Category: The Inner Life
Be careful what you wish for, as the old saying goes.
And like many such bits of wisdom, it merits thinking about carefully, especially at work. Many of our problems stem less from the right things going wrong and more from choosing the wrong things in the first place. Even more insidiously, our greatest pain often emerges from not consciously choosing at all. At work, perhaps more than anywhere else, we absorb our desires from the people around us, from the industry and from society at large.
The Stoics were well aware of this. They understood that desire shapes a life long before talent and circumstance get a look in. And if you chase the wrong things, no amount of effort will save you from disappointment.
They treated desire as something to be trained rather than obeyed. This might be an uncomfortable thought because we tend to associate our hopes with our true selves. Modern culture certainly encourages that view. If you want it, you must honour it. If you feel it, you must trust it.
Experience usually tells a different story.
I speak with a lot of people who feel lost in their careers, and a common thread runs through these conversations. They are often pursuing goals they never consciously chose. They’re giving energy to roles that never suited them, or securing promotions that looked impressive but left them restless. They often know this, but it sits at the edge of their awareness, half-admitted and uncomfortable. In those cases, the first step is not motivation but clarity. Desire has to be examined carefully before it can guide anything.
What makes a desire worth trusting?
The key discipline here is learning to distinguish between goals that fulfil you and goals that drain you. It is surprisingly hard to notice this in the moment. When you’re caught up in the excitement of chasing something, everything feels energising. Instead of listening solely to the loud, obvious emotions that are best suited to short-term decisions such as fight or flight, we want to pay attention to the deeper, quieter feelings.
There will have been situations in your life that simply felt right. They were accompanied by a deeper sense of wellbeing than a dopamine-fuelled high can provide. And, conversely, there will be scenarios you can remember that felt the opposite, bringing a sense of unease or foreboding. When we’re making big, long-term decisions, these deeper, more internally coherent states should be our guides. Some of this ties into how your own inner narrative shapes your judgement, which I explored in my reflection on the way our stories colour our choices.
Why low-stakes practice sharpens desire
This is one reason why practising in low-stakes environments helps. Job applications, for instance, are a perfect testbed. If you want to refine your thinking about direction, exposure to different roles can highlight what genuinely appeals and what is just noise and excitement. Keeping the emotions relatively quiet allows the whole mind to work coherently, using reason as well as feelings. I touched on this idea in the piece about why consistent, low-pressure applications strengthen your judgement.
Desire, resilience, and steadiness
Clarity about desire also strengthens resilience. When you’re not tugged around by every passing urge, you conserve the emotional energy you need to deal with setbacks more sensibly. Your mood becomes steadier, and you’re less vulnerable to the rise and fall of external events. I’ve written before about building that steadiness and how it changes the way you approach difficulty, particularly in the reflection on steadying yourself through demanding periods. Desire is part of the same fabric.
The modern buffet of things to want
The final benefit is perhaps the most valuable today. Modern work provides an endless buffet of things to want. Titles, projects, public recognition, influence, visibility, belonging, certainty, novelty, stimulation. It’s a relentless stream. If you don’t train your desires, you end up grazing from that buffet long after you’re full. The result is overstretch, confusion, and that peculiar modern exhaustion that has nothing to do with physical effort.
The Stoics weren’t immune to this. They lived in busy cities, surrounded by ambition. What protected them was the ability to step back and examine their wants with care. They asked whether a desire made them more rational, more grounded, and more self-directed. If it didn’t, they set it aside.
Making space to think
Work becomes much more meaningful when you adopt that same habit. You stop chasing everything. You stop reacting to every suggestion from your peers. You make decisions that reflect who you are rather than who you’re supposed to be. Most importantly, you create space to think. And in a world that tries very hard to steal your attention, that space is well worth guarding.
If you want a more peaceful career, start with the simple question: what do I actually want here? Then treat your first answer with suspicion. And once you start choosing your aims with more precision, everything else at work becomes easier to carry.