December 11th, 2025
How Wanting Creates the Future, and Needing Protects the Past
I’m listening to the book 10X Is Easier Than 2X by entrepreneurial coach Dan Sullivan and psychologist Benjamin Hardy. Chapter 3 struck me like a sudden shaft of sunlight through overcast morning skies, reminding me that a life worth living should not be shaped by daily obligations or what feels “expected,” but by what our hearts ardently, unapologetically desire.
It made me think how easily our days become wrapped in duties that seem responsible and proper, yet are not truly ours. How rarely we pause long enough to ask the most liberating question of all: Do I really want this… or do I feel I should want it to please others?
Sullivan draws a vivid line between two ways of living.
“Needers,” he explains, tiptoe through life as if crossing thin ice, measuring every step, competing for scarce scraps of certainty, worrying about opinions, and imagining rivals where none exist. They live as though opportunities are rations handed out by a tight-fisted universe.
“Wanters” live differently. They step forward as though the world were an open meadow, sunlight pouring through branches overhead, inviting rather than warning. Wanters do not justify. Their desires bloom from within, not to impress but to express who they genuinely are.
They create value where none existed. They do not slice the pie thinner; they bake a bigger pie.
Sullivan wasn’t always a “wanter.” His turning point came on a bleak August day in 1978 when divorce and bankruptcy arrived together, almost theatrically, as if conspiring to force an awakening. In that unraveling, he saw something astonishing: he had built a life based on need, not want.
So he made a quiet but radical decision to begin journaling each day, writing what he wanted, not what seemed reasonable, not what others expected, but what he truly wanted. Over the next twenty-five years, Sullivan filled 9,000-plus days with clarity, courage, and intention.
And by following those wants, he not only built a global entrepreneurial company, he built a life that felt like his.
There is deep wisdom in that. And deeper courage still.
To want something, truly want it, and to put most other things aside to pursue it is to step into freedom. When you clarify what you want and commit to it, you stop bending your life to please spectators. You stop living as an actor in someone else’s play. You become the author, pen in hand, choosing the scenes, choosing the scenery, choosing yourself.
Yet here is the inconvenient truth: the world will not always applaud. Many people live firmly planted in the country of “need,” and they fear the citizens of the land of “want.” They’ll call you selfish. They’ll say you’re reckless. They’ll ask, “Who do you think you are?”
You don’t need to answer.
“Because I want it” is answer enough.
When your desires harm no one, when they emerge from integrity and imagination, when they ask you to become the person you sense you could be… wanting is not indulgence. It is obedience to your soul. It is the blueprint of who you were meant to be.
And when you chase what you want you tap into your unique ability, the rare blend of skill, instinct, experience, and heart that is yours alone. This isn’t first about money, though money often follows. It’s about the richness of your time, the depth of your relationships, the clarity of your purpose, and the beauty of your life.
Need restricts. Want expands.
Need reacts. Want creates.
Need competes. Want imagines.
I know what I want.
A life where I am the best husband, father, and friend I can be.
To break 80 more often on the golf course.
And professionally, to Uberize a friction-laden industry that desperately needs it.
Freedom is not something bestowed; it must be claimed. And it begins with wanting boldly, unapologetically, wholeheartedly.
History shows the same truth. Our Founding Fathers wanted a new nation built on self-governance. Abraham Lincoln wanted freedom for enslaved Americans. Great wanting creates great futures. Needing merely protects the past.
So ask yourself today, as softly or as fiercely as you wish:
What do I truly want?
And then listen. For in that answer lies the map to the life you are meant to live.
