
What drives you to chase your dreams and pursue personal growth? How can you tell if you’re following your true desires or someone else’s expectations?
In The Desire Map, Danielle LaPorte explores the power of desire as a guiding force in our lives. She reveals how our deepest desires can lead us toward genuine fulfillment, while also warning about the pitfalls of pursuing shallow wants or others’ expectations.
Get ready to discover how your feelings can be your most trusted compass in making life-changing decisions.
The Power of Desire
LaPorte begins by saying that desire is a powerful force that drives you toward personal discovery, growth, and achievement. This is because it pushes you to figure out how to get what will make you happy.
For example, if you desire the security of a well-paying job, you’ll be driven to work hard and master a lucrative skill set. Alternatively, if you desire the joy of being in a relationship with a certain person, you’ll naturally try to learn about that person’s interests and work to connect with them.
(Shortform note: Neurochemistry can help explain the power of desire as a motivator. In The Molecule of More, Lieberman and Long explain that desire is sustained by a chemical called dopamine. Your brain releases dopamine when you make progress toward goals that are important to you. That dopamine release creates intense feelings of pleasure, which motivates you to keep working toward your goals in order to recapture that dopamine high.)
We’ll explain how the power of desire can guide you to long-term fulfillment and happiness. We’ll also discuss how peer pressure, and your own preconceived ideas, can drive you to chase things you don’t actually desire.
Why You Should Trust Your Feelings
Many people believe that logic is the best basis for decisions because it’s based on objective truths, while emotions are subjective. However, LaPorte says that your feelings, particularly the feeling of desire, are important supplements to logic in the decision-making process. This is because desire acts as an internal compass, leading you toward things that will make you happy.
The author clarifies that this internal compass works only with deep-seated, consistent desires. For example, many people have a deep-seated, consistent desire to feel useful, like they’re doing important work and making a positive impact on the world. If you come home from work every day with that sought-after sense of usefulness and importance, then your feelings are saying that your job is a good fit for you. If you don’t feel fulfilled by your job, your internal compass will point you elsewhere.
Notably, says LaPorte, deep-seated, consistent desires are different from shallow wants that change day by day. Pursuing those shallow whims will only leave you frustrated and dissatisfied because you’ll keep getting things you think you want, only to find that you never really desired those things at all.
Continuing the example, suppose you see that a leadership position has opened up at your workplace. You would most likely feel a strong urge to apply for that higher position—perhaps because it pays more or is more illustrious than your current role. Imagine that upon getting the promotion, you find that you’re only happy for a short time, and management work doesn’t provide the sense of satisfaction you had before in a more hands-on role. Now, your feelings are telling you that you gave up the job you truly desired for a new position that you thought you desired but is less suitable to your personal goals and interests.
Unpleasant Feelings Are Also Important Guides
Just as positive feelings help guide you toward what you truly want, says LaPorte, negative feelings tell you that what you’re doing isn’t aligned with who you are.
Many people view negative feelings like sadness or frustration as problems to be solved. They might run from such feelings by immersing themselves in a hobby, suppressing them with alcohol or other drugs, or simply ignoring them and pretending they don’t exist. However, LaPorte argues that feeling bad isn’t a problem in and of itself. Instead, it’s a sign that there’s some deeper problem with your life.
With that said, remember that your surface-level emotions will shift with your circumstances, and only the feelings that remain steady over time will guide you accurately. So, for example, feeling frustrated after a difficult shift at work isn’t necessarily a warning that you’re in the wrong job—it could just mean that you had a bad day. On the other hand, if you find yourself going to the bar every day after work to forget about how much you hate your job, that’s a clear sign that something needs to change.
Peer Pressure and Your Assumptions Will Mislead You
Following your desires can lead you to long-term happiness and life satisfaction, but LaPorte cautions you to first make sure that they’re really your desires. This warning is needed because many people find themselves pursuing goals that others have chosen for them.
For example, someone might follow their parents’ wishes by becoming a doctor, then feel unhappy in that role. This person is dissatisfied because they devoted their life to fulfilling someone else’s desire. LaPorte offers some guidance on how to make sure that you’re really pursuing your own desires.
Your own assumptions and expectations about your desires can also cloud your judgment, says LaPorte. These preconceived notions may lead you to chase things you don’t genuinely want or dismiss opportunities for real fulfillment. For example, you might know that you desire a career offering both creativity and stability, but you expect it to take the form of a high-powered business leadership role. Then you discover a love for, say, event planning—it fulfills your desires, but it isn’t the prestigious corporate role you imagined.
In this example, your preconceived ideas of what will make you happy (a high-paying, high-profile job) are at odds with the feelings telling you that event planning makes you genuinely happy. If you ever find yourself in a similar situation, LaPorte urges you to dismiss your previous assumptions and, as the saying goes, “follow your heart.”