Episode #31: Authentic Desire vs Memetic Desire

I’m always talking about the importance of pursuing your desires! After all, what’s life like when you don’t go after what you want?

I can tell you: limp. Lifeless. Boring.

Desire is part of our life-force energy. It’s a path we can follow into our desired reality. However, not all desire is created equal!

This week I’m talking about the difference between authentic desire and memetic (learned) desire. Find out more about this sneaky kind of desire so you can get back on your authentic path!

In This Episode:

Find out why not all desire is created the same
Learn what memetic desire is & why you want to be careful with it
Get inspired to follow your real authentic desires!
Much more!

Listen Here:

Authentic Desire vs Memetic Desire | Episode #31 Transcript

Hey, sis. Welcome back to the Self Worth Project podcast.
It’s your girl Jenn. I’m a coach and healer and I’m here to give you a little bite-sized bit of healing advice
to help you on your path to becoming your best, most badass, most confident self.
I was really excited to come to you with this episode today.
Sometimes you have an idea in your head, but it seems like it’s just there by itself
and you don’t really know how to speak about it.
And then one day comes along and you find out that this is not an idea that’s alone.
This is an idea that has existed in the world and there’s actually a name for it.
So today I want to talk to you about desire.
And specifically, I want to talk to you about the difference between authentic desire and mamedic desire.
I read a ton of books and I listen to a ton of podcasts.
And many times I’m listening to things that, you know, they’re great.
It’s interesting, but I’m not really learning anything.
But this week when I heard the term mamedic desire, I was like, “Oh my gosh, this is something that I’ve actually been talking about for years.”
So on my site, the Align Life, if you don’t know that site, that’s my original manifestation and mindset website.
It’s existed now for, oh my gosh, like, nine years.
So over there, I’ve spoken a lot about desire over the years.
Desire is something that is crucial to your overall happiness.
It is so important for you to have a good relationship to desire and in fact, to really understand your desire, to think about it, and to analyze it.
Sometimes in life it feels like we are without passion, we are without spark.
We are just going through the motions.
And many times when I speak to somebody who is struggling with that kind of burnout or very underwhelmed feeling in life, it’s because they have lost connection with desire.
And there’s no wonder to that because collectively we have such a complicated relationship with desire.
Desire is something that we sort of demonize.
And at the same time, it’s something that we teach people to have in many different ways.
Desire is something specifically that women, I think, have a lot more problems dealing with because we’re taught to be so selfless, we’re taught to put everyone else first.
That sometimes we don’t even know what our desires are.
And that can create a whole host of problems in your life.
So that’s my little overview of why desire is so important and why you should be thinking about yours.
But now I want to get into the actual topic of today, which is authentic desire versus memetic desire.
So let’s talk first about authentic desire.
This is something I have spoken about at length, like I said, for years now.
But we’re just going to go over it one more time because it is so important to really get this concept.
Authentic desire is desire that is real and true for you.
It is desire that comes from just who you are as a person.
It’s the kind of stuff that probably let you up when you were a child.
These are the big things in life that really make you happy.
Problem here is that many times our authentic desires are not actually what we think they are.
So one of the reasons why I think it’s so hard to figure out what our authentic desires are is because we have so many,
memetic desires.
So as you might have been able to tell from the word memetic,
memetic desire is desire influenced by other people.
And this is a huge category and I’m going to go into how memetic desire affects us in a few different ways.
First of all, we are influenced by what we see other people desiring.
So this can happen on both a personal level or on a whole social level.
You see somebody who wants something and you start to want it as well.
For example, that could be the latest shoes, the super cool hip shoes that are in the season.
That could be whatever the cool shoes are this season.
Like I’m thinking specifically right now last year,
where I guess two years ago there was this huge craze for Adidas sambas.
And sambas were selling out everywhere.
Everyone was getting sambas and there was a huge thing about sambas.
And I myself got caught up in that and I do have sambas.
I am semi embarrassed to say.
I got definitely influenced by market trends on that one.
But that is part of this.
We see somebody wanting something.
We see somebody wearing it like influencers wearing it.
And then we think we want that for ourselves.
So that is one way memetic desire works.
The second way is that we want things because other people want them.
This one I think applies more to, let’s say, celebrities and the things that celebrities desire.
For example, maybe you were not interested in cars at all.
But then all the celebrities or so it seemed at the time started driving Tesla’s.
So you were not interested in cars at all.
Suddenly you got this desire to own a Tesla.
We did not really want a car.
We weren’t really thinking about cars.
But when we saw so many other people getting Tesla’s, wanting Tesla’s,
talking about Tesla’s, designing their Tesla’s, getting their Tesla delivered,
then suddenly you started to want one, two.
Come on, admit it.
I know this has happened to you.
This has happened to me as well.
The next one, memetic desire leads to rivalries and conflict.
As people compete for the same desired objects or status.
So basically this becomes an oro-barrows situation.
The more rare something becomes, the more that we want it.
And of course, sometimes this is something that the market can manipulate and dictate.
Think for example, about diamonds, diamonds are a rock.
They’re grows in the ground that we have created a whole artificial value for.
Not to say that they’re not valuable and definitely not to say that they’re not beautiful.
Or that you shouldn’t want them.
But this is something we have deemed valuable.
We have created demand for it.
And because it seems to be rare and people are competing for it,
it can keep a high value, right?
So I mean, that goes into much more than just the desire part.
But I’m pretty sure that if no one you knew had a diamond,
and people weren’t talking about diamonds on TV,
and the diamond industry at large didn’t exist,
there would never be a day in your life that you would be thinking about owning a diamond.
So that leads into the next part.
Advertising in social media also amplify this mimetic desire.
They show us constantly what other people have, want, and desire.
So when we see what other people have,
what other people want, and what other people desire,
and what other people value,
we start to value those things too.
So advertising was a very targeted campaign to do this,
to manipulate us on mass by showing us those valuable.
So we all start to move towards it at the same time.
Again, think about Adidas Samba is about two years ago.
But I think social media has become its own separate driver.
Of course, there are many people chasing the same things.
You know, the perfect bikini photo on the beach and Bali,
that kind of vibe.
There’s definitely an element of sameness on social media.
But I think there’s a lot more room in social media for us to be the drivers of these things.
Or you just start to become an influencer
by being who you are, desiring what you are, having what you are.
Right?
Like just you showing your personality
and showing those things is going to influence somebody out there
because of mimetic desire.
Finally, mimetic desire ultimately drives trends.
So that could include anything from fashion to social to political movements
as people on mass adopt the desires and behaviors of those around them.
At the core of it, we are pack animals.
We want to belong.
And if everyone around you is suddenly wearing those Adidas Samba’s
or they’re all listening to the song or they’re all talking about this TV show,
there’s probably a lot larger of a likelihood
that you will do that too.
All of this stuff is super interesting to me on several levels.
But I just wanted to talk about this today
because I think it really illustrates just how influenced we are by other people.
We just naturally pick up their values.
We naturally want the things that they want.
We naturally want to be liked by them.
So we emulate what they’re going after and what they value.
On the surface, there’s nothing wrong with this, right?
Like there’s not really anything wrong.
You’re not hurting anyone if you are adopting the latest fashion cycle
or if you are listening to the latest trending audio, right?
The problem here comes.
When you live your whole entire life based on mimetic desire.
When you are running from one trend to the next,
when you are constantly going after goals because you see somebody on social media
doing something, I guarantee that many times these goals will not fulfill you.
So this is why it’s so important to talk about this stuff, right?
Because what is the point of going after desire unless it fulfills you?
If you are spending mental energy and at time and you’re looking at things and you’re
fantasizing about them and you are wanting these things so bad in your life
and then you get there and it feels kind of hollow and empty.
What is the point of doing that?
So again, I’m not telling you this is bad.
I’m not telling you to never follow trends.
But I want you to start to become aware of how this is influencing your life
because the more time that we spend chasing after the Tesla that we didn’t really want,
the less time we have to go after the things in life that we do truly want.
So I want you to really think about your major life goals, whether you are one of my
manifesting spiritual baddies or if you are somebody who is in the self-help world and you are
working towards creating healthier self-worth and creating a life that makes you feel fulfilled and happy.
I want you to think about what your desires are and I want you to look at them through this lens.
When it comes to goal setting, I like to think about both long-term goals, like big
dreamy over-the-top audacious goals as well as short-term goals.
So I think many times the mimetic desire stuff can fit into the short-term goals,
like I want to buy a pair of sneakers and buy those sneakers, the trendy sneakers of the year or
whatever, that’s you’re not going to probably spend that much time on them. You might think about them,
you might have to hunt them down like I did with the sambas because they were sold out everywhere,
but when you get them, like it’s cool and you wear them, but it was never going to be a high value
thing, right? Like you were never going to get that much out of it and you know that buying shoes is
at least most of the time you know that buying shoes, right? But it’s the long-term goals,
the big life overarching goals. This is where we really have to be careful because when you spend
months, years, decades going after something and you figure out, hey, this is not really
what I wanted. This doesn’t really align with me or the way I thought when I got this isn’t really
how it is. Like I don’t really feel as happy as I thought I would. So many times that is the way goals
are. We set them, we achieve them and they do not feel as good as we think they’re going to. And
that’s because many of us have perfectionist fantasies about what goals mean and we think
that all of our other problems are going to magically go away. We will never experience
all doubt if only I have this relationship apartment, job, man, whatever, right? So there’s a little
bit of unrealistic expectations there, but the other part of that is definitely because we’ve had
a mismatch between our energy, our time and our goal. We are going after goals that are not authentic.
So again, I want you to get really clear about this. I want you to go look at that list of yours
right now. For example, if you have written down, I want to manifest one million dollars. I want to
make one million dollars. Why is that? Ask yourself why? Where did this desire come from? Who did I see
with this that made me want to get it? And what do I think I will get out of this? Money is one of
those ones where it’s really interesting to do this exercise with because we have been programmed
to think that a certain dollar amount or a certain amount of money in the bank is success and doing
air quotes. You can’t see me, but success isn’t a dollar amount. It does not come from a lump sum
payment. It does not come from achieving a certain amount of revenue in a year. It comes from
something else and usually our satisfaction with money after a certain point after I think I think
it’s 70,000 dollars per year. After that point, there are diminishing returns. That means the more
money that you make, that only works until a certain point in time. And after that, you can make more
money, but your happiness levels aren’t going to go up. When you hit that level of money that allows
you to self-actualize after that, things do not get better. You just go to that level and you stay
there, right? So it’s not the number. And it’s probably not the ring on your finger and it’s probably
not the job and it’s probably not whatever. So I want you to just be really careful and really
curious. Sometimes we want things because we saw a cartoon when we were little and that’s what the
person in the cartoon had or a TV show. Sometimes it’s because you’re a friend at school. That’s what
their parents had and you decided that that’s what you wanted. Sometimes it’s because you grew up
and you watched a lot of this one influencer and that was something that they are going for and they
talk about all the time. So now you think that you want that too. Again, monkey sea, monkey do. And
sometimes those desires might actually align with who you are and what you want and what you value.
But many times they don’t. So one more tip here. So now that I’ve kind of scared you into taking a
closer look at your goals, I’m going to give you one more set of guidelines here to help you see if
you are on track. And that is thinking about what your core values are. So if you, we all have a set
of core values, whether you realize it and you consciously decide it on them or not, core values
are the values and standards that we bring to our life and that we value more than anything else.
For me, one of my core values is honesty and it really drives me insane when people are not
honest with me, honesty, truth, like that is something that I really hold dear, which means I cannot show
up being fake. I cannot pretend to you guys to be somebody that I’m not. I just cannot do that even if
that would mean more money, for example, or more popularity. I can’t do that because that would be going
against my values. But that’s my particular value. And I know that there are many other people in the
world who do not share that value and that they’re more than happy to put on a fake, I’m not saying
fake in a bad way, but like you falsified face of who they are and present that to the internet,
right? But if I did that and I achieved even the goals that I was going after, if living out of
alignment was the way that I got there, I can still guarantee that getting to that goal, achieving
that goal would not feel as good because that goal has led me away from my own personal alignment.
So just to sum up here, because I know I gave you a lot to chew on today, look at your goals
and look at especially your long term goals and really start to dissect where those goals came
from and why you are going after them. Because we want to move as far away from the medic desire as we
can for our long term goals, we want to have authentic goals, authentic goals that reflect who you are
as a person. And if you need a little bit more guidance here on how to do that, look at your goals
through the lens of your core values, your core values reflect who you are and what you prioritize in
life. And if there is a goal that in itself represents something that is not alignment with you
or if you are going after a goal that would require you to somehow step away from your core values,
I guarantee that you are going to be going in the wrong direction. I have a lot more to say on the
topic of core values over on the blog. So if you want to go over there and check out the article, I
have that linked for you down below. But that is all I have for you today, my friend. What are your
authentic desires and what are your memetic desires and be very, very clear before you go after one
of those memetic desires if that really is worth it or not? Okay, so that is it for today’s episode,
my beautiful friend. Thank you so much for being here. If you want to learn more about me or come
work with me inside my Heald program, I’ll leave a link for that below. It is the best place packed
full of workshops to help you work on your self worth and improve your life from the inside out.
I’ll love to see you in there and I’ll definitely see you back here in the next episode. Ciao for now.