Latest / YINWorldWide / Envy: The Desire You Never Chose
Transcript
- YIN: This is yin. And these are conversations about discipline, direction, and identity, and how they quietly shape who you become. You saw something this week that pulled at you. Maybe it was a car. Maybe it was a trip. Maybe it was somebody standing in front of a house you've been telling yourself that you'd have one day. And it made you stop scrolling. And somewhere inside of you, quick, quiet, and before you could dress it up as something else, you got a little upset. Not at the thing, but at the person who posted it. How did they get that before me, you asked yourself? I've been working harder. Nobody heard you think it. You barely heard yourself think it. But it did happen. And if you're honest, it wasn't the first time. That thought has a name. And today we're going to say it out loud. Before we go any further, I want to be up front about something. This is not an episode about deleting your apps. It's not a digital detox sermon. And it's definitely not going to be me telling you that wanting things is wrong. You see, I love nice things. I love cars. I love watches. I love to take nice vacations. I'm not going to stand here and pretend otherwise because you'd see right through it, and you should. This episode is about something more dangerous than wanting. It's about wanting things that were never yours to want. Desires that got installed into you. In the life you end up building when you never stop to check whose blueprint you were actually following. So let's get into it. Envy. Say the word and notice how much you don't want it attached to your name. People admit almost anything before they'll admit that they're envious. They'll tell you they're scared. They'll tell you they failed. They'll tell you that they have an ego problem. But nobody looks you in the eyes and says, I envy them. So it goes underground and it comes out wearing a disguise. He's overrated. She got lucky. It's all fake anyway. I don't even want that. Does that sound familiar? That's not analysis. That's envy with a script. now. Here's why this gets a whole episode. It's not because envy feels bad. You see, feelings pass. It's because of where envy points you. Every minute you spend staring at his car, her trip, or their house, your compass is set to someone else's coordinates. And you cannot move towards your life and towards theirs at the same time. Envy steals your heading. your grandparents could only envy people they actually knew. The neighbor, the cousin, the family down the street with the new truck. And they saw those people whole. They saw the neighbor's marriage up close. They knew about the cousin's debts. The picture came with the cost attached. You don't get the cost. All you get are the highlights. You carry a device built to show you the best 15 seconds of 8 billion strangers, the trips, the cars, the houses, with every struggle cut out before it reaches you. so when you fill that pool, understand the math you're actually doing. You see, your whole life, all the doubt, all the grinding. The Tuesday afternoons measured up against someone else's best 15 seconds. That scoreboard is rigged. But here's where I break from everybody else on this topic. The problem is not your phone. And I know that's not the popular answer. You want to blame the algorithm, blame the feed. You say, I'm gonna do the detox and delete all of the apps. Well, run the test, Delete everything tonight, every app. The pool doesn't die. It only relocates. now it's your neighbor's new truck sitting in the driveway, your coworker's new promotion, your brother-in-law walking you through the house he just closed on. People have felt this pool for a thousand years. Long before the first screen ever lit up, the phone didn't build the opening in you. It only found one. The opening is a person who doesn't know what they want. A life where the desires were never chosen, but only collected. From whoever happened to be winning nearby. And the vacancy rarely stays empty for long. if you don't claim what you want, somebody else's wants will move in. His car, her lifestyle, their timeline. Envy doesn't create desire in you. No. It installs someone else's into the space where yours was supposed to be. So now there's a desire living in you. That was never yours. Follow it because it doesn't stay a feeling. A feeling you can sit with. A desire demands to be fed. And think about where this one was born. You watching somebody else get seen. So being seen is the only thing that will ever satisfy it. That's when the watching flips. You can only sit in the audience for so long before you want to be on stage. You stop just consuming the show and start performing it. And now watch what you start buying. Not a life, but evidence of a life. The car chosen because it photographs well. The vacation planned around the picture instead of the experience. The watch that enters the room before you do. None of those things are a problem. the problem. Is what they're being asked to do. They're not objects anymore. They're evidence for an audience. And here's the part nobody warns you about. The high has a half-life. The car feels incredible for two weeks. Then the comments stop. and the feeling leaves with them. Not because the car changed. The car is the exact same machine it was on day one. but if the audience is what made it feel good, then the audience moving on takes the feeling when it goes. You're standing in the driveway with the same car feeling less, and somewhere in the back of your mind The next purchase is already forming. Because your brain doesn't only reward achievement, it rewards approval. Every compliment, every gaze, every moment someone notices leaves a mark. That's normal. Human beings are built to care about what other people think. The danger is when your brain stops chasing the thing itself and starts chasing the reaction to the thing. Now, you aren't building a life. You're feeding a loop. That's what status actually is. A scoreboard someone else holds. It is granted by an audience, which means it can be revoked. By the same audience at any time for any reason without appeal. person chasing status has done something they would never admit to themselves. They've handed strangers the key to their self-worth. They don't own their life. They perform one. And the performance has to keep up with its audience. The car that impressed people two years ago. Is now background noise. The trip everyone posted last summer doesn't count anymore. The bar moves because the bar was never yours to set. Now pay attention to what I have not said. I haven't said one word about whether they can afford any of it. because that is not this conversation. This is not a money problem. There are people who can afford every piece of it. Every purchase clears. No debt, no strain. But that doesn't matter. If they bought it for the audience, they are not the owner. They are the display case. Step back and look at the whole machine because the loop closes. The same person who felt the pool scrolling past someone else's life is now producing the pool for the next person scrolling past theirs. Audience at night, actor in the morning, everybody performing, everybody watching, nobody living. That's the machine. That's what's actually running underneath the feed. Now, let me stop. Because there's a version of this episode that I refuse to make. The version where I tell you nice things are the enemy, that wanting is weakness, that the disciplined person drives something sensible and never looks up. That's not discipline. That's a whole different costume. I love nice things. I'm not going to perform modesty for you. That would just be status chasing in another direction. There are cars that I want because of how they drive, not how they looked parked. There's watches I'd wear if no one on earth could ever see my wrist. Trips I'd take with the phone in the hotel safe the entire time. But let me be more honest than that. Because there's a cleaner version of this speech that would be a lie. We have all bought something because of how it made us feel when other people noticed. All of us. I have and you have. The compliment, the double take, the question, where'd you get that? That little hit when someone clocks what you're wearing or what you pulled up in. It feels good and it's supposed to. That's not a character flaw. That is human wiring. And I'm not going to stand here and pretend I'm above it. So the danger was never the feeling of it. The danger is when the feeling starts making your decisions. When you're chasing status because you like the attention. When the purchase was never really about the object, it was about the reaction. stop and look at what's actually happening. You are no longer in control. The feeling is. You are being controlled by something other people have to hand you. And anything they have to hand you, they can withhold. Which means every stranger with eyes now has a hand on your steering wheel. That's the difference. The difference is who's driving. A person in control feels the attention, enjoys it even, and it changes nothing about what they do next. A person being controlled needs the next hit, and they'll keep buying until they get it. So here's the test that I want you to write down. Would you still want it? If nobody could ever see it. The watch you'd wear on a deserted island that just gives you enjoyment, that's truly yours. The watch that only makes sense in a room full of people, that's a costume. And you don't own a costume. The audience does. Same watch, different owner. and most purchases, if we're being honest. Are mixed. Some of it's for you, some of it's for them. The test isn't asking you to be pure. It's asking you which part is in charge. So, no, the line is not drawn at the object. It was never about the object. The line is drawn at who's in control. A person enjoying the results of their work, attention or no attention. Or someone performing for a crowd that doesn't even know their name, chasing a feeling only strangers can hand them. So, how do you get out of the loop? Well, it's not by looking away, not by renouncing everything and pretending you don't have eyes. You get out the same way you build anything real. All three pillars. Each one shuts down a different part of the machine. Identity is the filter. When you know who you are. You can look at any desire and ask the one question the feed never once asked. Is this mine? Not, is it impressive? Not is it attainable? Is it mine? Did this want come from my life, my values, what I actually enjoy when nobody's watching? Or did it arrive three weeks ago through a screen? Without identity, every want that scrolls past gets absorbed as your own. You become a collection of other people's appetites. With identity, most of the feed just bounces. There's nothing for it to hook to. The vacancy is filled by you. Direction is the compass because even real desires have to be sequenced. identity tells you the want is genuinely yours. Direction tells you whether it's now. Does it serve what you're building or detour from it? This is the choir of damage envy does. it doesn't just install fake desires. It takes your real ones and scrambles the order. makes the thing you saw today feel more urgent than the thing you committed to last year. with direction, you want something, mean it, and still say, not yet. That's not denial. That's sequencing. Discipline is the hands because knowing isn't enough. You can know exactly who you are, know the car isn't part of the plan this year, and still feel the pool in the half second before the purchase. We've talked about the half-second on this show before, the gap between the reach and the grab. It's the same gap here, same doorway, different door. Discipline is what stands in the gap. It's the difference between feeling the pool and obeying it. Now watch what happens when the pillars fall, because they fall in order. No identity, and you don't know what you actually want, so the feed decides for you. No direction, and even your real wants get shuffled into someone else's sequence. You're chasing the right things at the wrong time for the wrong reasons. No discipline. And even when you know better, the pool wins at the register. Chasing status isn't about one failure. It's all three pillars down at once. and acclaimed life means knowing what you want when it fits and holding the line until it does. That means the car stops being a costume the moment it stops being for the audience. And I think this is the real tragedy of envy. It doesn't usually ruin your life overnight. It edits it. a purchase here, a career choice there. A relationship because it looked successful from the outside. A new city because everyone else was moving there. None of those decisions feel catastrophic on their own, but stack enough borrowed decisions together, And one day you wake up inside a life that makes perfect sense on paper and doesn't feel like yours. Imagine reaching the end of your life and realizing you accomplished goals. You never actually chose. That's what envy steals. Not gratitude, but authorship. Which brings me to what I want you all to work on this week. The next time you feel the pull, the car, the trip, the watch, the house, don't scroll past it and don't pretend it didn't happen. I want you to stop and ask one question. Would I still want this if nobody could ever see it? Sit with the answer. Don't rush it. If the answer is yes, Good. That means you found real desire. Claim it. Put it in the plan and give it a place in the line. If the answer is no, You just caught the installation happening in real time. Let it go before it quietly becomes another year of your life. of those is a desire. The other is a leash. people never notice the moment someone else starts writing their story. You just did. so let's come back to where we started. You saw something this week that pulled at you. You'll see something tomorrow that does it again. The feed isn't going anywhere. And I'm not going to pretend that you're going to delete it. Every time you feel that pull, don't rush to silence it. Listen Sometimes it's pointing at something you've genuinely wanted for years. Sometimes it's exposing an empty place you've been asking strangers to feel. Learn the difference. Because one leads you towards your own life. The other slowly replaces it. And the next time the thought shows up of how did they get that before me and I've been working harder, catch it. That thought was never about them. It's your own life asking why you keep checking someone else's. We spend so much time worrying about whether we'll be successful. We almost never stop to ask the more important question. Successful at what? By whose definition? Because if the answer isn't you, you can spend your entire life winning a game you never meant to play. And the greatest loss isn't the money. It isn't the time. It isn't even the success you never found. It's looking back and realizing someone else wrote the story. Envy installs desires that were never yours. Status performs them. Identity filters them. Direction orders them. And discipline keeps them from taking over. The goal was never to stop wanting. The goal is to make sure the person riding your life is you. This is Yin. If this resonated, share it with someone who needs to hear it. Not everyone, just someone who's ready. You can find Yin Worldwide Podcast on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. If you want to go deeper, visit our website at liveyin.com. That's www.l-iv-e-y-in-dal. Subscribe if you're committed to the work. If not, that's fine too. This isn't for everyone. Remember, move with intention.