Getting what you (think you) want

Describe your perfect week.

Not a week of vacation or some fantasy week. Just an ordinary seven days in which every thing that you normally put effort into pans out—perfectly. None of your plans are thwarted, nothing goes wrong, nothing unexpected comes up, everyone comes through.

If you’re having trouble pinning down your weekly goals, think about the things that you regularly do. And the things that make you anxious if not done. And there you have your values. Not what you think you should value, not what you want to value, not what other people have taught you to value, but what you yourself actually value enough to do on a consistent basis today.

Mine include keeping my house spotless, eating clean, exercising daily, staying on budget, making  progress on a home improvement project, being more productive than expected at work, and expertly managing my kids’ homework, extracurriculars, food, clothes, and hygiene. If I am unconsciously living my life according to my default values, these are the things that I pour my effort into, that preoccupy my concern.

So, now, try again. Describe your perfect week. What does it look like?

I’ve actually had a perfect week before. Four of them in a row, to be precise. I had just finished grad school and for the first time in years had only one (low-stress) job. Josh was in Europe for a month working on a movie. We didn’t have kids yet. And I devoted all of my time to my (unexamined) values. At first, I was high on how much I was getting done at work, at home, and at the gym. But it didn’t take more than a few weeks of that before I found myself so thin that my period had stopped and so compulsive that I had edged the grass of our entire giant corner lot by hand with a pair of scissors.

In other words, when my default set of values is running the show, my perfect week is one inhabited by a robotic woman living in a whirlwind of efficiency and productivity, beating her body relentlessly into the ground, while devoting no time to leisure, pleasure, contemplation, emotions, nature, or relationships.

When I stop for even a second to think about what actually brings me joy in life, it is undoubtedly all the stuff that the automaton version of me doesn’t have time for.

So what’s the deal?

We are wired to value certain things. It doesn’t matter why. Whatever the mix of nature, nurture, or circumstance, a set of values sits at the foundation of each off us. And the more unconscious we are of them, the more they rule our lives. What’s more, these values often have a negative motivation at their core. I am not a workaholic because I find so much joy in work that I tend to overdo it. I’m a workaholic because I’m terrified of what might happen if I wasn’t one. My default values are strategies for staving off anxiety (or perceived danger), in other words.

The things I feel anxious about may be very different from the ones that trigger that feeling in you (everyone feels anxious about something, right? Right?!). It doesn’t matter. If you haven’t taken the time to consciously shape your values, chances are that the”perfect” week you describe—in which nothing stops you from getting everything  you (think) you want—is dystopian as well.

There is an old SNL skit (which Peter Rollins, one of my favorite thinkers, was describing in a podcast I was recently listening to) where a robber dies and finds that he gets everything he wants in the afterlife: people freely give him thousands of dollars, he wins every game he plays at a casino, etc. It’s great at first but starts to feel unfulfilling fast. He finally expresses surprise that he hasn’t found happiness in heaven. His host replies, “What makes you think this is heaven?”

The problem isn’t that we don’t have what we want.

It’s that we don’t want the right things.