Our True Desires: The Second Set of Four Blocks

July 7, 2009

Pride & Prejudice's Elizabeth Bennet was defiant—and it kept her from her true love for a whole 400 pages!

This is the third article in a four-part series on increasing our awareness of our true desires. In the first part of this series we discussed how taking the time to recognize and honor our desires is an essential step on the journey to finding our true selves. Last week we examined the first four of twelve blocks that cause us to disconnect from what we truly want. Those first four blocks are revenge, attachment, doubt, and rationalization. Today, we’ll examine the next four blocks, which are defiance, submission, avoidance, and justification.

First, learn to defy your defiance. This is truly an exercise in thinking outside the box, here’s why: When we become defiant we are reacting to someone or some group of people who have annoyed us. The reaction is understandable, but in the pursuit of your own desires you have to learn to turn your back on this instinct. All power comes from doing what you want. When we change course in reaction to our dislike of someone else’s agenda, we are still being controlled by them and surrendering our intention to accomplish our own goals. If you stop and say, “Is this really what I want to be doing with my time?” You will quickly realize that it is time to think outside the box and to defy your defiance.

Second, learn to surrender your submission. There is a subtle but important distinction between these two terms. When we surrender we are giving up our resistance to what is. We actually embrace what we have to accept and cannot change. A perfect example of this is those ways in which our parents may have disappointed us during our childhood. Surrender frees us from those things that we cannot change. It also nurtures patience while not precluding a healthy sense of persistence. Perhaps the prayer that best encapsulates this thought is: “God, grant me the serenity to accept those things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

Third is to recognize the futility of avoidance. Much of the time when we think or feel we really want to do something, we are actually seeking to avoid doing what we really want to do. Here’s a perfect example: You’ve been telling yourself for a very long time that there is a creative project that you want to tackle, but before you get started you have to do a half dozen different things around the house. There is a good chance that you are fearing failure and so you’re going to avoid starting on the work of this true desire because you have suppressed that fear and now you’re attempting to convince yourself that the kitchen really does need to be straightened up before you can get started. Rather than repeating this futile exercise over and over again, focus on seeing yourself beginning this task, completing it successfully, and feeling happy that you chose not to avoid your true desires but embrace them instead.

Four, be careful to defend against your defenses. Nearly all of us have a tendency to become defensive with hardly even noticing that we are indeed doing that. So in pursuit of our true desires, it’s important to defend against our defensiveness. Our need, to always justify our actions. There is always a lesson to learn when we recognize we made a mistake. When, on the other hand, we excuse ourselves by saying, for example, “there was no way I could have known better,” we are holding ourselves back from experiencing real growth. Rather than excuse ourselves, we need to forgive ourselves and trust that others will forgive us as well.

Next week we’ll conclude this series of stories with an examination of the final four blocks we place between us and reaching our true desires; those being rejection, withholding, reaction, and sacrifice.

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