How to Want Very Little

By Leo Babauta

There’s a part of today’s consumerist world that drives us to want more, buy more, act on our impulses, hoard, spend to solve our problems, create comfort through shopping, seek thrills through travel, do more, be more.

What would happen if we broke from our addiction to wanting and buying more?

What would life be like if we didn’t need all that?

Imagine a life where we could enjoy simple, free pleasures like going for a walk in nature, meditating, reading a book, writing. By buying less we’d have less debt, less clutter, less to take care of. We’d need smaller houses, less storage. Perhaps we could even work less to support all this buying, unless the work were something we loved to do.

Now, I’m not saying we can free ourselves of all desire. I’ve certainly not learned to do that yet. But what if we could recognize our wants, and not be driven by them? What if we could let go of them when they are not helpful, and instead be happy with what we have?

I’m exploring this myself. I’ll share some things that work for me, with the acknowledgement that I’m still learning, I still fail at this all the time. I have a lot to learn, but here’s what I’ve learned so far:

Finally, recognize that it’s an ongoing practice. In my experience, you don’t just get rid of desires and then you’re done. You let go of one, turn to the present moment, appreciate it, find satisfaction in what there already is … and then a little while later, another desire arises. It comes from advertising, websites, magazines, seeing what other people are doing on social media, watching the news, talking to people, walking past a cool store, seeing a new bag that your friend just bought, etc.

The desires will keep coming back, but we can develop the skill of recognizing them, letting them go, being happy with the enough-ness of now.

image