Wanting From a Wound

Not wrong. Small.

I’m not talking about ambition, and I’m not talking about the size of the number. Some of the smallest wants I have ever encountered had nine figures attached to them.

I’m talking about where the want came from.

A note on my previous article

In You’re Not Lazy, I wrote that the reason you don’t move is grief. Moving kills a version of you, and nobody volunteers to mourn in advance.

This is the other half of it.

You have been weighing a real death against an undersized want. And you have been losing that math correctly.

The question gets asked in a particular room

Think about the last few times you seriously asked yourself what do I want.

My guess is you weren’t at your best. Something had gone sideways.

A quarter missed. A partner out. A board meeting that went badly. A Sunday night where the whole thing suddenly felt heavy.

That’s when people ask the question. It’s honest, and it’s the worst possible moment to trust the answer.

The answer is shaped by the room you asked it in.

Two kinds of wanting

There is wanting that comes from lack, and there is wanting that comes from possibility. They produce different answers to the same question.

Lack-based wanting is bounded by the shape of the wound. Whatever hurt you sets the outer edge of what you can want, because everything you want is a solution to the hurting.

Possibility-based wanting has no ceiling. It isn’t solving for anything.

Here is the tell.

Lack-based wants can be finished. There is a number, a date, an event, after which the want is satisfied and the ache is supposed to stop.

Possibility-based wants can’t be finished. They keep opening.

How this occurs for a founder

Three versions of it come up over and over.

The exit. Get to the event, and then you’ll be free. The want is real. But ask what happens the day after, and most people have never once pictured it.

That’s the tell. The exit isn’t a destination. It’s a door out of a room you don’t want to be in.

Which means the day you walk through it, you arrive nowhere in particular.

The number. Some figure that arrived years ago, out of someone else’s mouth, and never got re-examined since. It usually traces back to a specific moment of humiliation about money.

The org chart. Enough layers, enough redundancy, enough process that no one person can ever leave you exposed again.

That one is never described as a want. It’s described as good management.

It quietly builds a company nobody can hurt you in. Including you.

None of these are stupid. Every one of them is a want with the exact shape of the thing that hurt.

I paid $120,000 for one of these

I have written before about hiring Rich Litvin for a year. What I haven’t said much about is what I actually wanted from it.

I wasn’t there to be coached. I was there to watch him.

I wanted to learn what he was doing, so I could do it myself, and never have to need anyone again.

Sit with that want for a second. Never have to need anyone.

That isn’t ambition. That’s a wall, built by a man who had needed people and been left holding it.

Business failing, marriage ending, bankruptcy circling. Every one of those had taught me the same lesson. Needing is dangerous.

So I hired the most expensive teacher I could find and aimed him at the wrong target.

The want was small. Not the price. The want.

Here is the part that took me years to see. If I had achieved it, it would have worked.

I would have gotten very good, and very alone, and I would have called it winning.

Why you can’t just ask harder

You have probably tried to answer the question better. Journaling. An offsite. A coach. A book somebody swore by.

It rarely works, and the reason is plain.

You keep asking the question from the same place.

The state you’re in when you ask is doing more work than the honesty you bring to it. You can’t out-sincere the room you’re standing in.

This is also why other people’s visions for you don’t land. They’re describing possibility-based wants to someone standing in a lack-based room.

It sounds nice. It doesn’t occur as available.

The one move

Change the state, then ask.

Not what do I want. Try this instead:

What would I want if nothing were wrong?

Stand inside that for a while. Nothing is broken. Nothing needs fixing. Nobody has to be handled, no fire has to be put out, nobody is disappointed in you.

From there, what do you want?

The first answers will be the old ones. Let them come and let them pass. They are loyal, and they have been on duty a long time.

What arrives after those is usually the first honest thing you have heard yourself say about this in years.

I’ll tell you what I noticed the first time I did this properly.

The wants that survived weren’t bigger versions of the old ones. They were different in kind.

They had other people in them.

Ok, now it’s your turn.

Take these somewhere quiet. Paper, not your head.

• Where was I standing the last time I asked myself what I desire? What had just happened?

• Is my greatest desire finishable? Is there a moment after which I’m done? What does the day after look like, specifically?

• What is the wound my desire is shaped around? What taught me that lesson, and how old was I?

• What would I desire if nothing were wrong?

• Whose language am I using when I describe what I desire? Mine, or someone I once admired?

Don’t act on any of it. Just notice which answers came out of the room, and which came out of you.

If you are open to it, I’d love to hear what surfaced.