The Seductions of Healthy Desires: Getting What You Want Without Burning Out

This week I'd like to focus on something both personal and practical: What is a core practice that you return to when things go sideways? When you're overwhelmed, irritated, frustrated, or just worn out? What’s the thing that centers you and brings you back to who you really are?

In this episode, I explore how even our healthiest desires—those driven by love, purpose, or care—can quietly pull us away from that inner home base. We often get caught up in doing good, striving for goals, or helping others… and still find ourselves exhausted, contracted, or discontent. Why? Because even wholesome desires can seduce us into over-efforting and losing touch with the deeper peace that’s always available.

Here are the timecodes for some of the highlights:
00:00 - How to recognize your own core practice in daily life
10:35 - The difference between healthy desire (chanda) and craving (tanha)
17:15 - How “doing the right thing” can still lead to stress and burnout
27:13 - What it means to relinquish effort for the sake of a greater happiness
34:51 - How to return again and again to contentment, presence, and ease

This is a reflection on how to stay connected to what really matters—without getting caught in the endless push to do more. The goal isn’t to suppress your good intentions, but to hold them with wisdom, and rest more often in that quiet place of being already full.

This is also an invitation to come back home to yourself—to the deeper kind of happiness that’s available not when everything goes your way, but when you let go in wise and loving ways.

You’re welcome to join me live each week for these talks — for free — by signing up here. We always start with a guided meditation to set the tone for the evening. If you’d like to experience the meditation that accompanied this talk, you can listen to it here.

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