, Writer and Coach
Key Points: Desire, Not Mood
- When you navigate by mood you’ll find yourself asking How do I feel about this?
- This leaves you open to the vagaries of your changing mind.
- When you navigate by desire you’ll find yourself asking What do I really want?
- If you practice following your desire sometimes in spite of your mood then you will begin to recognise your inner compass more easily.
