Managing Your WANTS, Not Managing Your HAVES

“When your have’s go up, your want’s go up disproportionally.”  - Dr. Arthur Brooks

The prevalent message we grow up hearing is that success comes through more and more accomplishments and possessions. From a young age, we’re often taught that the more we achieve, the more successful we are. But what if this conventional wisdom is fundamentally flawed? What if success is not about accumulating more, but about refining and managing our desires?

Each morning, I meditate using the Hallow app, and today, Dr. Arthur Brooks, who leads a series called Satisfaction, shared a story that resonated with me deeply. He told the story of a man who had always dreamed of paying for a car entirely in cash. After years of saving, he finally had the money and went to a Mercedes dealership. He bought the car and drove off the lot, but as he did, a nagging thought crossed his mind: “I should’ve saved up for another year and bought a Ferrari instead!” The man’s dream car was no longer enough—his desire had already shifted to something else, something bigger.

Brooks also shared an experience he had at a museum in China, where he asked his tour guide about the most fundamental difference between how people in the West and East view art. The guide explained that in the West, people often see art as filling a blank canvas, stroke by stroke, until the image is complete. But in the East, art is seen as a process of chipping away at a block of jade until the piece of art within is revealed. This approach to art mirrors an approach to life that I find deeply meaningful: rather than constantly striving to acquire more, we should focus on reducing and refining until we discover what truly matters.

Both stories point to the same profound truth: True, lasting success comes from reducing and refining our desires until only those that align with our deeper purpose remain. Dr. Brooks calls this “managing your wants, not managing your haves.” However, this idea runs counter to nearly every influence we’re exposed to in our modern world. A quick scroll through social media leaves us with the overwhelming message that happiness comes from buying more, doing more, and achieving more—essentially, managing our wants. But that never seems to be enough, does it? Once we get what we think we want, we inevitably start craving something else.

The Buddhist concept of Dukkha offers another perspective on this. Dukkha refers to a specific kind of suffering—the pain we feel when we long for something we don’t have. It’s the suffering that arises from desire. Eckhart Tolle summed it up well when he said, “Suffering is being here, and wanting to be there.” We are constantly stuck in the space between what we have and what we think we need, creating a sense of dissatisfaction that seems to follow us wherever we go.

So, what if, instead of clawing and scratching for more, we viewed life as an opportunity to chip away at the inauthentic, the unessential, and the outside programming we’ve absorbed over the years? What if we focused on revealing the person we were always meant to be, rather than constantly striving for more of what we think we need? This approach doesn’t mean rejecting desires altogether. It means refining those desires so that they align with what truly brings us peace, joy, and purpose.

Living this way would drastically change the way we approach our daily thoughts, motivations, and direction. By managing our wants and refining our desires, we shift from chasing after external achievements and possessions to cultivating inner peace, purpose, and authenticity. This, I believe, is true success. It’s not about accumulating more—it’s about refining what truly matters and shedding the distractions that prevent us from being our most authentic selves.