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    “I would die without my [insert luxury item], we’ll say in jest. How can anybody live like this? we’ll ask not so rhetorically. The answer? They’re stronger than you. ‘The more a man is,’ the editor Maxwell Perkins had inscribed on his mantel, ‘the less he wants.’ When you strip away the unnecessary and the excessive, what’s left is you. What’s left is what’s important.”

    Ryan Holiday, Discipline Is Destiny (Page 36)

      “Modern marketing culture is designed to amplify our desires. To turn faint wants into desperate needs. As a result, we’re intimately familiar with what we want. And we strive to get it. The problem with getting what you want is that now you have a hole, because you don’t want that thing anymore, you have it. We then are on a cycle, eager to find a new thing to want. Which means that the thing you used to want but now have fades in comparison. There’s a more resilient path: To commit to wanting what you have.”

      Seth Godin

        “You tell me what you want, and I’ll tell you who you are.”

        Will Smith, Will (Page 212)

          “Not wanting something is as good as having it.”

          Dru Riley, Blog

            “It is a great happiness to have what you desire; but it is an even greater happiness not to want more than you already have.”

            Menedemus, via A Calendar of Wisdom (Page 156)

              “wanting always interrupts being.”

              Yung Pueblo, Inward (Page 166)

                “Remember how passionately you yearned in the past for many of the things which you hate or despise now. Remember how many things you lost trying to satisfy your former desires. The same thing could happen now, with the desires which excite you at present. Try to tame your present desires, calm them; this is most beneficial, and most achievable.”

                Leo Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom (Page 49)

                  “No person has the power to have everything they want, but it is in their power not to want what they don’t have, and to cheerfully put to good use what they do have.”

                  Seneca, via The Daily Stoic (Page 258)

                    To want nothing makes one invincible—because nothing lies outside your control. This doesn’t just go for not wanting the easy-to-criticize things like wealth or fame—the kinds of folly that we see illustrated in some of our most classic plays and fables. That green light that Gatsby strove for can represent seemingly good things too, like love or a noble cause. But it can wreck someone all the same.”

                    Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic (Page 61)

                      “What we desire makes us vulnerable. Whether it’s an opportunity to travel the world or to be the president or for five minutes of peace and quiet, when we pine for something, when we hope against hope, we set ourselves up for disappointment. Because fate can always intervene and then we’ll likely lose our self-control in response.”

                      Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic (Page 61)

                        “The more things we desire and the more we have to do to earn or attain those achievements, the less we actually enjoy our lives—and the less free we are.”

                        Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic (Page 33)

                        Naval Ravikant Quote on Desire and How It Works Against Your Pursuit of Happiness

                          “Desire is a contract that you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want.”

                          Naval Ravikant, Medium

                          Beyond the Quote (272/365)

                          How many contracts of unhappiness have you signed? And how lengthy are the terms for each? Is the contract of your desire going to take you a week to obtain? A month? 12 months? 48 months? 72 months? Or is the contract you signed more like a 30 year mortgage? Are you really okay with being unhappy for that amount of time? …For any amount of time? And for what? A fancy car? A luxury watch? A playboy mansion? How much of your life are you willing to sacrifice for these things?

                          Read More »Naval Ravikant Quote on Desire and How It Works Against Your Pursuit of Happiness

                            “Time ripens desires. It validates desires. Maybe you sort of feel like eating a cookie right now. If you get distracted, you’ll most likely lose your desire for that cookie. It didn’t stand the test of time. But when there’s something you want that you’ve kept on wanting for a long time, even if you’ve forgotten how much you want it, then that’s something you really want. And that will be something that will really satisfy you when you get it.”

                            Mira Kirshenbaum, The Gift of a Year (Page 67)