A man is galloping at breakneck speed on his horse and appears as if he’s going somewhere important; on a mission of some sort.

Another man standing along the side of the road shouts, ‘Where are you going?’ The man on the horse yells, ‘I don’t know, ask the horse.’ 

Desire is like the horse. Without insight and awareness, it carries us to destinations unknown. This is especially true when desire becomes confused with something we all want: happiness. 

Many of us confuse desire and happiness. Intellectually, we know the difference between the two. But in practice, many of our conditions for happiness depend on either acquiring something we don’t have or preserving something already in our possession. 

Material objects are one such source of chasing and clinging, but our jobs and relationships, too, can be sources of blurriness between desire and happiness. Think back to times you were truly happy. You’ll notice that desire was not present. 

In this article, we’ll learn to see the difference between happiness and desire in our lives. We’ll explore practices to help promote states of desirelessness. Finally, as a practical takeaway, we’ll share 7 ways to simplify your life and reduce desire. 

The neurochemistry of desire

Dopamine is a ‘feel-good’ neurotransmitter that helps us get things done. It’s a primary force behind motivation. It drives us to seek out food, shelter, and sex, to name a few. 

Brain chemistry like this helps us get what we need to survive. Once we get what we’ve been chasing, dopamine peaks, which feels great. Is this happiness—getting a dopamine hit in response to acquiring something we need or desire? 

It seems very likely that no, it is not, because after dopamine spikes, it dips. In fact, following large increases, dopamine levels dip below baseline. An analogy for this is getting into a bathtub that’s almost full of water. Once you’re fully submerged, the water level rises and spills over the edges of the tub. Once you get out, the water level is lower than before you had entered. Dopamine is like this with objects of desire. It rises until the object of desire is obtained, but then it’s depleted below its starting point. 

If we attach our idea of happiness with desire, as so many of us do either wittingly or unwittingly, we attach it to the rising and falling of neurochemicals that evolved to help us get what we need. 

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Desire can feel like happiness

Marketers figured this out a long time ago. Now, algorithms are taking it to a new level. They know how to play with the nervous system’s dopamine reward system to get you to desire anything and everything. It can feel like happiness when we obtain something we’ve been chasing. The dopamine response provides this feeling, but it reliably dissipates shortly after. 

Money can’t buy you happiness. This cliche is not hard to understand conceptually. We know, for example, that our health is precious and we wouldn’t trade it for any amount of money. It’s not hard to imagine how the thrill of luxury items like sports cars or designer clothes would wear off eventually. 

There’s even a famous study that demonstrated this strikingly. The study followed two groups of people over the course of a year. Participants recorded various metrics to measure their happiness. One group consisted of people who had just won the lottery. The other group included people who had just lost a limb. In the end, the study found that the people who had lost a limb reported higher levels of happiness versus baseline than the people who had won the lottery. 

This is due to habituation. We get used to what we have, no matter how convenient or luxurious. But why did the people who lost limbs maintain or increase levels of happiness? It’s likely because they had to adapt and overcome. I also assume that they did not spend much time chasing the desire of getting their limb back, because this was not an option. They would have eventually accepted this terrible reality and worked to improve their situation.

The difference between desire and happiness

The elimination of alternatives is crucial for eliminating desire. Sure, many of us don’t have grand desires for lavish vacations or expensive jewelry. But many of us wonder if the grass is greener on the other side. We wonder if there’s a better partner or a higher-paying job around the next bend. We feel anxious that our landlord may evict us, so we reason that once we have enough money to buy a home, we’ll have more freedom. We think that we deserve a sweet treat because we’ve generally eaten well recently.

Let me define what I mean by happiness. Most of us think of happiness over long time scales. When we’re asked, ‘Are you happy?’, we generally think in terms of months or years. We run a quick memory scan of the past year’s events. We think of the things that occupy much of our focus, such as jobs, family, and friends, and give them each a score that tallies up to our total level of happiness. But happiness is really a state of joy, ease, and peace. Happiness is an experience.

On a given day, I can experience the full range of emotions: anger, sadness, fear, but also happiness. Happiness is just one of the many contents of consciousness. Therefore, it is only available in the present moment. 

So we should think less about building a happy life—refraining from the mental calculus of X in a bank account multiplied by Y job prospects divided by Z beautiful spouse equals happiness. Instead, we should focus on creating the conditions for joy, ease, and peace to arise more often into our conscious experience. 

What is desirelessness? 

Desirelessness is present moment awareness associated with fulfilment, peace of mind, and gratitude. The title of this article is slightly misleading. Desirelessness and happiness are not the same thing. But desirelessness is a condition that makes present-moment happiness possible. 

The Eightfold Path to practice desirelessness

The first step is to learn to recognize desire. We’ve evolved to experience desire. Sex drive is the perfect example. We don’t want to eliminate all desire for sex, but we can at least recognize that it is desire, backed by brain chemistry pushing us to chase it, and more importantly, recognizing that once we get it, the good feelings will quickly dissipate. 

This is the Right Understanding path of the Eightfold Path. We recognize states of being. We label them appropriately. Once we know what we’re dealing with, we’re more in control. With Right Understanding we’re more likely to make wise choices and guide our actions harmoniously with our values. 

Right Livelihood is another path of the Eightfold Path that’s relevant here because many desires are related to our jobs. Most jobs come preloaded with some pressure to perform better to earn more. We get the impression, either true or false, that our colleagues are all working their way up the ladder. We may even feel that we’re competing with colleagues for space on the ladder. 

Stop grasping for ‘more’

Then there’s the intrinsic relationship between a job and the buying power it provides us. Our consumption is directly limited by how much we earn, so there’s a natural tension between income and desire. The more we desire, the more pressure we feel at work. 

You don’t need to exit the rat race. Most of us have no choice but to stay in the fight. We need to work and we should want to work. Even jobs that are not our dream jobs provide us with opportunities to challenge ourselves and grow. And it’s okay to want to stretch yourself, contribute to the success of your business, and be compensated for it proportionately. 

Right Livelihood teaches us to know when enough is enough. Work hard, but know your end game. Take time each year to figure out exactly how much you need to earn to meet your core needs. Without a clear definition of exactly how much you need, the default is to want more. More is a terrible thing to want because it’s unspecific and potentially never ending. You’ll never be satisfied if you’re trying to make or save more money. Set specific, realistic goals to meet your monetary needs. Measure and track your progress, and frequently readjust to economic and life circumstances. 

7 Ways to stop grasping

Desirelessness is the blank canvas onto which we paint the picture of present-moment happiness. Some desires are so closely related to basic needs, such as food and social connection, that they’re impossible to eliminate entirely. I don’t think you need to make drastic changes and uproot routines in the pursuit of desirelessness. This would only set you up for frustration. Instead, we can apply some gentle hygiene to our lives to make conditions unfavorable for desire. We can simplify our lives. 

Here are 7 practice to stop grasping and promote desirelessness:

Choose only one or two things to be great at

These days, we have access to so many tools that enable us to do almost anything. In theory, anyone can start an online business in a day, for example. We have many roles to play in life—many hats to wear. But it’s unrealistic to try to be amazing at all of them. Focus on one or two things to be great at, and be good at all the rest. 

Practice minimalism

We’re at a point with technology where one has to seriously question if we’ve already maximized convenience. Any more gadgets in your home are likely to add complication. But this point is not limited to tech. When was the last time you cleaned a pair of sneakers or repaired a backpack instead of buying new ones? Marketers will not stop finding innovative, AI-based ways to convince you to buy things, so it’s up to you to be seriously vigilant. 

Practice essentialism

When you think about it, the plural of the word priority (priorities) is ridiculous. Priority means ‘most important’. So how can there be more than one most important thing? Essentialism is the discipline of protecting one’s time and energy and focusing on only what is truly essential. It means saying no. It means tradeoffs. I highly recommend the book Essentialism by Greg McKeown, which first instructed me on this life-changing practice. 

Eliminate alternatives

So much desire comes from the astounding number of options presented to us. Make decisions and turn them into rules for yourself to eliminate indecision in the face of so many choices. Decide to cycle to work everyday. Invest in some good rain equipment and never again think about buying a car or taking a crowded bus. Decide to eat the same, very healthy breakfast everyday, and never again hesitate in the grocery store.

Avoid sensory pleasures that create addiction

This applies to ordinary things like sugar, alcohol, and porn. Check out our article on The Four Categories of Attachment to learn more about applying Right Understanding to sensory pleasures. 

Identify with values, not titles

Know your core values and keep them at arm’s length. Don’t identify with your job title. You are so much more than what you do for a living. 

Is the grass really greener on the other side?

People find themselves in harmful relationships. There’s no doubt that they should end these. But sometimes, we’re tempted to explore other partners because we desire that initial spark—that honeymoon phase of the first months of an intimate relationship that cannot be replicated. Just remember that yes, that new intensity is out there somewhere but it, too, will vanish.

Final word

Finally, simply practice noticing when feelings of joy, ease, or peace arise. These feelings are happiness, and they’re probably already more abundant in your life than you think. Appreciate them, but also examine them. It’s one thing to apply Right Understanding to promote desirelessness. But we must also apply insight into feelings of happiness, because understanding how, when, where, why, and with whom happiness arises helps us create favorable conditions for it.

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