I’m a very chilled person but i’m strict when it comes to my principles. I can’t tell you what to do, but i can tell you what you are not going to do with me.
Desire. I love this topic.
I went through this phase at around 18 y/o where I thought wanting things and making money was ‘bad’. I deprived myself of luxuries that I wanted because I was trying to maintain a certain image. I was going to sell all my things, live in a van, say fuck all/be a smelly mountain dude with long hair.
This all started to become virtue signaling in itself.
The more I deprived myself of things that I desired the more it would turn into judgement and resentment for those that got them! How funny that works. I couldn’t pay rent some months while living in Wyoming, so I blamed the world around me for it. The list goes on.
When I moved to California it forced me to snap out of it a bit. Suddenly, I wanted to work harder. I recently got out of a breakup and wanted to dress nicer. I wanted to smell better. These things costed money. It’s nice to be able to walk into a grocery store and grab what I want without worrying if I can pay my credit card off. It’s nice to buy clothes that last long vs cheaply made fast fashion. It’s nice to walk into the vet and know you can take care of your dog without selling your car.
I began to realize that the more I made, the people who had the largest opinion about money were those that felt victim to it.
Like @naval said, be careful how many desires you have, because you’ll be unhappy until you get that thing. And then once you get that thing, you’ll revert to the same state that you were in before you had it.
So, where does that leave you? I see desire as a great motivator. Desire more not for more things. But a desire to want more from yourself, creatively, in how you hold yourself. How the reflection of the world you’ve created for yourself is from how many times it took to drain the tank and fill it up again. That $100,000 watch serves better as a symbol that you gave everything you had, and did what you said you were going to do vs trying to look impressive to the girl at the bar. Do it for you.