"How to Want What You Have" Book Review

[Smashter]

Someone on the forum recommended the book How to Want What You Have, by Timothy Miller.

I’m glad they did, as I thought it was a great self help book. I didn't agree with every part of it, but it presented some classic ideas in a fresh way and gave me a lot to think about.

Here's my one sentence summary of the authors thesis on how to be happier: Make a concerted effort to become more compassionate toward yourself and others, cultivate the ability to enjoy the present moment by feeling all emotions without clinging to them, and develop a systematic gratitude practice.

There’s nothing earth shattering there. It’s the way he makes his case that most interested me. So much so that I decided to write 2000+ words about it

We Always Want More

The author’s core idea is that humans have an in-built and very difficult to suppress desire for More. He uses capital “M” more in a deliberate way to refer to how we all have cravings that can’t ever be fully satisfied. He believes that there is no natural regulator on our desires, whether they be for status, money, food, sex, or power. All of these things helped us reproduce in the ancestral environment. Our genes don’t care if this drive for More ultimately makes us feel bad, hurts relationships, gives us diabetes, or destroys the climate. Our genes don’t care if More is the root cause of all suffering. From the viewpoint of our genes, More is good, full stop.

I have experience with this. I’ve gotten big raises that come with a hit of dopamine, only to feel like my same disgruntled self a week later. I’ve secured two separate “dream jobs”, which came with huge amounts of prestige, only to get disillusioned and angry when I didn’t advance as fast as I wanted. I even once broke up with my now wife because while she was amazing, how could there not be someone even more amazing out there if I looked a little harder? I’ve spent a lot of time thinking that true happiness was juuuuuust out of my reach. This book claims that I am not alone, and that a constant craving for More is the natural human condition.

Wanting What You Have

If you’ve accepted that you are hardwired to be addicted to More, what can you do about it? You can deliberately subvert it with gratitude, compassion, and attention.

Miller puts it like this:

My methods for wanting what you have are easily summarized. I recommend the deliberate, constant practice of compassion, attention, and gratitude.

Here is my summary of how Miller defines his terms:

Compassion: Whenever possible, try to see the good in people. Including yourself.

Attention: Get better at doing one thing at a time with the whole of your attention. Take the time to stop and just be in the present moment while avoiding unnecessary value judgements. Let sensations, good and bad, come and go. (This is similar to standard western secularized “mindfulness” advice)

Gratitude: Pretty much what you’d expect. Try harder to notice all the ways your life is amazing. Even in bad situations there is something to be grateful for, if you look.

Again, this is all stuff you’ve heard before. What I found most interesting was how, in his opinion, there is never a magical point where you can rest on your laurels. You must hammer away at self improvement every single goddamn day, staving off the greedy monster of More. As David Goggins might say, this work is never finished.

Miller’s advice is not for the faint of heart. He doesn't let you off easy by saying “do a gratitude journal once a week” or “meditate for 10 minutes a day” or “volunteer once a month to bring out your compassionate instincts.” He’s more like “try to do your best to notice every single instance where you are thinking More-infected thoughts and replace them with thoughts infused with compassion, gratitude, and non judgemental attention to the fine grained details of the present moment.” It’s a big ask, but it’s also super empowering. You can will your way into being a more compassionate, grateful, attentive person.

This bit of advice for practicing attention gives a flavor for the “go big or go home!” nature of his approach:

I encourage you to challenge yourself, stretch yourself, as much as feels comfortable. When you wash the dog, try pretending it is the only surviving member of an otherwise extinct species. When you urinate, pretend you are a urologist, knowledgeable and curious about every urinary tract sensation and structure. When you watch TV, pretend you have recently arrived from an alien planet where nothing like TV exists. When you eat cornflakes, imagine you have just emerged from a dungeon where you have spent 20 years with nothing to eat but maggoty gruel and muddy water. These fantasies are a bit extreme, so don’t get carried away with them, but you can use them as a tool to get into the proper mindset so that you can perform routine actions as if they are not routine.

Or this, on compassion:

If you really want to challenge yourself, behave compassionately toward a person you find exceptionally detestable. For example, if you have trouble with violent criminals, find one in prison you can correspond with. You might visit him, bring him cigarettes and magazines, or try to help his family.

And this on gratitude, which he presents after going through more and more extreme hypothetical scenarios that might lead a person to feel ungrateful, only to have Miller drop the hammer and declare that hell yeah you can practice gratitude even if your child is dying or you are locked in a dungeon.

QUESTION: Is there any theoretical limit to the amount of gratitude an ordinary person living an ordinary life might be able to achieve?

It is hard to see what the limit might be. In every person under every circumstance, there always exists the possibility that there is something that person might feel grateful for in some small way. And beyond that one small thing there is always another thing, and one after that.

While your More-centric nature will never go away, it can loosen it’s grip. The positive habits get ingrained, and soon enough you get better at seeing the silver lining in a bad situation, you automatically put yourself in other people’s shoes before condemning them, you effortlessly embrace both good and bad feelings without being carried away by any of them, you get better at appreciating all the little details of any given moment.

Miller believes that the practices he recommends will allow you to see that your present situation is pretty darn good, all things considered.

I also like how he spends time addressing the myth that being compassionate means you have to be a pushover or a peacenik. If someone breaks into your house, defend yourself however you have to. He’d just say that there is no need to also hate the person who broke in, as in their messed up way they were just trying to be happy and doing what they thought was right.

Will I Become a Motivation-less Blob if I Don’t Want More?

My hesitation around “wanting what I have” or the whole “wherever you go, there you are!” type stuff has always been that I don’t want to lose my motivation to improve my circumstances. I was raised to always be striving, improving, climbing. And I think there’s a lot of good in that. We wouldn’t have modern technology or advanced medicine or a preponderance of beautiful art otherwise.

The author’s suggestion is not that it’s bad to strive, but that it’s bad to strive in a way that affects your ability to maintain your compassion, gratitude, and ability to appreciate the present moment. If you notice that’s happening as part of your striving, then the juice is not worth the squeeze. A lot of this boils down to the age old maxim of appreciating the journey, not just the destination.

He would recommend going all out towards being the best at your job, for instance, if that’s what you want. Just try to have fun while doing it, don’t hate yourself if you don’t get there, and don’t tear others down along the way.

While he is a huge fan of accepting the things you cannot change, he by no means is saying “never change.” I think he handles that nuance well overall, though I note some confusions in the next section. He thinks all of psychotherapy would be improved if we separated “get what you want therapy” from “want what you have” therapy. Each has their place. I liked that framing.

He also points out that, while almost no one does it, it’s perfectly reasonable to just decide that your present circumstances are good enough. You can put your foot down and announce that you have enough money, enough house, enough friends, enough whatever. This affronts our More-centric being, but it is possible.

Nitpicks and Confusions

The book is a little preachy. He has a whole chapter on ethics that is mostly like, “Obviously everything was better when society was more religious, but here are some ways to muddle through given that’s no longer the case.” Then he presents an updated 10 commandments and suggests people who coalesce around his way of thinking might like to get together and sing modern songs that have compassionate themes, much like singing a hymn in church. That seems...optimistic. But hey, a guy can dream. And optimism is supposed to help with depression, at least according to this book.

I was also surprised that he didn’t talk about physical fitness at all. Maybe the benefits of exercise on mental health were less well established in 1995.

More importantly, I still feel there is something unclear about Miller’s stance regarding when one should strive to improve their position versus accepting what is. For instance, here’s a bit about goal setting. He says that you should set all the goals you want, but:

If at some point your goal interferes with your practice of compassion, attention, and gratitude, then you will have a decision to make. Do you prefer to want what you have, or would you rather mortgage the precious present in favor of some hypothetical future? If you knowingly “cheat” one time, will your practice of compassion, attention, and gratitude be forever harmed? You will have to make that judgment the best you can.

That’s hardcore! Which is great and all, it just implies to me that wanting what you have is higher on the totem pole of importance than striving to improve. I could be wrong there, just my interpretation.

But later, it reads like Miller is implying that, in many situations, people will be happier if they change and improve. For instance, he writes about a hypothetical person who has a nose shaped like a rutabaga, and that person wants to get plastic surgery. (Interesting vegetable choice, I had to look it up!)

If you have a nose shaped like a rutabaga, by all means get plastic surgery. If your health insurance doesn't cover it, start saving your money. While you are saving your money, live according to the principles of compassion, attention, and gratitude. Do the same as you prepare for surgery, the same as you recover from surgery, and the same again as you reenter life with a nice new face. If you are too poor to have much hope of saving enough money, live according to the principles of compassion, attention, and gratitude. They will help you find serenity regarding your nose. If you have an unexpected windfall, your serenity needn’t stand in the way of plastic surgery.

The way he says “reenter life with a nice new face” sure does make it sound like that’s an objectively better state to be in. Does that not imply we should all strive to be more beautiful? And to make more money to pursue that goal, within limits? These are the deep questions we all have to grapple with, and I suppose it's too much for me to expect this random self help book from the mid 1990's to have a perfect answer

Finally, to quickly touch on some more modern research, what should we make of this recent study?



Maybe More is really not that bad after all?

All in all I love that the book gave me so much to think about.

Moving Forward

I have long had a gratitude practice and a meditation practice. I think my entry point into the recommendations of the book will be through the compassion stuff. I feel like I am empathetic and compassionate in general, but it’s certainly my weakest link of the three that Miller emphasizes. It doesn't take much to set me off on a minutes long internal tirade about how annoying my boss is. If I find myself doing that I am going to try cutting it off way shorter than usual. And I’ll end with a compassion focused thought about how I’m sure that person is just trying their best to be happy in their own way. I will also work in some compassion to my typical morning gratitude practice.

Hope y’all are enjoying the precious present and cultivating a desire to want what you have.

[theanimal]

viewtopic.php?t=12426

[zbigi]

The way he says “reenter life with a nice new face” sure does make it sound like that’s an objectively better state to be in. Does that not imply we should all strive to be more beautiful? And to make more money to pursue that goal, within limits? These are the deep questions we all have to grapple with, and I suppose it's too much for me to expect this random self help book from the mid 1990's to have a perfect answer

I think it's relatively simple, at least in theory. If the effort and discomfort/unhappiness caused by striving to get certain thing are lesser than the happiness generated by finally getting that thing, then striving is worth it. Of course, the devil's in the details, as it's usually hard to estimate either of those two values - but, with age, as one accumulates wisdom (incl. self-knowledge), it should become easier.

Also, a separate topic is a sort of addiction to effort and discomfort which characterises "strivers". Such people often discount the negatives of striving completely, as for them putting in effort is a virtue and a value in itself.

[Smashter]

@theanimal thanks for the link! I swear on all that is holy I searched the forum for "how to want what you have" and somehow missed that.

[mountainFrugal]

@smashter this was a hard book to search for on the forum! I also tried and failed to find it before posting my thread. haha. So in the spirit of tradition, we should keep your excellent write-up here. More surface area for others to search in the future .

Also, a separate topic is a sort of addiction to effort and discomfort which characterises "strivers". Such people often discount the negatives of striving completely, as for them putting in effort is a virtue and a value in itself.

Could be. I think that there is a mature version of striving that negates the negatives. As a self-described striver, I found this book's articulation and combination of the main Compassion, Attention, Gratitude practices to be spot on for diagnosing immature vs. mature striving. While I think there are negatives to striving, there are far worse negatives to being lazy. Being lazy sometimes is a good thing. However, in general being lazy all the time accumulates very quickly towards physical and mental health decline. On the spectrum, I am personally glad to be on the striver side of this and will happily deal with the negatives.

[7Wannabe5]

As somebody more on the "lazy" or "relaxed" end of the spectrum, I would note that stress is a great contributor to physical and mental health problems. Although, I suppose the slope of decline is much more rapid and, therefore less noticeable, if you stroke out while yelling at somebody to get the hell out of your way than if you just waddle your fat butt ever more slowly through your garden of a morning

Of course, my perspective is that of somebody who is currently resting upon the thorooughly unearned laurels of a perfect physical at age 58, although way too chubby. My doctor literally said "Wow, you must be doing something right" when he called me with my bloodwork results, etc.

[mountainFrugal]

@7 - I view laziness as having both mental and physical components. While I cannot comment on the physical aspects, you are certainly not lazy in the mental department! Humans are physical and mental beings. Chronic stress without some sort of release (physical and/or mental) is the truly dangerous combo. Having a mature view of things will include tools of stress management.

[7Wannabe5]

@mountainFrugal:

I just need to shut up on the fitness/health front. The only reason my numbers are very good at my current BMI is that my minority-of-human-population genetic makeup is such that my waist-to-hip/bust ratio stays around .75 no matter how chubby I become. So, vast majority of my fat is subcutaneous and fairly inert, like 4 ruck-sacks I haul around all day every day If evil scientist liposuctioned all the fat on my butt and injected into the absdominal cavity of 58 year old male, he'd likely be dead within a couple weeks.

[suomalainen]

Thanks for the timely reminder.

[Smashter]

@MF, ha, thank you for making me feel better.

As a fellow striver, what you said really resonated with me. I think I do better than the average person at mature striving, but I am nowhere near as dialed in as you or others on the forum.

I think it's relatively simple, at least in theory. If the effort and discomfort/unhappiness caused by striving to get certain thing are lesser than the happiness generated by finally getting that thing, then striving is worth it. Of course, the devil's in the details, as it's usually hard to estimate either of those two values - but, with age, as one accumulates wisdom (incl. self-knowledge), it should become easier.

The devil is in the details indeed. I can be too persuasive with my internal monologue. Give me five minutes and I can convince myself that yes, in fact I would be happier if I worked 10 more years so I could move to a bigger house on the lake.

What I’ve been noticing is that most of the strive-y type feelings that make me feel bad are about wanting material things. Those that make me feel happy and motivated are about wanting to be healthier, smarter, more connected, or more loving. This is probably stupidly obvious to many people already, but it has been somewhat of a revelation for me.

I have been doing my new quick little compassion exercise every morning for about a week. I like it. It doesn’t hit as hard as my gratitude practice, but it’s early days.

@7 lol. And glad to hear your health numbers are so great! A win for sugar fiends everywhere

[Henry]

"He seemed to have what he wanted but he didn't want much."

https://nypost.com/2023/11/21/news/secr ... n-in-will/

[Smashter]

@Henry great story, thanks for the share.

His sister seems to have missed the point of what he was going for:

“I just feel so sad that he didn’t indulge himself just a little bit,” said Alison

Given that she lives in an expensive part of California, that's not surprising.

Totally off topic, but this part left me confused:

Geoffrey Holt, who died in June at the age 82, was known as the caretaker of a Hinsdale mobile home park where he lived in a unit with no computer or TV and a bed with legs that went through the floor.

(emphasis mine)

Does this just mean the floor was rotting away? Do I have a big blank spot in my cultural knowledge around poverty, and this this is a classic marker?

[Henry]

My guess is the floor was rotting. His home was elevated but not on a foundation so under the floor was a few feet gap of space and then ground. My family had a home in VT and as kids we were able crawl on the dirt underneath the house.

As far as not indulging himself, looking at the picture of him reclining on his mower, that's Jeff Bezos on his yacht without a gold digging woman by his side.

[Frita]

@Smashter

Yes, I also interpret this as the floor being in a state of disrepair. No, I would not say this is a classic, specific sign of poverty. Having done many home visits, I would note that some families living in poverty do not repair things that most people would repair (using low- to no cost- ERE solutions). It seemed to be more correlated with concurrent addiction in the family.

Poverty, addictions, and having disabilities are all extremely stressful. Stress impairs problem solving abilities.

[chenda]

Not having matching bathroom towels is apparently a classic sign.

[jacob]

I finally got my hands on it, but I couldn't finish it.

I found most of the examples/scenarios unrelateable, yet they are presented as hardwired and nearly universal with exceptions claimed to be nearly inconceivable. I didn't see it as preachy as much as "if all you have is a hammer, the whole world is a nail".

The CAG method is a hammer for that nail.

In spiral terms, it is targeted towards those who are ill at ease with competitive win-lose individualism (success, winning, climbing ranks) (red, orange) offering a (blue/green combo) solution of caring for one's in-group (blue) or identifying/being inclusive of all human [suffering] (green) + finding comfort in accepting one's place in the hierarchy---typically by refocusing on the subjective (faith and other immaterial measures that makes objective win-lose ranking impossible).

The opposite of this are of course books with titles like "How to Get What You Want" for those who are ill at ease with where they feel stuck.

[Jin+Guice]

I haven't read this book, but I think a lot of the wisdom might be in the title?

@jacob: An alternate title for ERE could be "How to Want What You Have While You Get What You Want." or "How to Get What You Want While Wanting What You Have."



Personally, I think a lot of issues are caused by a secret fear of not being able to get what you need. This fear is exacerbated and cast into the shadows by the collective myth that all you need is money. As we try to get what we need with more and more money, which is unable to or inefficient at meeting many of our needs, we become more and more desperate. The cure to that desperation, we are told, is of course more money...

I think getting out of this fear state is what makes one a "live player." Confidence that we can get what we need is truly rare.

The positivity/ affirmation* movement has co-opted this realization. It mistakes saying you are free with being free.

*I'm not convinced that positivity/ affirmations are bad or that they don't work. I think they might. I think the only harm is believing in them as the only or primary tool.

This is why ERE CAN get you free. It shows how one can easily meet their financial and economic needs in the first world. A Jafi is <1/5 of the USA median-income (and most here could earn more than the median if they wanted). If you accept this you are free. Meeting one's economic needs only takes one day a week (less if you earn more than the median or expect any positive investment returns).

The rest of the work is convincing your mind that this strategy will work, while the world around you tells you that it won't. We are told in a million ways that even if we can meet our economic needs we'll never have fun, friends, lovers, family, do anything interesting or be able to contribute to the world in any interesting or meaningful way.

Once we convince ourselves that we can not only meet our economic needs, but can rather meet all of our needs to an equal or better capacity at 1/5 the median salary, we are truly free. We are live players. We have access not only to the CAG model, but many or possibly all models.

If you need more money it's there. If you need more time it's there. If you need more energy it's there. That's abundance. That's freedom.

But convincing yourself is a life long process. One can never truly guarantee they will have even their basic economic needs met. This is why wanting less or accepting things that cannot be changed will always be a more powerful tool than the ability to enact the changes you want. It's not the lack of striving or wanting that sets you free, it's the acceptance of the risk of failure and the ability to change what you want or are striving for.

[mathiverse]

But convincing yourself [you can meet your needs with ERE as a strategy] is a life long process.

Uh, this seems obviously incorrect by the counterexamples of several people on this forum (jacob, theanimal, fiby, basuragomi, etc). Maybe my understanding of what you meant is off? (I added the bracketed part of the quote to show what I understood you to be saying. Maybe my reading comprehension is bad.)

I don't even think ERE as a strategy would be as valuable if it didn't allow you take meeting your needs for granted on a fairly short time scale (a decade or less; 5 years being the tagline).

[Jin+Guice]

@mathiverse: I am saying something different. I'm saying convincing yourself that your needs (beyond just economic, but also including economic) are met is a continual lifelong internal process (for most).

I agree that ERE meets concrete economic needs in a short amount of time, which does not require more external convincing or proof of concept. I also agree that non-economic needs can be met inside the methodology of ERE in the same amount of time, though this is not guaranteed by meeting economic needs.

The gulf is convincing yourself that your system will work and that it's worthwhile.

I think jacob and MMM are both particularly good at having faith in the systems they built and both of them have been acting as "live players," having both a strong sense of abundance and freedom-to.


In some sense I think there is still likely an internal process where they convince themselves that the system is working. Maybe it happens automatically or takes 10 hours a year in stock trades only though.

This does contradict the spirit of the statement you brought into question though. I think for most the struggle of truly feeling you have abundance and freedom-from is more of a life long process that requires some sustained attention over time.

[jacob]

@J&G - The spirit of the book (based on making it halfway) is replacing "wanting more" [than others] with "having enough" as a thinking pattern. Striving for "more than others" is the water of the fish in the dominant cultural paradigm of much of the western world (SD:orange). "Wanting enough" in the first place is not described. It is taken as a given that everybody really already "has enough" if only they could realize this. As such this is a book directed at the [striving] middle class and not the precariat(*).

One way out of middle class striving that often takes an arms-length win-lose modernist form, which sees others as means to a personal end, is C/A/G, which not surprisingly happens to be a combination of traditional (sd:blue) and postmodern (sd:green) values.

(*) And also not those who have "reached the other side". If the Musashi book that AH read while in Japan is the book I think it is (a bestselling fictionalization of Musashi's life from 1970/80 or so), it talks about how Musashi reached a point in his life where he got so tired of beating all his challengers---he got lazy about it, eventually beating someone with a wooden sword he carved out of a boat oar on the way to a duel---that he retreated (retired!) into the mountains away from public life. He had nothing left to prove or perhaps more accurately, he got tired of proving how easy it was to "climb" or "win-lose". Instead, he focused on calligraphy, which he also mastered. This is not the C/A/G solution described in this book, but it is another solution.