The Wanting Trap - Essay No. 3
The wanting trap is more difficult to recognize than many other traps, precisely because desire itself is so often perceived as something positive. Wanting is commonly associated with drive, ambition, and direction, with development, progress, and the idea of moving forward, becoming more, improving oneself. Yet it was only when I began to seriously question the very act of wanting that something fundamental in my way of seeing it began to shift.
This became particularly clear to me when I read Michael Singer’s book The Surrender Experiment, in which he describes choosing a life path where he stopped wanting anything at all, both in his personal life and in his business. He chose to stop steering life through desires, plans, and expectations. Instead, he committed to meeting whatever showed up in front of him and doing the very best he could with what was actually there. It was only then that I realized how deeply I myself had been living inside the logic of wanting without ever noticing it.
Wanting is treated as almost sacred. Not wanting anything can easily be interpreted as indifference, laziness, or a lack of ambition. Yet releasing wanting does not mean disengaging from life. It means no longer demanding that life take a specific form. The paradox is that when this demand is dropped, a stronger and more natural movement often arises, one that is not driven by desire at all. Wanting frequently acts more like a brake than a motor. The more we want something, the more tense our relationship to it becomes. Even though I have used the word tension in other contexts, there is no better description here, because wanting always carries the same underlying message: I do not have what I want.
When I say I want money, I am simultaneously saying that I do not have money. When I say I want to be healthy, I am saying that I am sick. When I say I want love, I am saying that I am alone. It is the same sentence, expressed with different words.
This is where the trap forms. The moment we define ourselves by what we lack, we place what we long for outside of ourselves. It becomes something distant, something in the future, something to be reached later. Like the carrot in front of the donkey, always visible yet never quite attainable. It may function as motivation, yes, but it is an exhausting form of motivation, because there is never any rest in the experience of already having arrived.
This becomes especially evident in manifestation culture and self-development, where attention is constantly directed toward what one wants to create, attract, or have more of. What is so often overlooked is that it is not what we want that manifests, but what we are. The state we live from, or more precisely, the identity we hold onto, becomes the story we continuously repeat about ourselves. The world does not respond to our wishes; it responds to our self-image.
This is why wanting often reinforces the very state we are trying to leave behind. The one who wants to be healthy starts from being sick. The one who wants to be wealthy starts from being poor. The one who wants to be loved starts from being alone. The moment these states become part of our identity, they solidify. Not because we are thinking incorrectly, but because we are unconsciously living in separation from what we claim to want.
This is difficult for many people to accept, because we have been trained our entire lives to sense lack rather than wholeness. Had we learned from the beginning to feel whole regardless of circumstances, regardless of money, relationships, or health, this way of living would not feel radical. It would feel natural.
When wholeness is unfamiliar and lack is familiar, stepping into a felt sense of health in the midst of illness, or safety in the midst of uncertainty, can feel almost impossible. Yet this is precisely where the shift occurs.
For me, this became clear when I stopped wanting in the way I had before. When I stopped chasing outcomes and instead began living from an inner state of already-being. Not as an affirmation, not as a mental technique, but as an orientation toward life. I am healthy. I am safe. I am supported. From that state, things began to fall into place without effort, without searching, without pursuit.
Michael Singer’s way of living offers a clear example of this. When something appeared in front of him, he chose to meet it fully and do his best with what was present, rather than constantly striving for something else. He removed wanting as a governing principle. The wanting trap convinces us that desire is the path to fulfillment, but very often the opposite is true. It is only when we loosen our grip on what we believe we need that what we have been longing for is able to reach us.
What made this so liberating for me was seeing it embodied by someone fully engaged in modern life. Not someone who withdrew from the world, but someone who built businesses, relationships, and responsibility on a large scale. A person openly describing how removing wanting as a principle did not close life down, but opened it. When he stopped wanting, the right people appeared at the right moments, with the right competence, intention, and timing. Life flowed toward him, rather than being pulled by force.
That was when I decided to change course myself. Not as a philosophy, but as an experiment. What did I really have to lose by trying a different way of relating to life? The transition was not linear. There is a middle ground where it is easy to slip back into the wanting trap, where desire quickly turns into a sense of victimhood. One becomes like a child disappointed on Christmas morning, wanting, waiting, feeling overlooked or unfairly treated. For me, it has required repetition and practice, learning to notice when I fall back into wanting, letting go, and returning again. Michael describes this as relax and release. Others say let go, let God. I adopted it fully, and what happens when it is lived rather than conceptualized is difficult to put into words. When the tension and resistance dissolve, it feels like opening a window and letting fresh air into the room.