Why Wanting it more pushes it away.

The harder you want something, the further it seems to get

You set the goal. You stay focused on it. You push.
And the more you want it, the more it stays out of reach.
‍It feels like you are doing everything right.
More effort, more discipline, more wanting.
But the thing you are chasing keeps moving away from you.

If that sounds familiar, this is for you.

Because the problem is not that you are not wanting it hard enough.
The problem is the wanting itself.

I made a video about exactly this, including a short experiment you can do right now to feel the difference in your own body:

Watch: Why Wanting It More Pushes It Away

My own year of being completely stuck

At the end of 2018 I took all my courage and quit my well paid engineering job.
I had no plan, no product, not even a clear idea what kind of business I wanted to build.

I just had this strong urge:
I need to get out of this job, because that is the only way to find a path that is actually mine.

And then, for a whole year, nothing worked.

I was overwhelmed. I did not know what to do or where to start, and everything I tried failed.
A year later I had exactly one client. I was pushing as hard as I could, and nothing moved.

Then something broke open.

Late summer of 2019 I had been casually dating someone for a few months.
In one of my own coaching sessions, something cracked, I started crying, and I had a sudden change of heart.
I wrote to her that I wanted to be together. Her answer: "That's funny. I decided to end it yesterday."

I do not fully know why, but that moment cracked me open. For two months straight I cried several times a day.
In the beginning for hours. It was a heavy, dark, almost depressive time.
Getting out of bed was a success. Taking a shower was a bigger one.

But six months earlier I had learned one idea at a workshop: if you let go and let your emotions move, life gets better. So I did. I welcomed the heaviness instead of fighting it. I surrendered to all of it.

Then everything came on its own

‍ It took about a month. And then the outside started to shift.

‍"Hey Tim, do you want to sub in for a yoga class?" The next day again. And again. I had been trained as a yoga teacher, but before that I had never taught yoga in my life outside the training. But the requests kept coming. In January I taught 30 classes, in February 25, March similar, all of it covering for other teachers.

Then the first lockdown hit. When it lifted three months later, every single gym I had taught at called me, one after another, on the same Monday: new regulations, no active sports allowed, they wanted more yoga, did I want to be their teacher? By the end of that day I had six regular weekly classes. The only thing I did was pick up the phone and say yes.

Three days later a friend sent me a link to a small studio for rent. Cheap, in the city center, a park next to it where I could teach outside. Every single criterion I would have written down, that little studio had it. I called, met them the next day, and within a day I had my own studio.

I went from "I have no idea what I am doing" to "I am a yoga teacher with six fixed classes and my own studio" in about a week. None of it came from wanting it. It came the moment I stopped being able to want it.

"But Tim, you just got lucky"

This is where most people push back. You got lucky.
Or: you cannot expect me to just do nothing and have life hand me everything.

‍That is not what I am saying. If you sit on your couch and do nothing, you probably will not get it either.

It is about understanding what wanting actually is.

Wanting is the feeling of not having it

Most people assume that wanting is the thing that brings their goals into their life.
But look closer at what wanting really is.

‍Wanting is the if-then game: if I achieve this, then I will feel happy, then I will feel enough, then I will feel loved. There is always an expectation that the good feeling lives on the other side of the goal.

Underneath that is a sense of lack.
A quiet signal that how it is right now is not good enough, that you are not enough right now.
And you are trying to overcome that lack by pushing through it.
That is exactly where people burn out.

So here is the reframe that changes everything:

Wanting is not the feeling of moving toward a goal. Wanting is the feeling of not having it.

That is why you push. That is why you chase.
And the strange part is that even when you push hard enough to actually reach the goal, the satisfaction does not last.
Maybe a day, maybe a week, and then the same feeling creeps back.
Most people conclude the goal was not big enough, so they aim for more.
But there is no amount of money, no achievement, that closes the gap.
The gap was never out there.‍ ‍

So we have to flip the script. We start with the feeling first, not the goal.

The shift: life is energetic, not just physical

This can sound abstract, so let me give you the view that made it click for me.

I used to believe life was primarily physical. That I had to say the right things and do the right things to create results.
Then I understood that life is primarily energetic, and that at the base of everything is energy.

Look at quantum physics. The deeper it goes, the more it says the same thing: everything is energy and vibration.
And if energy is the base, then everything built on top of it follows the rules of energy.
Everything around you was first a thought, first a concept, first energy, before it became real.

Your body works the same way. Inspiration comes in from the top.
You set the intention to create. You speak it, you love it, you feel worthy of it, and then you bring it into the world.
If you are blocked anywhere along that path, it becomes hard to create what you want.

And here is the mechanism. The tighter you are wound up, the more you want it.
Wanting contracts your whole field. A contracted field does not attract, it blocks.
So the harder you want, the more you close the very channel the thing has to come through.

The work is the opposite of pushing. It is relaxing your system and opening your field.
The funny thing is that the more you open, the better you feel even before you have it, and the easier it becomes to create it in your life.

‍You can feel this for yourself. Just imagine wanting something, and notice your body start to contract.
Now move into having it. Notice how that feels more open.
The shift you are looking for is from wanting into having.
And you do not force that shift. You relax into it.

"But don't I need the wanting to stay motivated?"‍ ‍

This is the most common objection.
I need the wanting, I need a bit of fear, because that is what motivates me.

I would argue the opposite. Have you ever watched children? I have two.
When they play, there is so much creativity. They explore. They have fun. And I do not see any fear watching them.
They do things because they feel like it. That drive comes through them.
It is excitement for life, not pressure.
It is courage, not fear.

If you drop the fear, you start living authentically to who you are.
You stop doing the things you thought you had to do to be successful, and you start doing the things that actually fulfill you.
And from that place a real inner drive shows up.
You sit there genuinely wanting to create.

I have seen this in my own life. At Airbus I had excellent working conditions, and it was empty.
I had no ambition, no dreams, I did not know what I wanted. I was completely blocked and tensed up.
After I left, it took a while for my shell to break open, but it did.
And the longer I live this way, the more excited I am, the more I want to create, the more dreams I have.
It does not come from fear anymore. It comes from inside.

That is the real difference. Fear-driven action is run from the outside.
Intrinsic drive comes out of you. And because it is yours, it actually fulfills you.
Build something on fear and you will always feel empty, because fear only creates more fear.

A simple experiment: feel the difference between wanting and having

‍ You can test this right now.

Close your eyes for a moment. Imagine moving through a landscape, walking or driving or flying, however you like.
A city, the mountains, a tropical island, anywhere. Just move through it and look around. Then stop.

Take a short break.

Now imagine doing the same thing again, but this time focus on wanting to move. Wanting to walk, wanting to fly.
Make the wanting stronger and stronger.

Most people notice the same thing.
In the wanting version, you cannot move. You are stuck where you are.
And the harder you want it, the more stuck you get.

That is exactly how wanting works in real life.

So the question for this week is not "how do I want my goals harder?"
It is the opposite. Where are you gripping so tightly that you are freezing yourself in place?
And where could you let go, open up, and let it come?

Watch the full video‍ ‍

I go into all of this in depth in the video below, including the full story of how an entire yoga business came to me within a week once I stopped pushing, and the body experiment in full.

Watch: Why Wanting It More Pushes It Away

If this resonates, the next step is simple: watch the video, try the experiment, and notice what comes up.