The Difference Between Wanting Something and Wanting to Be the Person Who Has It

There’s an old saying, everyone wants to go to heaven but nobody wants to die. Often times in life, we may like the idea of something but ultimately fall short of achieving it because we may want the result without wanting, accepting or sustaining the behaviours required to produce it.

Maybe you want to write a book. You picture holding the finished copy. Seeing your name on the cover. Someone asking what you do and casually saying, I'm a writer.

There's only one irritating detail. You don't particularly want to sit alone for hundreds of hours writing the bloody thing.

Same with starting a business. Getting fit. Learning an instrument. Travelling. Owning a beautiful house. We can fall in love with the photograph of a life without falling in love with the life itself.

There are actually two different desires. Wanting the thing, and wanting to be the person who is capable of producing the thing.

Let’s say you want to write a book. Do you really want to write a book or do you want to have written a book?

Those sound almost identical.

They're not.

One points toward an experience and a process. The other points toward a self-image.

Do you really want to write a book? I mean do you really want to go through the process of what is involved in writing a book? Or, do you want to be someone who has written a book? Do you want to be interviewed on TV about your latest book?

The difference between wanting to write and wanting to be an author. The press conference looks very different to the cold room at 2am when the rest of your family are sleeping and you have total mental blank over chapter 17.

So does the difference between;

• Wanting to build a business vs wanting to be an entrepreneur.

• Wanting to exercise vs wanting to be fit.

• Wanting to travel vs wanting to be well travelled.

• Wanting to learn guitar vs imagining yourself as someone who can play guitar.

• Wanting a beautiful garden vs wanting to garden.

And neither is necessarily dishonest. We often genuinely can't tell the difference ourselves.

Often we’re glued to the trailer without watching the whole movie. Most aspirations arrive in our imagination as highlight reels.

The entrepreneur has freedom, money and an interesting life. We don't picture them trying to reconcile an invoice at 10:47pm.

The fit person looks fantastic. We don't picture them getting out of bed when it's cold and going to the gym when they'd rather stay home. (something I struggled with if I’m being honest).

We imagine results as lifestyles. But results are usually the residue of thousands of incredibly ordinary actions.

Is A Dream A Lie If It Don’t Come True?

I’m reminded of the line by “The Boss” Bruce Springsteen, “Is a dream a lie if it don't come true?”

What happens when we want something, yet we don’t manifest it?

We often blame that on a lack of motivation, I must not want it badly enough, or I’d have it right?

But perhaps that's not quite right.

Maybe you do desperately want the outcome. You just don't want the process.

And that's an uncomfortable distinction because motivational culture tends to tell us:

If the dream is big enough, the facts don’t count. If you want something badly enough, you'll do whatever it takes.

But will you?

You can want to be thin while wanting cake more at 9pm.

You can want financial independence while hating everything involved in building a business.

You can want a novel with your name on it while finding writing miserable.

Wanting the destination doesn't automatically make you enjoy the road.

Motivation  alone rarely gets you there, and perhaps that’s not such a bad thing. Perhaps we need to stop beating ourselves up for lacking motivation, when in reality the chances of motivation alone getting us there were always slim and none to begin with.

Do Not Merely Listen To The Word

Don’t misunderstand me, action is required to move toward any goal. Sitting at home in front of the TV waiting for success to fall in our lap is also doomed to fail.

Or as a 12 year old Neill once learned at Sunday School Camp, Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.

I’m just saying, don’t expect the goal alone to be enough to propel you to it, then beat yourself up when you don’t achieve it.

Also, don’t allow distractions to feel like progress. Sometimes, we allow ourselves to be deluded into thinking that preparing to take action is the same as taking action.

• We buy the running shoes.

• Download the fitness app.

• Buy the notebook.

• Register the business name.

• Create the website.

• Buy the course.

• Tell people we're starting something.

And suddenly we feel slightly like that person already.

That can be dangerous because preparing to become someone can sometimes scratch the same psychological itch as actually becoming them.

Planning feels like progress.

Research feels like progress.

Talking about it feels like progress.

Sometimes they are progress.

They're progress only if action eventually follows.

Sometimes they're nothing more than extraordinarily sophisticated forms of avoidance.

Don’t Do, Have Done!

The secret is, you don’t have to try and force yourself to love every aspect of the process, nor delude yourself into thinking you already do.

This is perhaps success’s biggest secret. You don't have to love every part of something worthwhile.

Writers don't have to leap out of bed screaming, YES! EDITING! People who exercise aren't necessarily thrilled about every workout. Entrepreneurs don't enjoy every spreadsheet.

I once attended a seminar with the commentator and author Doug Wead in which he perhaps summed this up beautifully as simply “Don’t do, have done!”

What he meant was, the doing isn’t the enjoyable part, it’s the having done. So get the doing done so that you can enjoy having it done.

The question isn't: Do I enjoy every step?

It's closer to: Is there enough about the actual experience that I value to justify everything that comes with it?

That's much more realistic.

What Are You Really Chasing?

There is nothing wrong with wanting to become someone.

Identity is one of the things that pulls us forward. Sometimes we begin doing something precisely because we want to become the kind of person who does it — and somewhere along the way, we genuinely become that person.

The danger is spending years pursuing an identity without ever asking whether we actually want the life attached to it.

Maybe the question isn't just, What do I want?

Maybe it's: If I got it, what would my ordinary day in the life look like?

And, am I OK with that.

Because the dream isn't really the book launch, the successful business, the before-and-after photograph or the plane ticket.

The dream eventually has to become a part of your ordinary day in the life.

You don’t have to love the process, but it helps if you can enjoy at least part of it, but love it or hate it, you have to do the process to get the result.