What It Means to Live by Your Own Compass, and Why Borrowed Wishes Spin Without Traction

Introduction: The Wish Is Supposedly Yours, Yet No Force Gathers Behind It

I want to live more by my own compass. And yet, the moment you set about forming a wish, voices work their way in — how will this look to other people, surely this much ought to be within my reach. The wish is supposedly yours, and somehow you cannot commit to it. You want it realised, and the action does not follow. Is that sensation of no force gathering familiar?

What this article treats is not a doctrine of willpower for building a compass of your own. It is the mechanism: why a wish oriented by other people — a wish arriving from outside — fails to move a person however hard it is concentrated upon.

Here is the conclusion first. The absence of force is not weakness of will. It is an accurate symptom of the wish not being yours. Living by your own compass does not mean reducing outside influence to zero. It means noticing the influence and then examining, and taking responsibility for, what you finally want. That stance is what gives a wish sustained energy.

What Separates the Quality of a Motive: Self-Determination Theory

Why does a wish oriented by others fail to move a person? The key is self-determination theory, systematised by the psychologists Edward Deci and Richard Ryan [Deci & Ryan, 1985]. The theory grasps human motivation in terms of how far a motive is genuinely one’s own.

At one end sits a motive arising purely from within — doing it because you want to. At the other sits a motive imposed entirely from outside — doing it because you are made to. And the higher the degree to which a motive belongs to the person, the more sustainably and vividly they engage. This is a finding supported by a large body of empirical research.

A goal supplied from outside sits at the made to end of the scale. Goals set by rewards and punishments, by the expectations of others, by the standards of a society, are extrinsic in the quality of their motivation even when the person says aloud that this is what they want. Extrinsic motivation moves a person while the external pressure lasts, and the movement stops when the pressure goes. Fuel borrowed from outside runs out when the supply is cut.

Energy Comes Not From the Intensity of a Wish but From Its Origin

Here lies a fundamental reversal that manifestation misses. Manifestation holds that wishing strongly generates the energy for realisation — that the intensity of the wish is the source of action. What self-determination theory shows is the opposite ordering. Energy is generated not by the intensity of the wish but by whether the wish belongs to you.

When people who had been enjoying a puzzle were rewarded for each solution, they lost interest in the puzzle once the reward was discontinued [Deci, 1971]. A reward from outside impaired the motivation that had been rising from within. Being made to concentrate on a wish distributed from outside performs the same function that the reward performed in that experiment. Which is why no energy rises from within however long the concentration continues. The person concludes that their will is weak, when in truth it is the external origin of the goal that is generating the shortfall of energy.

Wishes That Have Turned Into Obligations

Reality is a little more complicated. Many goals arriving from outside do not simply remain outside; at a certain stage they are taken half-way in. Self-determination theory calls this intermediate state introjected regulation: a value that came from outside, never chosen by one’s own will, internalised as a sense of obligation — I must.

It would be shameful not to earn more. I have to stay youthful. Sensations of this kind are external standards that have taken up residence in the form of internal commands. They came from outside, and they feel like your own conscience or sense of responsibility. Which makes them harder still to escape. A goal imposed purely from outside can be felt as coercion and resisted; an introjected obligation feels as though it issues from within, so it offers nothing to push back against. A person chases it in the belief that this is what they want. And that pursuit lacks, decisively, the joy and lightness that a genuine wish carries.

One clue lies in what you feel when you imagine letting the wish go. Imagining letting go of a genuine wish produces plain sadness or regret. Imagining letting go of an introjected obligation produces relief first, and immediately after it the anxiety of but then what will people think. A wish that brings relief first may have been a burden all along.

The First Criterion: Would You Still Want It Against Opposition?

How, then, is a wish of your own to be told apart? The most fundamental question is this. Is it something you would still want to do if you were opposed?

Most borrowed wishes rest on the assessment or approval of others for their support — I want to be envied, I want to be acknowledged as impressive. A wish supported by such motives deflates once the people doing the assessing are absent. Where the wish is genuinely yours, you feel you want it whoever opposes it and even if nobody assesses it at all. Only a wish standing on its own, without the external support of agreement, is the genuine article.

People pursuing goals that align with their internal values — self-concordant goals — sustain those goals more readily, feel greater satisfaction on attaining them, and report higher well-being overall than those who do not [Sheldon & Elliot, 1999]. One confusion is worth guarding against, however. Defiance — if people oppose it, all the more reason to do it — is not the same as self-concordance. Depending on agreement and reacting against opposition are alike in that both hand the content of the wish to other people. What still remains, quietly, when the reactions of others are set aside: that is your wish.

▸ This discernment connects closely with not knowing what you want to do because the wish is borrowed.

Conclusion: The Absence of Force Is a Compass

That wishes oriented by others spin without traction was never a matter of weak will. A wish arriving from outside relies on external pressure as its fuel, and the movement stops when the pressure goes. An obligation taken half-way in wears the mask of a genuine wish, and the pursuit lacks joy. The sensation of no force gathering was not a defect. It was a compass, telling you that the wish was not yours.

What is required, then, is not to wish with greater force. It is to stop and ask whether this is something you would want against opposition. Only a wish that survives the removal of other people’s reactions carries fuel of its own. Receive the overall design as your next step. How this question of self-determination operates across manifestation as a whole is set out in what the law of attraction actually is.

References

Academic papers and theory

• Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. Intrinsic Motivation and Self-Determination in Human Behavior (1985) Plenum Press
• Deci, E. L. “Effects of Externally Mediated Rewards on Intrinsic Motivation” (1971) Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 18(1)
• Sheldon, K. M., & Elliot, A. J. “Goal Striving, Need Satisfaction, and Longitudinal Well-Being: The Self-Concordance Model” (1999) Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76(3)