“What Did You Stop Wanting Because Someone Told You It Was Selfish, Greedy, or “Not Very Spiritual” to Want It?” Randy Gage
There’s a moment most of us can trace back to — a specific conversation, a look, a comment dropped so casually it barely registered. Someone said it. Maybe a parent, a pastor, a partner, a friend with good intentions. And just like that, you quietly folded up a dream, tucked it somewhere behind your ribs, and learned to want less.
This post is about what you put down. And whether it’s time to pick it back up.
The Quiet Violence of Shrinking Your Dreams
Desire is not dangerous. Wanting more — more health, more money, more freedom, more joy — is not a character flaw. But somewhere along the way, many of us were handed a different message.
“You don’t need all of that.” “Why do you always want more? Be grateful for what you have.” “Money is the root of all evil.” “People like us don’t live like that.” “That’s so materialistic. What about your spiritual growth?”
These messages didn’t arrive with warning labels. They came wrapped in love, in religion, in cultural norms, in family loyalty. So we did what people do when they want to belong — we adjusted. We made ourselves smaller. We stopped asking out loud. Eventually, we stopped asking inside, too.
And we called it contentment. We called it humility. We called it peace.
But if you’re being honest with yourself right now — was it really any of those things?
What People Actually Stop Wanting (And Why It Costs Them)
Let’s name some of them, because they deserve to be spoken.
The body they actually want. How many people — especially women — have quietly surrendered the idea of feeling truly good in their skin because wanting that was deemed vain? Somewhere vanity and vitality got mixed up, and the result is a generation of people who have made peace with exhaustion, inflammation, and bodies that feel foreign to them. Wanting to be healthy, strong, energetic, and yes — to like what you see in the mirror — is not shallow. It is one of the most practical, grounded things you can pursue.
The money they actually need. Prosperity has been weaponized against people for centuries. Entire communities have been taught that financial ambition is spiritually corrupt — while the people delivering that message often lived very comfortably. Wanting financial stability, abundance, and generational wealth is not greedy. It is wise. It is responsible. It is one of the most loving things you can build for yourself and the people who come after you.
The life that actually fits them. Some people stopped wanting the career pivot, the move to a new city, the unconventional relationship structure, the business that felt too big, the lifestyle that looked “too much” — not because those things stopped calling to them, but because they got tired of defending their desires to people who didn’t share them.
The time and freedom that felt too luxurious to ask for. There is a particular kind of shame that attaches to wanting rest, space, and autonomy. We’ve been conditioned to measure worth in busyness. To want a life with breathing room — time for yourself, for creativity, for simply being — sounds indulgent to many people. It is not. It is necessary.
The Spiritual Myth That Keeps People Poor, Tired, and Small
Let’s address this one directly, because it runs deep.
A distorted version of spirituality has been used for generations to keep people — particularly women, particularly communities of color, particularly working-class people — from pursuing prosperity. The logic goes something like this: If you truly have faith, you won’t be attached to material things. If you’re really humble, you’ll be satisfied with what you have. If you’re truly good, you won’t care about money.
This is not spirituality. This is a control mechanism dressed in spiritual language.
Real prosperity — the kind rooted in purpose, discipline, and service — has never been incompatible with faith or spiritual growth. Many of the most spiritually grounded people in history were also builders, creators, and wealth generators who used their resources to transform lives. Abundance and altruism are not opposites. In fact, you cannot give from an empty well.
The most generous people are often the most prosperous — not because money made them generous, but because they refused to accept the lie that wanting abundance was wrong.
What Reclaiming Your Desire Actually Looks Like
This is not about becoming someone who chases money and ignores everything else. This is about becoming whole — which means bringing your real wants back into your conscious awareness and making intentional choices about them.
Here’s what that process looks like in practice:
Audit your beliefs, not just your habits. Before you can change your financial behavior, your health habits, or your daily choices, you have to examine what you actually believe about your right to have better. Many people are working against themselves at the belief level, which is why strategies alone don’t stick. Ask yourself: What was I taught about wanting more? Who taught me that? Was that person living the life I want?
Separate what you were told from what you actually know. You may have been told that wanting a six-figure income was greedy. But do you actually believe that? Or do you believe it because you heard it enough times in a context that felt authoritative? Examine the origin of your beliefs with the same rigor you’d apply to anything else.
Give yourself explicit permission. This sounds too simple, and it isn’t. Many people are waiting for an external authority — a mentor, a parent, a spiritual figure — to tell them it’s okay to want what they want. That permission is not coming from outside. You have to issue it yourself. Say it clearly: I am allowed to want excellent health. I am allowed to want financial abundance. I am allowed to build a life that excites me.
Start where you actually are. Reclaiming desire doesn’t require a dramatic reinvention. It starts with one honest conversation with yourself, one decision to stop performing contentment, one action toward something you want that you’ve been pretending you didn’t want. Momentum builds from there.
Prosperity Is Not a Personality Flaw
The word prosperity comes from the Latin prosperus — meaning “doing well.” Not taking from others. Not hoarding. Not being better than. Simply doing well.
Prosperity is health that lets you show up fully for the people you love. It’s financial freedom that lets you respond to need without calculating whether you can afford to help. It’s time and space to think, create, and grow into the fullest version of who you are. It’s a body that carries you with energy and strength. It’s a mind that believes in its own future.
None of that is selfish. None of that is greedy. None of that is unspiritual.
What IS wasteful — what IS a kind of poverty — is spending your one life apologizing for your own ambition.
The Question That Changes Everything
So here it is again, and this time I want you to sit with it:
What did you stop wanting because someone told you it was selfish, greedy, or not very spiritual to want it?
Write it down. Say it out loud. Put it back on the table where it belongs. You don’t have to have a plan for it yet. You don’t have to defend it to anyone. You just have to stop pretending it isn’t there.
Because the life you quietly folded up and put away — the health, the wealth, the freedom, the version of yourself that felt like too much — is still in there. Waiting.
And it was never too much.
You were just surrounded by people who had learned to want too little.