What Is It About?
Napkin Version
Our overall enjoyment of life is fed by the pleasure and satisfaction we get from our experiences. Desire motivates us to work towards the more rewarding and enjoyable ones, and has us seeking those we know to be, or can imagine as, a positive experience.
If we continue to enjoy the experience, our feeling of desire is usually strengthened. If we stop enjoying it so much, or stop experiencing it (in reality, and in our mind), our desire for it will diminish over time. So Desire is very much kept alive by repeated enjoyable experience (or the imagination of it).
How we handle Desire can make a big difference to our overall quality of life. If all of our desires are based upon short term pleasure rather than more fulfilling pursuits, we can develop addictive habits that provide little long-term satisfaction, and can drain our valuable resources.
On the other hand, we can burn ourselves out if we don’t balance purposeful work with healthy forms of enjoyment.
Handling Desire
In The Moment
Training our brain to use a relevant process helps us to focus more effectively and move on more easily. Using it often will also help our brain to catch Desire sooner, making it easier to manage.
It may be more difficult to do this process when the intensity of Desire is strong though, so it can be worth every effort then, to teach our brain this simple process whenever the intensity is mild. Then it will be more likely to default to this process when it is more intense, making it easier to respond (rather than react) in the more challenging situations.
If we find ourselves overwhelmed with desire for something, it can be difficult to make a more balanced assessment on how good it will be for us – in the short and long terms. So it’s usually worthwhile doing everything we can to say to ourselves (silently) ‘Wait!’.
Creating this little gap will give the rational part of our brain more of a chance to catch up, before we act.
Getting a pause in, then taking a step back and distracting ourselves away from it can help our nervous system, and and associated chemicals and hormones, to calm down to a more manageable level.
Once our rational brain has gained more control, we can start to consider any longer term and broader impacts that pursuit of the desired target would have upon us.
Self-Reflection
If the emotion feels quite troubling, it’s usually worth checking if something else is going on first.
By resolving things in ourselves and clearing any other residual emotions, we can reduce the intensity of the emotion - now and when we encounter it again in future.
Doing so also makes us less likely to ‘attract’ other difficulties that leave us feeling the same way.
See the Processing and Clearing an Emotion page for a generic process to resolve and clear an emotion.
Working Through Desire
The actions we choose to take in response to an emotion can make a significant difference to how well we adjust and move on from it.
The more we take genuine actions that are uplifting and ‘right’ i.e., are good for ourselves and everyone else (including the environment and other living beings) - for now, and over the long-term, the better our experience of life becomes.
If we know something isn’t good for us, then the following can help to diminish our desire for it:
Using a metaphor to give us a balanced visual e.g., if it was a person, what type of person would it be?
Identifying what the benefits are for us, and looking at better ways to meet the underlying needs.
Looking at what we can learn from it, as we can be attracted to experiences we need to learn from. Once we learn what we need to, our desire for it often diminishes.
Distracting ourselves onto something more purposeful, enjoyable, and wholesome, so we can naturally move on from it without the anguish.
Exploring new experiences or learning new skills.
Avoiding fatigue so our self-control remains strong.
Avoiding situations that may trigger the desire.
Making it harder for ourselves to engage with it and choosing enjoyable situations that don’t expose us (or our thoughts) to it.
Distracting ourselves from triggering memories (at least for a while), or from imagining what it would be like to experience it.
Considering the negative consequences to keep a balanced perspective, and focussing upon these whenever we think of it.
Having strategies to deal with specific situations e.g.
giving our brain a plan of attack in advance e.g., “if this happens, then I’ll do that”.
talking ourselves (silently) through a diversion plan if we find ourselves approaching a dangerously desirable situation.
writing a note to explain why we don’t want to do it, and reading it if we feel ourselves weakening
Clearing Residual Desire
Emotional energy can stick with us, even after we have worked through and resolved whatever caused it.
There are a number of ways we can clear the energy, including doing something physical in nature, imagining the emotion leaving our body, or for more intense emotions, there is a variety of different therapies and alternative forms of energy healing that can also help.
This short video has been created to help the imagination process:
Imagine holding a ball of energy in your hands, and ‘charging’ it with the feeling of love, and anything else that would help to offset it (especially any feelings that were missing in the situation)
Imagine any residual Desire energy flowing out of your body, into the ball, and being transformed into the positive equivalent.
Once all the residual energy has left, imagine the ball shooting far out into the atmosphere and dissolving into pure white light energy.
