234 How to Figure Out What You Want (And Why It’s So Damn Hard)

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Dec 13, 2025

Discover why knowing what you truly want can transform relationships. Explore how childhood experiences and social pressures shape your desires. Learn to use disappointment as a guide and differentiate between real wants and societal expectations. Uncover techniques to access your imagination and recognize envy as a sign of unmet needs. The podcast dives into personality styles that influence how we navigate our desires. Engage in playful practices to embrace longing and ultimately create a fulfilling life.

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INSIGHT

Wanting Is Needed For Authentic Agreements

Discerning your wants is essential for making authentic agreements with others and yourself.
Childhood, birth order, and cultural messaging often block access to clear wants.

ADVICE

Use Disappointment As A Compass

Use disappointment as a compass to reveal unmet wants.
Treat disappointment as data about the gap between what you got and what you wanted.

INSIGHT

Separate Desire From Assumption

Distinguish real desires from assumptions of what will happen.
You can be disappointed by unmet assumptions even when outcomes improve.

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There’s one really important prerequisite for a whole lot of juicy relational goodness… but it sounds deceptively simple… figuring out what you want. Whether it's day-to-day preferences or deeper desires, knowing what we truly want helps us make authentic agreements with ourselves and others. So why is this process so difficult for many of us?

In this episode, we’re exploring the psychology behind identifying our true desires, the obstacles that get in our way, and practical strategies for uncovering what we genuinely want. We share personal experiences and tips that can help you reconnect with your desires and use them to create a more fulfilling life.

Here’s what we’re covering:

— How disappointment can serve as a powerful compass pointing toward what we truly want

— The crucial difference between what we genuinely want and what we think we should want

— Why some of us struggle to identify our desires due to childhood experiences, birth order, or cultural conditioning

— How to distinguish between assumptions about what will happen versus actual desires

— The power of using envy and "justice jealousy" as indicators of our deeper wants

— Practical techniques for accessing your imagination when you feel stuck or disconnected from your desires

— Why constraints can sometimes help us identify what we want more clearly than complete freedom

— How different personality types approach the process of wanting differently

— The concept that "desire desires desire" and how the gap between wanting and having creates energy

— Strategies for working with the tendency to lose interest once we obtain what we thought we wanted

Resources mentioned in this episode:

— Jessica Fern's book Polysecure

— Our episode on Justice Jealousy

— Unruly: Our agreements lab for unconventional relationships

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Music: Dance of Felt by ⁠Blue Dot Sessions