A Sincere Wanting? The Difference Between Wanting and Wanting to Want

I was sitting with a client last year. He is a sharp, accomplished leader working through our goal-setting exercise. We were mapping out what he wanted across his life domains: vocation, relationships, finances, and health. The full landscape. He’d clearly done this kind of work before. The language was polished. The timelines made sense. On paper and as presented, everything was clean.

Yet every time we defined a goal, he’d soften it. There was always a qualifier: “Well, maybe...” or “But I also...” He kept standing in the hallway instead of walking through the doors he opened. I recognized this—not indecision, but a compass set to someone else’s north.

I didn’t call it out immediately. I let him keep going, because sometimes you have to let the pattern reveal itself before you name it.

Then we got to marriage.

Same polished language. Same right words, right cadence, even the right enthusiasm. But now I’d been watching him waver for forty-five minutes, and this one didn’t land any differently. We needed to stay, “Stay in the tension,” as my mentor would say. So I sat in it with him, and as we peeled back the layers, the truth surfaced. He didn’t actually want marriage. He wanted to want marriage. And once we named it, the entire direction of our work together changed.

There is a subtle, yet significant difference between genuinely wanting something and simply wanting to be the kind of person who wants it. The first is rooted in your own values, your own sense of what is good, what is promising, and what is necessary for your life. The second is borrowed. It’s a desire you picked up somewhere along the way. Maybe it’s a family expectation, cultural pressure, or from watching someone else’s highlight reel on these here interwebs and assuming their chapter should be yours.

Your beliefs and values act as lenses, shaping how you see what’s purposeful and what’s worth your energy. When those lenses are clear, desire flows naturally. You don’t have to talk yourself into it. You don’t have to manufacture motivation on a Monday morning. You move towards it because it’s genuinely yours. A genuine want comes from alignment.

So, when someone is “wanting to want,” that’s a different animal. I’m not seeing a motivation problem. It’s not a discipline gap. I see a real and present identity crisis. They’re not struggling with follow-through. They’re struggling with authorship and the question of whose life they’re actually building.

When your desires aren’t actually yours, your life becomes a series of uphill battles that didn’t need to be fought. You’re chasing waterfalls. ...swimming upstream. ...running amok! Burning through energy on pursuits that look right from the outside, but feel hollow from the inside. The harder you push, the more exhausted and confused you become, because effort alone cannot close the gap between who you are and who you think you should be.

This is what disharmony looks like in real life: Saying yes to things that drain you. Chasing titles or metrics that don’t actually mean anything to you. Building a career or a relationship or a public image that checks every external box, but leaves you feeling like a stranger in your own story. The goals get accomplished (even impressively), but the fulfillment never arrives. So you set new goals, big, shinier ones, hoping the next achievement will finally feel like enough.

It won’t.

It won’t be until the foundation shifts and is reset.

I’ve seen this in servant leaders who lose themselves in the grind, in friends and colleagues building empires they secretly resent, and at my own kitchen table. No one is immune—especially in this influencer economy. The question is whether you’ll look at it honestly.

I want to recall something my pastor taught many moons ago. The Latin sincera, from which we get “sincere,” means without wax. The story goes that Roman craftsmen would fill cracks in flawed pottery or marble with wax to disguise the imperfections. A piece that was sine cera was genuine. Whole. Unmasked. No hidden fractures. What you saw was what you got.

I love this image because people stuck in “want to want” patterns are essentially filling cracks with wax. Borrowed desires and ideas of success cover gaps in their own clarity. The outside looks smooth, but under pressure, the wax melts, and the fractures reveal themselves.

And this is where sincerity meets authenticity. In the way I teach it and hopefully living daily, authenticity means living in alignment with the author’s intent. It means operating according to your own design, your own purpose, and your own internal authority. It is not a borrowed script from someone else’s life. When you’re not operating from your own authority, you are—by default—operating from someone else’s. And that’s not living well. That’s not leadership. It is not success. That’s performance.

As a reminder, I’m Tray. I am your friend. I’m here just to nudge, lightly prod, suggest, and walk alongside you. My aim here is to dissolve this fragmentation by going back to the questions that actually matter. Not “What are your goals?” Instead:

What is your definition of success? Where does this meaning come from? Did you write it yourself, or did you inherit it?

Is this something you genuinely want? Have you adopted this desire from someone you admire?

Who are you? Why are you here? What do you want? And how do you intend to get there?

These are existential questions. And only the honest answers from deep reflection will do. Your polished, boardroom-ready answers won’t cut it.

To say it plainly: coveting someone else’s version of success will always distort your view of your own potential. Their path aligned with their values, their wiring, their season. Yours has to align with yours. I believe every person can lead an abundant life, one marked by harmony across all of life’s domains. But abundance doesn’t look the same for everyone. It can’t. Our values are shaped by culture, geography, experience, faith, heartbreak, and triumph. The manifestation of a well-lived life is as diverse as the people living it.

So here is what I want to leave you with. Don’t rush past this one:

Is it truly a desire you hold? Or merely a desire to have that desire?

Don’t even beat yourself up if it is the latter. Name it. Recognize it for what it is: a fracture being filled with wax. You’re out of alignment. And alignment is not a luxury or a nice-to-have. It is the prerequisite of authentic leadership, meaningful success, and a life that actually belongs to you.

Strip away the borrowed scripts. Remove the wax and begin to lead your life sincerely (sine cera) from the inside out.

Be well. Be brave. Be Blessed.

Tray T.S. Deadwyler, CBC, CLC, CVM

Founder & Executive Director, Think For Good, Inc.

thinkforgood.org