I learned something over the past few months. It is the greatest lesson I’ve ever learned, and I hope and pray that I remember it forever:
The way to get what you want is to want it a little less.
I’ve found this is uncannily true about any object of desire – whether its a person, a thing, a job, or a change you want to make in yourself.
When you give attention to something, it gets bigger in your mind. It becomes the only thing you can see – which is great for focus, but also terrible for seeing other things. It blinds you to other opportunities. It keeps you pinned to a single outcome, and it allows the situation to destroy you if it doesn’t happen the way you want it to.
But by staying a little busy, by having lots of things happening, you allow other possibilities to creep in, and your world to broaden.
I realized it yesterday, when I got something I really wanted, that the only way I’ve ever gotten anything I ever wanted was by keeping it in my peripheral vision, not front and center. This goes against every piece of sports advice, every life coach, self-help book and guru that I’ve ever encountered, but it’s absolutely true for me.
Curious.
An interesting insight…I think there’s a lot of truth in this point.
Part of the reason is the law of diminishing returns. If you go from devoting 100% of your mental effort to your primary goal…getting a promotion at work, snagging the desired boyfriend/girlfriend, finishing the novel, whatever…to only devoting, say, 70% of mental effort to that goal, then there will probably be almost no reduction in the amount of progress you’re making toward the goal. But you’ll now have 30% available to do other stuff, and some of that other stuff may turn out, indirectly, to help you toward the original goal…or to find another one which turns out to be even more important to you.
I like the fact you used percentages. : )
But yes. When I was very young and brash, like last year, I believed that if I didn’t want it with all my heart, if I didn’t obsess, it meant something was wrong with my intensity. But it’s really just the opposite. By refusing to obsess, you allow the world a little bit of maneuvering room to give it to you. I guess that’s a squishy new-age kind of thing to say but I don’t know how else to explain it.
If I want something super bad, I think the way to get it is to work for it, but also churn things up in your life. Other things. Like I want my book to sell. We know I want this more than anything in the world. But I’ve recently started doing some other things. Sending resumes to companies I’ve always thought would be cool to work for, enrolling in school again (yipes.) So by throwing a lot of things into the world, and being way outside my comfort zone, I’m actually seeing a lot of things happening now. Opportunities are coming to me which I believe would not have happened if I hadn’t taken the initiative to do churn up the status quo.
The Japanese have a term for this. “Soft eyes.” Keeping the eyes soft allows you to absorb more of the peripheral vision. It keeps you calm and balanced. By maintaining a state of “wideness”, of being open to the things that come at you from left field, I think it makes you 1.) a more interesting person and 2.) more able to see new paths for getting what you want.
Linked: worthwhile reading & viewing
Kinda related
Great essay! I think this also goes to a discussion we’ve had before about “cross-pollinating.” When I go to the museum and see beautiful pictures, or head to the ballet, or do something besides write, my writing is fresher. It’s accessing some other part of my creativity.
I love this subject!