Focus On What You Want to Do
You will never get everything you want.
This should be fairly obvious if you spend a few minutes thinking about it. (It’s in our nature to always want more — and so we’ll never get it all.)
My guess is most people accept this fact deep down — yet we don’t live according to it. If we did, I think we’d make some changes.
Desire Is a Contract You Make to Be Unhappy
If we can never get everything we want, and if desire makes us unhappy until we get what we desire, we have to be careful with out desires.
One way to think about this:
Success is having everything you need and doing everything you want. It is not doing everything you need to have everything you want.
We have to limit our desires in some way. And Jacob suggests we do it by focusing on what we want to do, not what we want to have.
Doing is ultimately limiting. You can only do one thing at a time. Sure, you may attempt multitasking, but you won’t be able to climb mountains in the north while also sipping cocktails on a beach in the south.
If you focus on what you want to do, you’ll naturally limit what you desire.
Instead of focusing on what we want to have, maybe we should focus more on what we want to do. (And work on being satisfied when we are doing what we want — it does not come naturally.)