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Transforming Desire to Build More Meaningful Networks

In part two of “Wanting,” we discuss transforming your desires to reach your goals—not someone else's.

Author

Devin Keane
July 26, 2023

Reminder! Subscribers with one or more referrals will have access to a bonus takeaway each week. More rewards for more referrals will be announced in the coming weeks🎉 Now let’s dive in…

Read time: 4 minutes

Hi Proactive Professional,

Last week we covered part one of Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life to learn when to recognize that mimetic desire is playing a negative role in your relationship building (in case you missed it, read it here).

What have I learned? Mimetic desire is hard to avoid. In fact, we are never truly free of mimetic desire, especially when you consider all of the ways it’s forced upon us in life.

From a young age, negative mimetic “systems” are already impacting our lives. Let’s take a typical roadmap to success that we are given: the K-12 school system. From the day we enter, we are told our goal is to progress to the next grade. When we arrive in high school, we need to juice up our application with varying hobbies (that we often never return to) in order to show our unique depth and breadth to college gatekeepers. Rather than pursue our actual interests as they arise, we are told what to learn, what extracurriculars will look best, and how to fill up all of our spare time. ”The right way.” (Although some schools do take a different approach, like Montessori schools.)

The same thing goes for our networks. "Make connections", "stay in touch", "send 1,000 emails." Does this actually help us make meaningful relationships that are uniquely beneficial to both sides?

We can't fully escape mimetic desire, but we can choose what mimetic desires to reject and even transform positive mimetic desires into tools that bring us closer to the right people. After all, we can’t learn every desire and interest from someone else—like, our sister, for example.

Let's jump into the Part 2 of Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life—The Transformation of Desire.

Here are 4 ways for Proactive Professionals to be “anti-mimetic” and transform desire to their advantage:

1. Set Your Own Goalposts

  • Takeaway: "Most people aren’t fully responsible for choosing their own goals. People pursue the goals that are on offer to them in their system of desire. Goals are often chosen for us, by models. And that means the goalposts are always moving."

  • Tip: Goal setting is not a bad thing. But, if your goals are a result of a mimetic system, you may be setting them based on what you "should do" rather than the ultimate purpose you want to achieve. Following someone else's roadmap for making meaningful connections means you are tethered to their changing goalposts along the way. Be anti-mimetic and intentional about how you choose goals—start with your purpose and work backwards into establishing firm networking goals.

2. Practice Disruptive Empathy

  • Takeaway: "Empathy disrupts negative cycles of mimesis. A person who is able to empathize can enter into the experience of another person and share her thoughts and feels without necessarily sharing her desires…In short, empathy allows us to connect deeply with other people without becoming like other people."

  • Tip: Empathy is a constantly recurring concept in relationship building. You don't need to be exactly the same as someone to have a meaningful connection. In fact, having relationships with others that have similar ambitions but achieve them in vastly different ways is the best way to learn and grow from connections. Disruptive empathy allows us to cultivate stronger relationships and understand and shape our own thick desires after being exposed to examples of them in other people.

3. Pursue Thick Desires, Avoid Thin Ones

  • Takeaway: “Thick desires are protected from the volatility of changing circumstances in our lives. Thin desires, on the other hand, are highly mimetic, contagious, and often shallow."

  • Tip: As we use disruptive empathy to relate better to people, we will be able to form and identify our few, meaningful thick desires as opposed to the cheap thin desires. We can allow those thick desires to shape our ultimate goals—optimize for freedom, climb the ranks in a corporate role, etc.—and intentionally surround ourselves with more targeted and meaningful connections.

4. Live as if You Have a Responsibility for What Other People Want

  • Takeaway: "The destructive mimetic cycle works when people are convinced of the absolute primacy of their own desires. They're even willing to sacrifice others in order to fulfill them. But in the positive cycle of desire, people respect the desires of others as they would their own. What's more, they take an active role in collaborating with others to help them achieve their single greatest desire."

  • Tip: Choose a positive cycle of desire. Whether we like it or not, we are constantly influencing those around us to want more, less, or differently. Connections are a two way street. Do your best to model your positive desires to others, and let their positive desires further shape yours. That’s what makes mutually beneficial relationships—ones that allow you to continually learn and improve.

BONUS: 5. Available to Subscribers With at Least 1 Referral

  • Takeaway: 🤫

  • Tip: 🤫

So why is mimetic desire so related to forming relationships? Because we need to shape our desires in a way that aligns with our ultimate goals. However, the formation of our desires will always mimetically stem from the people closest to us and vice versa.

That's why it’s so important to be intentional about the friends, family, professional connections, and overall network that you put in place. Remember—20 meaningful connections provide much more value than 200 “friendly” ones.

What I am committing to this week for both networking and transforming mimetic desires (time commitment ~2.5 hours):

  • 🤝 Meeting with a targeted group of other founders and entrepreneurs to discuss ideas on our respective projects (~1 hour)

  • 🍽 Practicing disruptive empathy at a laid back KBBQ networking event hosted by Daniel Chen (~1 hour)

  • 📰 Sharing this article a connection sent to me on maximizing serendipity, to help promote building thick desires for my connections (~10 minutes)

  • 🤔 Reflecting on my week: Are the relationships I’m surrounding myself with now going to help me achieve my goals in one year, five years, twenty years? (~30 minutes)

What are you committing to this week? Reply to this email!

Best of luck building,

Devin