YEARNINGS

Follow Your Urges to Fulfill Your Yearning

We are literally bursting with yearning to live lives of MORE—and yet, too often, our very life force is spent repressing these powerful yearnings. We frequently don’t recognize these yearnings, because we haven’t been trained to see them, to feel them, or to act on them appropriately. In fact, we have been conditioned to ignore our yearnings, to view them as an imposition on our lives of comfort, or as an embarrassment. And yet, these yearnings can be a compass guiding us to true fulfillment in life—if only we can learn to heed them.

Our urges are the impulses our yearning sends to us to guide us in the moment. Urges, when properly interpreted and followed, lead us to fulfill our yearning. We might have the urge to pick up the phone to call an old friend, grab our bike and go for a ride in nature, go into the kitchen and bake a cake, or ask the person in the checkout line out on a date. Sensing and following these urges would lead us to fulfill our yearnings to love, to be one with nature, to create, to connect. It is by following our urges that we fulfill our yearning and experience the richness of self-care and the nourishment of our deepest selves. Without fulfilling our yearning, we can never be satisfied, nourished, or complete.

The Neuroscience of Yearning and Wanting

Only when we meet our yearnings do we experience satisfaction and fulfillment—a deep pleasure that we can never experience by pursuing our cravings or surface wants. There are two different brain circuits associated with wanting and yearning—what some neuroscientists call our wanting and liking centers, or our excitatory centers and our satisfactory centers. The “liking center” and the “satisfactory center” coincides with what we call the “yearning center.”

Wanting is related to being stimulated, excited, or even crazed. Our wanting circuit is fueled by dopamine, that gives us that rush or high feeling...but it doesn’t last. It is a short-lived fuel that fades very quickly and then we want our next “hit”. It can be addictive—we often crave or feel a compulsive “need” for chocolate, social media, to buy something, to pick up our phone... Our dopamine system doesn’t have satiety (satisfaction) built into it, so we can never be truly satisfied by our wants—particularly by our cravings for soft addictions.

It is only liking or satisfying—meeting our yearning—that brings us true satisfaction. Our liking circuit (associated with the satisfaction of true yearning) is fueled by opioids. Activating the yearning center brings us a satisfied pause, a sense of contentment, bliss, or fulfillment. We only activate the satisfaction centers of our brains and experience true fulfillment when we pursue our yearnings.

Differentiate Your Wants from Your Yearning

To help us experience that true satisfaction, we need to practice distinguishing our yearnings from our wants in the moment. Our surface cravings (or wants) can indicate that we have a deeper yearning or even provide cues to our deeper yearnings, but we often use our cravings to numb or avoid the feeling that is indicating the deeper yearning. We have surface cravings for our soft addictions, which can never satiate our true hungers.

Not all urges will lead us to our yearning, but we must learn to exercise the muscle of following our urges if we want to reopen this connection to our yearning. Because we are out of practice, we often misread the cue and our yearning. We have a yearning to feel alive, but we interpret that yearning as a need for a cup of coffee. Because of societal and programming noise, we misread the yearning for connection as a compulsion to share some gossip or check social media.

Soft addictions have become such an issue for us, because we have missed the many urges that have been trying to nudge us to meet our yearnings. Then when we do sense an impulse, we do not heed the nudge clearly and we misread them as surface cravings for our soft addictions—the “need” to grab a bag of chips, log on to Netflix, check our email, or gulp down a cup of coffee. When we indulge in our soft addictions, we numb ourselves even more from the call of our yearning. It takes practice to sense our urges and interpret them appropriately.

Remember, what we want is often a soft addiction. What we yearn for is something much deeper and richer: to be seen and heard; to be connected; to matter; to make a difference. As we learn to use our feelings to discern the difference between wants and yearning, we can keep from confusing the two. Our wants are our ways to escape from our feelings, which can never lead us to satisfaction or peace.

Satisfaction in the Moment—and in Your Life

The amazing thing is that, once you've consciously your yearnings, even the little things in life can meet that need and bring that satisfaction. If you yearn to be affirmed, you can relish the acknowledgement you received from your boss in that email. If you yearn to touch, you can savor the mid-meeting interruption of your child tapping your arm, or ask your partner or roommate for a hug, or high-five or hug yourself, cuddle your pet or even your stuffed animal, massage your face with tender care when you are bathing or grooming yourself...

When we focus on meeting our yearnings, even the smallest acts can add up. If we aren’t aware of our yearnings, we miss those moments. You might miss that moment to love and to matter in your child’s life when you’re tucking her into bed—when she wants to talk, but your mind is jumping to all the “to do’s” left at work. Or you may miss the moment to meet your yearning to make a difference, to express yourself—when you find yourself complaining after a meeting, instead of speaking up and sharing your thoughts during the meeting where you could make a difference.

Yearning is the key to finding true joy and satisfaction in our lives. It is key to nourishing ourselves, navigating crises, living consciously, finding fulfillment, and designing—and living—our best life! Follow your urges and your yearnings—and discover their power!